It all means something in sequence, as you point out, and again - I'm astounded at your knowledge of the game and ability to explain it so I can understand they why's of it. Thanks.

Still, I was referring to the sheer volume of newspeak verbiage involved, and what it must take for a young QB to assimilate it. You've simplified it and made it comprehensible. I was just having fun.

Back when I played the game for fun as a kid, it was simpler: Draw it up the dirt, saying who goes where, as in, "Bill, you line up right and I'll fake Brice by looking right, and you go behind me and I'll hand it to you and you go left and I'll try to block Brice." Or simply, "Everybody go out for a pass."

That was before the invention of the Nerf. The old Voit football we used wouldn't hold air because a dog put a fang through it. There was no grass on the wide dirt alley where we played. We played two-below touch at home on the alley, and on Saturdays when a couple of us could go to town, we loved it because we could play tackle on the grass at the park. And one of the town kids usually had a football that held air. That opened up the passing game.

We lived 85 miles east of LA on the edge of the desert. The Rams had just come to town. I got to see them starting in 1949 on a TV set at a store downtown where they'd put up chairs for the dads and sons to watch football after church. My family bought one of those TV's in 1952 so we could watch all the Rams home games on KTLA. We kept playing football in the alley into the mid-50's when Bill, the oldest kid in the neighborhood, made running back on the high school football team. He still played two-below touch with the rest of us in the alley.

A lot has changed since - one thing I wish hadn't changed is the horns. Back in '49 the Rams had the coolest helmets ever and I wish, with most of you, that we could get the horns back.