Out: The Spread Offense
In: The Really Spread Offense

It took the entire 100 years since the legalization of the forward pass for football coaches — all of them collectively innovating at the speed of a Greenlandian glacier — to embrace the idea of using the maximum five allowable receivers at the same time. Even in the 2000s, the spread offense was used almost solely by teams with excellent quarterbacks like Manning, Brady, and Drew Brees. The dominant mental calculus of the rest of the league’s coaches remained: more chances for quarterbacks to make decisions = more interceptions = higher likelihood that my ass will be fired. But this decade, coaches will finally catch on that more receivers = more scoring and excitement = happier fans = owner getting laid more = job security. The spread will be used by everyone, even teams with absolute morons under center.

Out: Drew Rosenhaus
In: Twitter

It used to be that if you, the NFL player, wanted to say something insanely stupid to the whole world, you needed to hire a greaseball agent to call a press conference on your front lawn so you could expound extemporaneously on your personal philosophy while doing shirtless crunches for the cameras. Now, thanks to Twitter, there is absolutely no filter between the underdeveloped, trauma-damaged cerebral cortexes of NFL stars and audiences of millions. During a one-month period last year, Chad Ochocinco tweeted more than 2,800 times, an average of one tweet every 15 minutes. We’ve gotten to hear Chad worrying if Brad and Angelina spent enough time with their kids (“What happens when it’s time to film a movie six months out of the year?”), touting his shopping prowess (“Am I the only dude that went to see Sex and the City 2 and could name every shoe and bag Carrie and the girls had?”), and comparing celebrity deaths to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history (“Okay, first Mrs. Fawcett now Mr. Jackson, please tell me that this is a mistaken rumor, if not this is just as sad as 9/11”). In Twitter’s infancy, NFL players and coaches have already discovered all sorts of ways to use it to give Roger Goodell aneurysms, from Vikings wideout Bernard Berrian falsely tweeting that quarterback Tarvaris Jackson was out for the year with an injury, to Pete Carroll giving hints on Seahawk draft strategy based on song titles, to Cardinal Jay Feely crushing the kickers-should-be-seen-and-not-heard mold by tweeting his inane, milquetoast opinions on everything from politics (“McCain is a true American Hero and I hope he remains in the Senate until he retires from Politics”) to medicine (“H1N1 is so new we don’t know about the long-term effects of the vaccine”). I can’t wait for the inevitable @jaycutler tweet tossed off on the way to taking the snap in the fourth quarter of a tight game: “Sup everyone about to throw back-breaking pick into triple coverage LOL.” Twitter is going to allow the casual fan to get to know the players in ways he never, ever wanted to — and that is a beautiful thing.

Matt’s not done yet. Click here to read his 30-second NFL preview, for the man a bit too busy to watch 22 weeks of football.

Plus, in an upcoming issue, Matt will answer your most pressing sports questions. Whose gut would win in a judo match, Andy Reid’s or Rex Ryan’s? Will Derek Jeter retire as the all-time postgame cliché leader? Send your own queries to asktaibbi@mensjournal.com, or post them in the comments section here.

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This article originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.

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