SmashMouth

It’s hard to gain confidence from your teammates when they can tell you aren’t confident in yourself.”

It can’t be faked. The other faces in the huddle can see through you — especially at quarterback. It’s almost impossible to find success when the players looking to you to lead hear you bumbling through play calls or see your head spinning.

“If they look at you and you’re not really confident about what you’re doing, then they’re not going to be confident in what they’re doing and they’re not going to be confident in you,” Saints backup quarterback Luke McCown said.

That’s where Garrett Grayson was at this time last season. He struggled calling the plays. The playbook was still new to him. Things were happening faster than he could process them. It was rough.

In other words, he was enduring the bumps and bruises that rookies are expected to endure. Still, that didn’t make it easy. But after spending a year in the classroom and learning under McCown and Drew Brees, Grayson has returned to the Saints a more confident player.

His head isn’t spinning. He understands what he’s supposed to be doing. He’s confident in the huddle. He’s ready to take charge of whatever group of players he’s leading during practices.



”I want to take command of the guys,” Grayson said. ”That was something I don’t know if I necessarily know if I did the right way late year because I didn’t really know the offense that well. I don’t want to say I was timid, but I wasn’t really commanding guys like you should.”

It took Grayson a while to get to that point. He wasn’t there the last time anyone outside of the organization saw him on the field. Even last preseason, when he completed half of his passes for 334 yards with zero touchdowns and a pair of picks, he was still trying to figure things out.

It wasn’t until about the midway point last season that he started feeling confident with the system, and he continued to work at it throughout the offseason. He said each day he’d pick a play, concept or defense and spend a day dissecting it until he understood everything about it.

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