In Weis’s system, though, there is less to throw out than with many other NFL teams. Weis is more a believer in matchups than trickery, as is head coch Bill Belichick. He believes more in formations and player groupings than the foolproofness of any play in his playbook, a marked departure from a place like San Francisco, where they might have 55-100 plays on a list for any game and 400 or more in a playbook that looked like Volume A of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

By contrast, Weis’s looks more like Volume V. There’s still plenty there, it’s just a little thinner and easier to carry, both by hand and in your mind.

“San Francisco could call 400 plays,” Weis said. “I have a different philosophy. I think you can cut down on the plays and get different looks from your formations and who’s in them. It’s easier for the players to learn. It’s easier for the quarterback to learn. You get different looks without changing his reads. You don’t need an open-ended number of plays.”