INDIANAPOLIS — The tackle’s made, the play stops.
Lou Anarumo’s voice crackles into Cam Bynum’s helmet.
The Colts defensive coordinator tells his free safety the play call once. Maybe twice, if Bynum’s lucky.
Then Anarumo launches into everything else he wants his defense to know, working quickly in order to get his defense as much information as possible before the mic cuts out with 15 seconds left on the play clock.
“He’s giving me all the keys to success,” Bynum said. “Tell them the down and distance, tell them the situation. If it’s two-minute, tell them this, this and that. If it’s fourth down or third down, tell them what we’re expecting to see. I think he’s doing a really good job of teaching me how a typical green dot would do it.”
Only one player can wear the green dot, the sticker on the back of the helmet that signals which player’s helmet has the speaker.
Bynum isn’t a typical green dot because of the position he plays. Bynum is a free safety; traditionally, the middle linebacker wears the communication device.
But the Colts plan to use a rotating cast of linebacker this season, at least to start the year, and that makes it necessary for Bynum to take over the most vocal role on the defense.
“Especially when you have young linebackers, if you’ve got a veteran guy that's out there that can be calm and not have to worry about processing all of it all at once, it's just one less thing on their plate,” Anarumo said.
Bynum has spent most of training camp preparing to wear the green dot, both by learning how to communicate with Anarumo and by doing a lot of cardio, from getting on the battle rope to high-intensity workouts. Anything to get his lungs going. When a guy plays at the back of the defense, the way Bynum often does as the team’s free safety, part of the responsibility of wearing the green dot is getting the call on a dead run back to the line of scrimmage.
“It’s a difference because he’s got to run around a lot,” Colts pass game coordinator Chris Hewitt said. “Before, he could just chill back there and get the ball, but now he’s got to run all the way up and get in front of everybody. He’s got to get his conditioning up.”
Anarumo and Hewitt have both given the green dot to safeties before. When Anarumo was in Cincinnati, strong safety Vonn Bell often had the dot on his helmet, and Hewitt gave the dot to both Chuck Clark and Eric Weddle during his time in Baltimore.
“The thing about when you’re playing safety, you have to do all the communication anyway,” Hewitt said. “It works a lot better when you’ve got the (speaker). You’ve got the time to think about it now, for him to be getting the communication from the defensive coordinator, he’s going to be way ahead of the game.”
Bell visited the Colts and his old defensive coordinator during organized team activities, and he gave Bynum a heads-up on what it’s like to hear Anarumo’s voice crackling to life after every play.
If Anarumo’s being honest, he prefers to talk to the safety anyway.
“Because at the end of the day, Lou is a DB guy,” Bynum said. “He's always talking to me. Obviously, now because it's practice, he's able to talk whenever in the mic. During the play, he's saying stuff in there, but obviously I know on Sundays he's not going to be able to (talk after the 15-second mark). He’s always giving little reminders to tell this guy this, tell this guy that, just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So that's why for me, as one of the leaders of the defense, I take pride in being able to carry that communication straight from the coach and give everything that I need to say to the other guys.”
There are a lot of little nuances to the role.
Bynum has to get back to the line of scrimmage quickly, has to make sure he’s loud. He’s always telling himself he can’t mumble into the huddle.
Then there’s the tougher parts of the job.
“You can’t hear the every single word Coach says,” Bynum said. “Imagine it being third down, it’s a home game, the crowd is loud. You have to be able to hear one word, and that can be your trigger word to know the exact call, know what Coach is trying to say.”
Bynum believes he has to think the way Anarumo’s mind works to do the job well.
He has always had an excellent grasp of the defense, but as a free safety, there are parts of the defense that do not affect him. Now, he has to know exactly what every call means to each part of the defense.
“Sometimes I have to talk to the d-line,and it's something that I've probably never had a conversation about: the fronts or a blitz pattern or anything,” Bynum said. “I have to be able to learn those things myself to be able to, so it's not some random words that I'm just spitting out from coach, it's something I can understand too.”
Bynum also has to know the game plan like the back of his hand. If he’s only getting one word of the call, he has to know which fronts go with which coverage plans that week, how Anarumo has designed the game plan based on the opponent’s down and distance.
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Then he has to get it to everybody else, something he’s always done as a safety.
“You’re almost playing Telephone,” Bynum said. “When I wasn’t the green dot, I’d walk next to the linebacker. … So I can hear it clearly. Then I’d walk to the corner, the nickel, the other corner and the other safety just to make sure we’re on the same page. … You have to get those few seconds of communication, then all 11 guys have to be on the same page. A lot goes on within the cycle of the snap, and it’s really playing Telephone.”
Once the play call is out, Bynum starts passing along the tips and notes that Anarumo left in his helmet.
"All the checks, all the communication we've got going on the secondary, all those things that were foreign are now normal," Hewitt said. "Those calls are a lot easier, and we're ready to roll."
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts safety Cam Bynum tell you what it's like to wear the green dot
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