"Study, steal, repeat. If you're an NFL coach, that doesn't make you a thief or unique. It's your duty, particularly if your team has a talent deficiency, to investigate any innovation that could give you a better shot to succeed. So what if someone else thought of it first?

So Tony Sparano does that, sure. The Dolphins coach does it often enough that he deems himself "a pain in the neck" to his assistants. He watches tape of opponents, sees "all these teams doing a bunch of things," identifies interesting wrinkles that might "marry something that maybe we've done," and pesters his staff with them.

But Sparano and his staff have done more than the NFL norm. They haven't merely borrowed a play here or there from other NFL teams. That just takes a tweak. Rather, they've updated and implemented formations used far more extensively in other generations or at other levels, whether the single wing (Wildcat) or the spread option (Pat White). That takes some courage.

They have been so full of surprises that nothing they try should surprise us now.

They might take just about any suggestion.

How about the run-and-shoot? "