One of the perks to playing on Monday Night Football is that both teams are featured fairly prominently throughout the day on the various ESPN programming. For example, as we speak NFL Primetime is on discussing yesterday's action and previewing tonight's 49ers-Saints game.

Michelle Tafoya was just speaking and explaining the plan for tonight to improve the communication between Jimmy Raye, Mike Johnson and Alex Smith. The plan is have Smith wear a numbered wristband and Raye will then call down a specific number, which corresponds to various plays on the wristband. We've heard some discussion about it but I figured a little confirmation is helpful.

This would seem to improve the situation, but I still see one issue that is not being addressed. My understanding of the game last week was that Raye basically would call down the plays more from memory because he was busy shuffling through his playbook. Using this new wristband system, that means Raye has to associate various plays with specific numbers. If he doesn't remember the play names, how is he supposed to remember the additional numbers that go with those plays? Did the 49ers just assign numbers 1 through whatever for the plays? If Raye is finding these numbers in the playbook, how does that improve things if he was shuffling through papers last week?

Can somebody clarify this for me?