I still play non-standard openings most of the time so there's that. But when I do study an opening I focus on the position rather than the number of moves. This is a time consuming way to study an opening because analyzing each position usually means taking the entire game into consideration... so it's quite the investment to make.
Studying complete games is far more profitable than studying opening lines anyway.
So there are a lot of moves entailed if you study the opening properly.
It's a bit different at the pro leagues - everybody plays book moves. But at an amateur level you have to consider deviation, and for that you have to really work into that positional understanding.