The Turtle Walks on the Clouds

The Patriots stand at the cutting edge of football philosophy, theory, and technology. We spoke with Patriots "football communications" director Harlan Thunder Eagle.

DSP: "What history brought you to the New England Patriots?"

HTE: "Thank you for asking me here today. Like all teams, the Patriots are interested in secure communications between the sidelines and the players. As you know, NFL teams transmit offensive and defensive signals electronically via specially designed helmets. The Patriots look for redundancy in communications security. I have expertise in secure communications."

DSP: "Can you elaborate?"

HTE: "You're familiar with the movie "Wind Talkers?" During World War II, the Marines recruited Native Americans to facilitate speedy, reliable, and 'unbreakable' communications. Several of the Native American languages have unique grammar and syntex, understandable only to a very few outside of native speakers. For example, if you wanted to represent "football", you might use the word "turtle" or call a blitz using the Navajo words for "red dog."

DSP: "Fascinating. And if you wanted to transmit the message to remove air from a football?"

HTE: "That would take some imagination, Doc. I suppose we might combine the words "cloud" and "turtle" or a brief sentence, "the turtle walks on the clouds." That's never really come up."

DSP: "Is this reflected in the Patriots' playbook?"

HTE: "As you know, Navajo is not a written language. So, even discussing a written representation of the signs and symbols we use really has no meaning. You hear discussion about football having its own language, and we believe that to be quite literally true.

DSP: Can you give me an example of a play call? Let's say you want to send Gronk on a deep fly pattern. What might you say?

HTE: We would have a unique name for Gronk. We could choose any animal, but let's say we chose "white buffalo." We could use a bird to signify pass or a weapon or even a type of weather, all of which could change from game to game or quarter to quarter. So deep pass could be 'buffalo wind' or 'buffalo arrowhead' or 'buffalo falcon'. It's very flexible, variable, and of course, we would be using the Navajo for buffalo, not "Y" or "H" or Gronk."

DSP: "You're not in Kansas anymore, Mr. Thunder Eagle."

HTE: "True happiness comes only to those who dedicate their lives to the service of others."