Headsets Signal Play-Calling Advantage -------------------------------------- John Branch DENVER - A tiny speaker was tucked inside the helmet of Browns quarterback George Ratterman. The plan was to allow Cleveland coach Paul Brown to secretly call plays directly to Ratterman's ear. It wasn't illegal because, in 1956, no one had tried it before. The system debuted in a preseason game against the Detroit Lions. The Lions soon noticed that Brown wasn't shuttling plays through other players, as he normally did. They saw Ratterman dancing slowly with himself, a human antennae trying to pick up signals. They spotted a transmitter stashed on the sideline. That's when the Lions knew. They tried to rip Ratterman's helmet from his head, to break the unit or at least get a peek inside. "They were saying, 'Kick him in the head,'" said Ratterman, now 75 and living in Littleton. "It seems to me it wasn't working at that time. Other people would come on there and you could hear them talking. I took my helmet off and bounced it on the ground a few times, to show them, 'See, it's not even working.'" Forty-six years to the day, Denver Broncos quarterback Brian Griese knew how Ratterman felt. Like Ratterman, Griese heard voices in his head that didn't belong to his coach. Thanks to faulty technology, he, too, had to rely on the previous method of having plays sent from the sideline via courier, not radio waves. Apparently, 46 years isn't enough time to make the system infallible. But it is enough time to drastically change the mind game played by the quarterback, molded by a mix of evolving coaching strategy and technology. The NFL banned coach-to-quarterback radio communications weeks after Brown's dalliance in 1956. The league waited until 1996 to permit it again. The helmet Griese wears features a small speaker tucked between the padding, near the ear hole. From the time a play is whistled dead to the time the play clock reaches 15 seconds (or the ball is snapped, whichever comes first), Griese hears the voice of offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak. "It's easier because you can let the quarterback know the substitution that's in the game, sometimes the formations, give him reminders of what's going on," coach Mike Shanahan said. "It does help." But two weeks ago, Griese put on his helmet in San Francisco and heard security guards, beer vendors and ushers, perhaps even the ghost of Paul Brown. Everyone, it seemed, but Kubiak. Somehow, the Broncos and the stadium communication system were on the same frequency - something the NFL and Motorola, in the middle of a five-year, $105-million contract to supply wireless systems, have assured the Broncos was a one-in-a-million occurrence. The Broncos had a similar problem three years ago at Tampa Bay. "Maybe we should be able to win the lottery," said Shanahan, whose team has secured a backup system to operate at a different frequency. (The NFL, which holds a Federal Communications Commission license for a band of frequencies, investigated the problems in San Francisco and "found that there was outside interference and frequencies around the stadium," spokesman Steve Alic said. No problems were reported when the Washington Redskins played there last Sunday.) Against the 49ers, Denver was forced to go back in time, to 1995, when plays were relayed to the huddle by hand signals and substituting players. Some were botched in translation. "A lot of the plays didn't come in the way they were supposed to with those guys," Griese said after the Denver victory. "If I didn't get a play, I just called my own play and went with it." And, like that, the role of the quarterback came full circle. "It's unbelievable the way the game has changed," said Sonny Jurgensen, who called all his plays, sometimes drawing them in the dirt, during an 18-year career. "It's a coach's game nowadays. Players used to control the game. Vince Lombardi once said, 'If I haven't been able to convey to the quarterback in practice what I want done on Sunday, then I shouldn't be coach.'" Quarterbacks haven't called plays since the mid-1970s, except in unique situations such as the two-minute offense. But technology has even changed that. "I liked being able to call my own plays in two-minute," said Broncos backup Steve Beuerlein, whose 16-year career bridges the helmet-radio gap. "Now, with the headset, as soon as the play is run, the coach is in there, 'OK, 300 Jet Dragon, 300 Jet Dragon, get 'em lined up.'" Brown began calling from the sideline midway through Cleveland's 10-year, two-league run that produced seven championships and three league runner-up finishes in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The team's success made the practice acceptable, to the chagrin of Otto Graham and other quarterbacks uncomfortable with having control wrested away. Soon, assistants were watching games from the press box, where they could get a better view of plays developing. Once communication was established between coaches, first by telephone and later by headsets, those men began calling plays, or feeding information to the head coaches who did. San Diego coach Don Coryell hated headsets, former quarterback Dan Fouts said, annoyed at the tangled mess of wires that kept him leashed to the sideline. So Coryell sometimes carried a walkie- talkie to talk to his coaches. A ham radio operator once picked up the conversations and transcribed them, handing them to a local newspaper. "It was things like, 'What the (bleep) is Fouts thinking?' and 'Where the (bleep) is he throwing the (bleep) ball?'" said Fouts, laughing. Now the coach can call the play and formation - complex messages that signals and couriers didn't convey. "(Headsets) have definitely made the job easier from that standpoint," Beuerlein said. "The problem is that you get so dependent on that, you don't spend any time going over signals and preparing for the possibility that those headsets might go out." Even in the wake of the problems in San Francisco, the Broncos haven't spent any time working on hand signals or shuttling plays from the sideline. "We made it through that one," Beuerlein said, "and, hopefully, it will never happen again." Somewhere, Paul Brown is smiling. - John Branch may be reached at jbranch@gazette.com NOW HEAR THIS: THE NFL'S EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY Sept. 15, 1956 - Cleveland coach Paul Brown secretly puts receiver in helmet of quarterback George Ratterman for a preseason game against Detroit. Weeks later, the secret out, NFL commissioner Bert Bell bans radios in helmets. Early 1960s - Phone systems installed on sidelines, allowing players and coaches to talk with coaches in the press box, an increasingly popular vantage point. Late 1960s - Dallas coach Tom Landry, among others, popularizes the growing notion of calling plays from the sideline, not the huddle. By mid-1970s, few quarterbacks call their own plays, relying instead on hand signals or substitute players to ferry calls to the huddle. 1977 - Introduction of headsets for coaches to communicate with other coaches on the sideline and in the press box. 1991 - World League of American Football (now NFL Europe) reintroduces use of radio systems in the helmet of quarterbacks. 1994-95 - NFL experiments with using in-helmet communication during two preseasons. 1996 - NFL adopts use of radio receivers in the helmets of quarterbacks during regular season. 1998 - NFL coach-to-coach systems go wireless, putting dozens of coach-following "grips" out of work. 1999 - Introduction of pagers as a way to notify referee that the team wishes to challenge an on-field ruling. The referee's pager buzzes, and its screen reads "HOME" or "VISITOR." Sept. 15, 2002 - Forty-six years after the technology was introduced to the NFL, the Denver Broncos had technical difficulties similar to the Browns in 1956. During their game at San Francisco, the Broncos found that they were sharing a frequency with workers at the stadium - and were forced to use the old-fashioned method of sending plays from the sideline through couriers and signals. - John Branch; The Gazette Copyright 2002 Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.