Football For Youth!

A Dissection of a Series (Part Four)

2011-10-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Offensive linemen

Dive/Trap

I've been referring to this as the "Dive/Trap" for a reason. Let's be honest, without some killer offensive linemen, most youth offenses gain precisely squat on the dive play. It typically relies on man-on-man blocking, and without the mechanical advantages to drive physically superior defensive linemen off the ball, your offensive line is at a disadvantage.

However, there are some reasons to run a pure dive with base blocking. This took me a long time to understand, but here's the basic gist of it: when you angle block all the time, defenders learn to expect the assault to hit them from an angle, and set themselves to repel your charge back along that same axis of inertia. Well, if he's going to be kind enough to try to angle himself away from the play, we can help him with a simple explosive base block that stays low and gets into his hips, driving him out even more.

A Dissection of a Series (Part Three)

2011-09-28T06:30:00.001-07:00

receivers (TE, Split end)

A Dissection of a Series (Part Two)

2011-09-21T06:30:00.001-07:00

Last week I discussed the basic Buck Sweep action from the Wing-T and how it can be easily incorporated into virtually any offensive system, allowing for a four-play series that simultaneously threatens both perimeters, the center of the offensive formation, and the downfield area. This series has been one of the most successful in the history of football, and today I want to discuss the basic backfield actions.

Dive/Trap

As mentioned previously, the series relies on three backs acting in concert to threaten both edges of the defense as well as the middle. Although the typical youth offensive system revolves around the sweep, I'd like you to focus your attention on the middle of the field for a moment.

Whether you choose to run a dive or to trap block the defense or-- as I'll discuss in a couple of weeks-- to run both schemes, attacking the middle of the defense is critical. Because most youth offenses gain yards predominately outside the tackles, most typical youth defenses are set up in a sort of "V" shape designed to contain the edge. Because of this, you can punch large holes in their middle if you set the play up properly-- particularly if they are flying outside to pursue a sweep they are absolutely, positively sure is coming.

To begin the dive/trap play, I recommend running dives on first sound, and traps on your normal cadence. This is not the key it sounds like to the defense if you have one or two other first sound plays in the similar series (Out of the Wing-T, I like a quick toss to the weak side with the split end cracking the outside linebacker. It's a great 3rd&1 play when the defense is committed to the middle and positive you're about to dive.)

I run both the dive and the trap to the weak side of the formation, as you can see in the diagram. I should note that I use two types of terminology:

1) "Cut" -- A Cut is a trap-action play that attacks in the same direction as the sweep. The fullback takes the hand off and 'cuts' behind the pulling guard, into the hole and underneath the pursuit.

2) "Trap" -- A Trap is a trap-action play that attacks in the opposite direction of the pursuit. The full back takes the ball and hits directly into the hole, preferably without slowing down at all.

Both plays have their uses. Against fast-flowing defenses with highly aggressive pursuit, the Cut is a more effective play because it offers cutback opportunities. With less-aggressive pursuit, the Trap is effective and hits a little quicker, generally while the defenders are still trying to spot the ball.

In either case, we will assume a Wing-Right look, so the fullback will be taking the handoff on the left side of the quarterback.

QB:
Begin the cadence in a slightly pigeon-toed stance with your knees held closely together. At the snap, pivot sharply to the left, drawing your left foot back to the 3o'clock position and opening your hips directly towards your own goal line. Put your eyes on the bottom of the fullback's numbers and extend the ball into his pocket with both hands. After he receives the handoff, take a giant step with your left foot directly back towards your goal line, locking your eyes on the crossing halfback's belt buckle. Extend both hands together as if you had the ball and let the halfback wrap his pocket around them, closing as if receiving a handoff.

Your right foot should not have moved yet. Now take a giant step towards your 2o'clock position with your right foot, pulling both hands down to your left hip and pivoting your head sharply around to the right. Lock your eyes on the corner on that side of the field. Take one more giant step with your left foot at the same angle to gain depth, and now head for the sideline as if running a sweep. Make eye contact with any tacklers that approach you, and attempt to dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Keep your hands locked to your upfield hip and your upper body turned. If you make it to the edge without the defensive end or corner approaching you, signal to your coach that the keep is open. (The signal I use is for the QB to wiggle his facemask.)

The quarterback should practice these steps and actions 20-40 times without any other players present in the drill, until he is perfectly comfortable with the steps necessary.

FB:
Begin the cadence with your elbows on your knees in a comfortable rest position. If the play is on first sound, take your first step without going to a three-point stance. Otherwise, drop to a forward-weighted three-point stance on the quarterback's first sound.

Take your first step directly forward with your right foot, keeping your body low. If the play is the Cut, lock your eyes on the nearest hip of the pulling guard. With your second step (left foot), angle to follow that hip, cutting off the block and up into the hole on your third step (right foot). Look for cutback against the defensive flow after crossing the line of scrimmage.

If the play is a dive or a trap, take your second step (left foot) at 11o'clock into the hole. Stay low and keep your legs driving. Expect to break tackles and protect the ball at all times.

The fullback should get 20-30 reps of these steps before joining the rest of the team.

HB:
Begin the cadence in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. At the snap, crossover step with your left foot directly across your body to as close to 3o'clock as you can get. The crossover step will pull you slightly forward, which is fine; it brings you closer to the quarterback's second handoff point. Lock your eyes on the defensive end in front of you and receive the quarterback's extended hands on your second step (right foot). Wrap your pocket around the quarterback's hands and grip both sides of your jersey under your armpits until you reach the cut point.

Keep your eyes on that end, and belly slightly back towards your goal line with your third step (left foot). Sprint at full speed directly towards the sideline, cutting up as soon as you make it past the defensive end. Try to make your cut as sharp and close to 90-degrees as possible, getting your shoulders square to the line of scrimmage and gaining as much vertical ground as quickly as you can. Make eye contact with potential tacklers and dodge them as if you were carrying the ball. Make them chase you.

The halfback should get 15-25 reps of these steps by himself before joining the rest of the team.

WB:
Begin the cadence with your left foot splitting the tight end and approximately the same depth in the offensive backfield as the quarterback. Be in a comfortable rest position with your weight on the balls of your feet and your elbows resting lightly on your knees. Face directly forward. If the play is on quarterback's first sound, move from this stance, but if the play is on regular cadence, on the first sound swing your left foot back until your belt buckle is pointing directly at the ball. (Coaching point: Wings tend to rotate too far and end up facing towards the sideline. Stay on them to keep that belt pointing to the ball or they'll be unable to reach block or execute outward breaking steps.)

At the snap, step with your outside (right) foot as close to 3o'clock as possible. Take a second step immediately with the left foot slightly towards the line of scrimmage. Immediately attack the nearest defensive player ON or WITHIN ONE YARD OF the line of scrimmage from your nose outward. Get your head across his body and aim to place your face mask into his outside armpit. Either place your crossed wrists into his near ribs (shoulder block) or your hands together on his near hip (hand block), and run directly through him to the sideline. Do not stop or break contact with the defender until you reach the sideline or hear the whistle.

The wingback should receive 10-15 reps without a defender before a player is placed in the defensive end position. A further 10-25 reps should be gained with this defender moving to various locations: on the line, off the line, head up, inside shade, and outside shade. The wingback must ignore any inside shade defender and execute the reach block aggressively on each rep.

Now here's the best part of series based football: for the remaining plays in the series, if you have properly repped and installed the dive with attention paid to the the correct footwork and the angles, almost everything is already done to install the remaining plays.

Sweep:

QB:
At the snap, pull the ball sharply in to your hips and execute your footwork exactly as in the dive. Do NOT fake a handoff; let the fullback execute an arm-over wrap and enter the line exactly as if he had been handed the ball. On your second step, extend the ball to the halfback and place it securely in his pocket. Execute the remainder of your steps and fakes exactly as you did on the dive!

FB:
At the snap, execute your steps exactly as you do for the dive. As you pass the quarterback, wrap up like you're taking a handoff. Hit the line hard and try to break tackles just as if you were carrying the ball. Fight for ten tough yards and work hard enough to make the defense come to you.

HB:
Align and perform your first step exactly as you do for the dive. Take the handoff from the quarterback on your second step and accelerate to full speed as fast as possible, bellying slightly back from the line of scrimmage. As soon as you get past the defensive end, break downfield, getting as square and as vertical as possible as soon as you can.

WB:
The wingback's assignment does not change for the rest of the running plays in this series, Although it should be noted that a Wingback counter is possible in this series, I generally don't consider it a part of the Buck series, but put it with the Power sequence.

Keep and Waggle

I generally teach the Keep and Pass as one play. My quarterbacks are given the primary instruction to seek a first down on foot first, and only consider throwing the ball when it's wide open. The rule is simple:

"If you can get five yards on first down, a first down, or score without being touched, then tuck the ball and run."

If he is likely to be tackled, he needs to throw the ball, even if he throws it away. I don't like my quarterbacks getting hit, although it doesn't bother me a bit to see them lead blocking, where they control the speed of impact and can protect themselves with their own kinetic energy.

QB:
The quarterback's assignment is identical to the assignment on the dive/trap and sweep plays. He executes both fakes and attacks the perimeter hard. Hopefully, by the time you've called this play in the game, the near defensive end has been set up enough to be abandoning his assignments and crashing down hard rather than keeping a good contain position.

His passing reads are low to high with the backside tight end executing a one step drag across the field, and the backside wing running a short post to cross the nearest safety's face. This should pin that safety in place and prevent him from helping out over the top. The split end is the primary receiver, and should leave the line hard with a three step fade route that brings him between the numbers and the sideline. The ball needs to be thrown over his outside shoulder to prevent the interception.

This is not an easy throw to make. For one thing, the roll out is to the left, and for a right handed quarterback it's difficult. Second, it takes a bit of an arm to make an over the outside shoulder throw. There is one real trick for this:

Practice. The quarterback needs to throw each route at least 75 times before it's called in a game. He needs ample reps at throwing on the run. I have a simple roll out drill that I run each day that I'll detail in a later blog, but for now, understand that he can make the throw, you just have to work it.

FB:
The fullback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to hit the line hard, faking as if he has the ball, and run hard enough to draw the defense to him.

HB:
The halfback's assignment does not change for the Keep or Waggle. He needs to attack the perimeter as if he were carrying the football and draw the defense to him by running all out and juking, jiving, and avoiding the tacklers just like he has the ball in his hands.

WB:
The wingback shows reach block with a hard step to the outside with his right foot, and then releases to the inside across the face of any defender aligned outside his nose or over the top of any defender aligned inside him. He runs three steps directly upfield and then angles to run a short post directly in front of the nearest safety. If possible, he should make eye contact and give the safety a friendly nod. This will make any safety plant and immediately attack him. (It's like hypnosis!)

For more information, see:

1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.

A Dissection of a Series (Part One)

2011-09-14T06:30:00.001-07:00

Today I want to begin a series of articles on sequence-based football. The objective behind sequence football (also called "series" football) is to make every play look as closely similar as possible at the snap and for the first few steps into the play. This forces the defenders to commit based on what they think is happening, and a properly constructed series will place a defender in the wrong position most of the time by default; whatever action he has to take to put himself in position to defend play "A" of the series will take him out of position for play "C" of the series, and so on.

At the youth level, the most dangerous play is usually the sweep. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one that sometimes is forgotten is instinct. If you give a player a ball and tell him to run away from the defense, he runs to where he sees open field, usually to either side. Then he turns downfield and heads for the goal line. The sweep in my playbook doesn't work because I'm a great coach, but because of the natural instinct an athlete has to run away from where there are tacklers.

So, if most youth coaches are going to run some sort of sweep, let's look at a series that starts there, and expands in all directions while still staying true to the idea of series-based football.

Perhaps no system is more focused on series football than the venerable and efficient Wing-T. Developed in the early 1940's as an extension of the under-center T-formation, the Wing-T allowed the offensive coach to force the defense to respect both sides of the formation as a run threat, but in different ways.

Shown in the diagram above, the base formation features a "Wing" on one side, with a tight end and a back in close proximity to one another, allowing for double teams on the defensive end, as well as providing a natural rub angle for bunch passing attacks. On the weak side, the end is split 7-10 yards from the tackle, not necessarily to isolate him for the passing game, but to give him an excellent crack angle for a down block that can spring the quick pitch sweep.

In the backfield, a halfback sits approximately four yards deep and with his outside foot splitting the tail of the tackle on his side. A fullback aligns anywhere from four and a half to five yards depth directly behind the quarterback. His depth should depend on his acceleration and allow him to reach almost full speed before striking a hole opening in the center of the formation.

The series I want to talk about here is the "20" series in standard Wing-T nomenclature, or the "Buck Sweep," as it is also known. You can find it in just about any offense, and from almost any formation, but it always features three distinct parts:

1) A fullback play that strikes directly between the guards. Whether this is a "Cut" (playside trap) like the Vallotton Double Wing, or the 124 Guard Trap out of the traditional Wing-T, or an inside zone out of a Split-Back Pro look, or even simply a dive out of the I-Formation, this play forces the inside linebackers to honor it first and foremost before pursuing the sweep that is the horizontal stretch.

2) A halfback sweep action that attacks the perimeter almost immediately at the snap and is executed as close to simultaneously to the dive action as can be timed on the field. This play usually relies on the speed of the halfback to get around the corner, but great gains can be made if the defense overpursues and the back can cut against the grain. You see this play as the traditional "Packer sweep" and also in the pros "end around". (Which is not a reverse, no matter what Joe Theismann says.)

3) A combination quarterback keep/rollout pass play that occurs almost immediately after the sweep action and forces the defense to react simultaneously across both perimeter points of attack. Since defenses usually structure their pursuit to "roll towards" a sweep, allowing the corners and outside linebackers to force the ball back inside, two perimeter attacks at one time has the effect of drawing the defense apart down the middle, opening the way for the fullback.

3a) With the addition of a couple of slight adjustments to the eligible receivers and their pass routes, a "Waggle" play can be added to the quarterback keep, allowing for a run/pass option that again forces the defense out of position; a corner rolling up to prevent the run has almost no ability to defend a pass thrown over his head. He is entirely dependent on the free safety assistance over the top, and if the free safety is reacting to the perceived dive or sweep on the other side of the field, he will be well out of position to assist on the pass.

What makes this series so effective, especially at the youth level, is the conservation of effort that it allows. By practicing the series without footballs and focusing on the steps each player must take no matter where the ball goes, it is possible to make the entire series look almost identical. This means, for the first few seconds after the snap, the defense has absolutely no clue whatsoever where the ball is or where it is going.

When I have installed this series, whether from out of a Wing-T look, or the I-Formation, or even my beloved Double Wing, I generally rep it with the offensive backfield some 150-200 times without a football. Although this sounds like a lot, it really isn't. I'm using just the backs, and the timing drill we work on every day allows us to get approximately 40 reps every ten minutes during our individual period each day. (Indo usually features a five minute drill of some manner, such as exchanges or ball security or aggressive running, and then 20-25 minutes of timing work where we perfect the backfield actions of each play.)

In most offenses that are not series-focused, each play should receive 150-200 reps of the backfield actions before seeing game day grass. That means the four plays described, if they were broken among a typical grab-bag youth offense, would require 150x4=600 reps to perfect.

With a series-based format, however, the entire series can be repped in the same amount of time. I'm sure you can see the benefits. (Now get tricky: find 4-8 offensive formations that allow you to run the same series without altering any of the responsibilities. Now flip those formations and run the same sets and actions to the other side of the field. To the defense, it looks like you have 400 potential plays, but your offense is only learning one four-play series and eight formations! This is what I mean when I say "simply complex.")

While the backfield is working to perfect their movements, the offensive line divides their time into a) learning the assignments for that day's two plays from the series (generally starting with the trap/dive first and then the sweep second), and b) getting reps of plays previously installed.

During team time (anywhere from 20-45 minutes, depending on the time of year and how much of the offense is installed), we focus on running the specific plays called on to rehearse during that day's practice against a myriad of defensive fronts (Gap-8, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 4-4, etc) in the preseason, and against our next opponent's most likely defense in the regular season. During this period, we teach the line to make any necessary calls against a defensive front, how to react to blitzing linebackers, and we can even "front load" the next day's offensive line responsibilities. The backs should focus during this period on faking correctly; series-based systems fail miserably when they don't fool the defense.

It's with no small amount of pleasure that I see the Wing-T sliding downward in popularity against the "sexier" Spread-based offenses that have been the craze since about 2004. This means that the most popular and effective offense in history is becoming less and less well known to defensive coordinators, increasing your chances of success with it.

Don't forget that this one series is just a tiny, tiny fraction of what the Wing-T has to offer you, should you choose to run it, and equally important is the knowledge that you can run the Buck Sweep series as part of virtually any offensive system, from the West Coast to the Run and Shoot, if you keep to the simply principles I've outlined and force the defense to honor a dive/trap, sweep, and keep/pass all at the same time!

It works.

Next week I'll talk more about the responsibilities of the offensive backfield in this series.

For more information, see:

1. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: The Base Plan. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
2. Creehan, Dennis. The Wing-T from A to Z: Installing the System. [Monterey, Calif.]: Coaches Choice, 1999. Print.
3. Coverdale, Andrew, and Dan Robinson. The Bunch Attack: Using Compressed, Clustered Formations in the Passing Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
4. Raymond, Harold R., and Ted Kempski. The Delaware Wing-T: the Running Game. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1998. Print.
5. Gentry, Dan. Football's Mis-direction Wing-T with Multi-points of Attack. Champaign, IL: Coaches Choice, 1997. Print.
6. Cox, Gene. The Multiple Offense. Lake City, FL: Hunter Printing, 1996. Print.

The HURRICANE.

2011-09-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of the problems football coaches encounter is that, all other things being completely equal, the more physical team generally wins the game. Whoever blocks, tackles, and just plain knocks the other down is most likely to have more points on the scoreboard at the end of the game.

That's an elegant restatement of the problem. Now, what do we do about a solution?

There are a lot of ways to build aggression in football players. In high school, the emphasis is on not hitting your teammates, due to the risk of injury. As a result, we tend to focus our impact time on sleds, bags, and other nonhuman equipment that doesn't incur medical expenses when broken.

The youth levels, however, are vastly different. Most youth programs don't have expensive sleds and other equipment, and so need to focus their hitting on one another, even though it is somewhat more dangerous. Before you shriek out that I'm advocating increased risk for your players, I want you to think about this:

Should your players hit and be hit in practice, where you and your staff can tailor the drills, control the matchups, and otherwise damp things down to reduce injury while still building confidence...

...Or should your players discover hitting in a game, where anywhere from two to five officials will be more interested in collecting a paycheck than in enforcing safety rules correctly, and the opposing team will care neither for the equality of matchups or for any conditions that adversely affect their ability to score?

I would rather my players gain confidence in hitting in a controlled environment where they can improve without worrying about the blindside block or decleater from out of nowhere, and where my quick whistle and the eyes of my assistants can stop a drill before someone is injured.

Enter, the Hurricane drill. I've discussed this drill before, most notably in the FORUM, but this is the first time I've placed it online in complete form.

Setup:

Take four cones, shields, or bags and set them up to mark an area approximately five yards on a side (25 square yards). Place three players in the square with one football.

Player A: Tackler. His responsibility is to securely bring down the ball carrier.
Player B: Blocker. His responsibility is to prevent the tackler from making any contact with the ball carrier. He can strike from almost any angle (although you can provide pressure on him to block only from the front-- I usually work the drill from the defensive side and allow the offense to "cheat" slightly.)
Player C: Ball Carrier. He must avoid being tackled as long as possible.

Execution:

All three players begin movement on the whistle. The designated tackler must attack the ball carrier immediately, not seeking to avoid the blocker, but disengaging from him as quickly as possible if contact is made. The blocker can attack, sit, angle, or use any other technique or method to move the tackler away from the ball carrier, who can juke, spin, and dodge as needed to avoid being tackled. As a natural occurrence within the drill, the blocker may hold. If you are working on offense, penalize him with pushups, up/downs, etc. If you are working on defense, your defender can use this as an opportunity to execute holdbreaking techniques (something you should work at least five minutes out of every defensive practice.)

Coaching Points:

The tackler should keep his eyes pinned to the ball carrier and use his peripheral vision to locate the blocker and avoid him as necessary. He should use any and all holdbreaking techniques necessary to separate from the blocker and regain an angle of approach to the ball carrier.

Ball carriers will generally be able to spin out of tackles unless the tackler makes a secure and tight wrap, grabbing cloth with both hands. The drill does not end until the tackler has managed to bring the ball carrier to the ground. All players involved in the drill must remain within the square.

As a conditioning exercise, I require my players to move from tackler, to blocker, to ball carrier. This has two affects on the drill. First, the ball carriers are generally tired, which gives the outnumbered tackler a better chance to bring them down in a timely manner. Second, it extends the period during which the athletes are strenuously active, which pushes them closer to their VO(2max). This is the maximum rate at which the body can absorb oxygen. Training to increase this threshold increases the burst ability of your players-- they will be able to function at peak explosive effort for longer periods. They will also recover more quickly between plays, and be better able to recuperate after games.

Some players will focus too extensively on the blocker and forget the ball carrier. This has a way of weeding itself out of the drill-- the longer you fart around with the blocker, the more tired you are going to get. Your best option to get out of the drill in a hurry is to act like the blocker doesn't exist and simply attack the ball carrier. This translates on game day to defenders that shed tacklers faster and penetrate to the offensive backfield in a hurry.

I try to run this drill for fifteen to twenty minutes (four segments) once a week or so in the preseason, and for five to ten minutes (two segments) in the regular season.

Hope this helps!

~D.

Please Don't Run the Pistol

2011-08-31T06:30:00.000-07:00

In 2007 I was coaching with the Valley Wolfpack organization in Sumner, Washington. For some reason the Cascade Junior Football League reversed the "normal" nomenclature for football levels. Although I was coaching the 12-14 year olds, our level was the "Pee Wee" (because freshmen just love to be referred to as peewees). The youngest level was the "midgets." I don't really get it, either.

That's not really important. What is important is that, in two of our games, we faced the Puyallup Rough Riders football club, which has a twenty year reputation for success at all levels, and the Puyallup team ran the Pistol offense.

I'm not going to describe the system, or even give you any diagrams to look at because I don't want to distract you from the ultimate message here. Suffice it to say that the Pistol is a Spread-based offensive attack that places the quarterback about four yards deep behind the center, and puts the tailback at I-formation depth (seven yards). From this position, with four wide receivers, the offense can execute a number of option, run, pass, or play action plays.

Here's where things got turned upside down. I was entranced by the Pistol. Not enough to run the damn thing; I'm not that insane, but enough to try to reverse engineer a playbook for it and consider that if I ever chose to run it, this is how I would do so.

I put the playbook online after I finished it. It was an amalgam of research into the history of the Pistol (developed at Nevada in 2005 under head coach Chris Ault, with an ultimate grandfather in the Glenn Warner Single Wing), and the modern Double Wing blocking rules I use for my own offense (which can largely be found in Jerry Vallotton's outstanding book, The Toss.)

And... that's where the midden hit the windmill.

You see, I made the mistake of titling the work The Pistol Offense for Youth Football. To me, Youth Football starts at high school junior varsity and goes down. My Pistol is pretty simple, but it's still a Spread offense, and I have never advocated using the Spread below the high school level.

About three to six times per week, depending on the time of year, I get an email that reads something like this:

Hi Coach Wade. I recently came across your Pistol playbook and it's really swell. I'm a rookie head coach and I was searching the web to find a playbook for my eight and nine year old team. Most of them have never played before, but I think this offense can help us win a championship. Are there any other plays you didn't put in the book that you can send me? How many championships did you win while you were running this?

Um.

In the first place, I clearly point out in the playbook (Page 2) that I have never run the Pistol. One of the things that scares the crap out of me is the thought that a coach who couldn't read the playbook well enough to realize that I only reverse engineered the system from game film is now going to use it to coach a team of rookie players.

In the second place, although I obviously didn't make it clear enough, the Pistol is not for eight, nine, or ten year olds. The absolute rock-bottom youngest age group I'd run the system with is a team of ages 11-12 that was heavy in the older/lighter category. As written, the system is better suited for the midget level of youth football (or the peewee, if you're in the Cascade Junior Football League).

In the third place, rookie head coaches are probably best served sticking with ground-based attacks. It's a lot easier to coach a power/misdirection system like the Single or Double Wing, or a Wing-T or even Power-I, than it is to try to coach the intricacies of pass blocking, coverage reading, and proper route running. Can it be done? Absolutely. A rookie head coach with zero experience could step in with any offense, a decent work ethic, a reasonable study period before the season begins, and comparable talent and be successful-- for a given value of the word "successful." He might go .300. He might even go undefeated if the right elements are in place. That depends on him and his players.

However, the odds are highly, highly stacked against him. Most youth coaches who try to run pass-heavy playbooks get their asses handed to them. It's not uncommon to see them go entire seasons without scoring a single touchdown. They turn the ball over on bad-call interceptions. They don't know how to read defenses themselves to determine a Cover-2, Cover-3, or Cover-1, and they run receivers into waiting defenders or overpressure their quarterbacks with insane demands like reading three receivers in widely disparate sections of the field in two seconds.

Their players get frustrated. They get frustrated, and they drive young people out of football. They themselves get out of coaching too early, without realizing that it wasn't the kids; it was them not knowing what the hell they were doing.

Even the ground-based attacks have a ridiculous number of details. I coached a Double Wing at Tomales High School at the varsity and junior varsity level under the outstanding head coach Leon Feliciano for three years before it ever occurred to me that our offense would get better if the pulling guard ran forward-- through the center's hips-- rather than pulling flat and turning up. That one little adjustment added .6 of a yard to our lifetime average on 24 Toss, the cornerstone of our offensive plays. That doesn't sound like much, but when you run that play 75% of the time, .6 of a yard turns into one more touchdown each half, and one to two more wins each season.

We're not even getting into the fact that if you coach a passing system, you have to coach pass blocking and run blocking, but you can conceivably get away with either not passing at all in a running system (Been there. Done it. Got the trophy.), or using only play action and teaching run blocking on all your passing plays.

Pass blocking is passive. You sit in one position and guard a space on the field, blocking only the defenders that enter it. Run blocking is aggressive. You physically attack a defender with the intent to either knock him on his ass or at the very least physically move him from out of the path of the ball carrier.

Pass blocking can be out-schemed by blitzing much more easily than run blocking can. What does a pass blocker do when threatened by two or more defenders? Who knows? But a run blocker doesn't care that much because he should already be engaged with one of them-- the guy he attacked at the snap.

In the fourth place, there are nine running plays that can be reversed in the playbook I wrote. That's eighteen plays that hit all points of attack: interior, off-tackle, outside; and also provide power, misdirection, and draw action. That doesn't even count the ten passing plays that can be mixed and matched on each side of the field for more than one hundred potential pass pattern combinations off of just a single formation. Writing me to ask for even more plays for this offense shows me that you really haven't studied what's already there.

Does my Pistol work? Yes. I had a coach contact me that was running a Multiple-I system in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2008. He switched to the Pistol in 2009 and scored 38+ in every game for two years straight. I had a high school coach from Long Island, NY email me and tell me he was using my system with his junior varsity, and had adapted his own terminology to fit mine because mine was easier for them to grasp and more modular and expandable.

I had another coach, much more recently, contact me asking if the Pistol was a good fit for him. He was coaching younger players, 11-12 year olds, but they were experienced (he had one player that had never played before, and two players with only one year of experience. Every other player was in his third year or more.) and he himself had been coaching for six or seven years. They'll be using it in the 2011 season and I think they'll do very well.

Properly coached, with the right personnel in place, at an age group that can functionally perform the required skills, the Pistol as I've developed it is very effective. However, this does not mean it is right for you:

If you're in your first three years of coaching-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
If this is your first year as a head coach or offensive coordinator-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
If your players are younger than age eleven-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
If your team is composed mostly of rookies-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.
If you're not comfortable with your ability to read a defensive coverage-- the Pistol probably isn't right for you.

I believe that anyone can beat the numbers. America is the greatest country on earth because anyone can work hard and achieve success. However, I also believe that intentionally charging headlong into overwhelming odds is more likely to make you dead than make you a hero. Yes, you can be successful running the Pistol as a rookie coach with a team of eight year olds. This does not mean that you should try to do so. The risk of leading that team to an 0-8 season and the frustrations that entails (which will probably be worse for you than for them because... they're eight.) is just not worth the pleasure of calling a tunnel screen at the perfect time.

I get dozens of emails each month about this playbook, and very few of them turn into actual conversations. The first email I receive is above, and my reply usually says, "Coach, I really, really do not recommend what you're about to do. You're not coaching the right age group and your experience level doesn't lend itself to easy success with this offense." That email almost never gets a reply back.

I'm not trying to say that you're a bad coach, or stupid, or anything negative like that. I'm saying that my experienced opinion (which you asked for when you contacted me) leads me to believe that you will have more success with another system. If you've got the experience, and you've got the players, by all means, give the system a shot.

But if it's your first year as a football coach and you're in the junior peewee division... please don't run the Pistol.

~D.

Four Wides of Death (Part Two)

2011-08-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I talked about the basic four vertical passing game and how to integrate it into your existing spread package. This week I want to talk about some basic formation adjustments to keep the defense guessing. I also want to discuss some protection schemes to help keep the heat off your quarterback.

As you recall from last week, we spoke only about the "Basic" formation and the 4 vertical play as taken from the playbook used by Mike Newsome, at Butler High School in North Carolina. Whatever terminology you use, the play is one of the simplest in football:

There are a lot of ways you can change up this play to keep the defense guessing, and they're all pretty simple from the offensive point of view. As you probably know if you've read my stuff regularly (or at least as regularly as any schedule I've been on for the last seven years or so), I am a huge believer in changing formation without changing my offensive assignments. If you can alter your alignment, without altering where a player goes or what he does after the snap, in a lot of cases the defense has to treat that as a whole new play.

So take a look at what happens when we adjust from "Base California" above to "Trips Right California" below:

What changed for our players? Nuffin'! #1s still run streaks (arrows, go routes... whatever you call them in your specific terminology) outside the numbers, and the inside men still run the same thing inside the hash marks. The only change is that the mostest innerest man now has to cross the formation before angling downfield.

With this in mind, we can use any formation: even Quads, Ace, TE Trips, what have you, and we can still get our receivers into the places they're supposed to be. Further, just like the Pistol playbook, the receiver responsibilities change based only on where their alignment places them: if you're the #2 receiver, then you run the #2 route, always, forever, whenever. If motion makes you the #1, then you run the #1 route.

I'll let you come up with motion tags to adjust this further, but if you're looking for help, the Pistol playbook has some for you.

But if you're ever going to get that pass off, you need to spend some time working on pass blocking. This has taken me a long time to understand, and after some research and study this year I finally discovered that I had backed into an excellent pass protection scheme several years ago.

In 2003 I sat down with every video copy of our offense running a flood pass over the preceding six years, as well as some video of the same play being run by other teams. I came to the conclusion that we needed to run away from one defensive end, and get a back on the other. I was so damn smart I even spent 35 minutes talking about it at the 2004 Double Wing Symposium (DWS-I).

Here's why passing coaches in the audience were yawning: what I was doing was simple slide protection, nothing more.

Here's the basics for how it works. At the collegiate-- and sometimes high school-- level, protection is called based on where the defense is most likely to stunt from. Defenses at those levels generally decide to stunt from the field (the wide side) when they want to be in the quarterback's face and disrupt his vision lanes, and from the boundary when they want to blindside him. According to Mike Archer of NC State, NCAA offenses generally throw to the wide side about 65% of the time. He likes to blitz from that side, and gave me an excellent zone blitz package called "Fargo" ("field").

The offense can slide their protection one way or the other in order to intercept the stunting defenders. This works for the same reason angle blocking works on running plays: you're cutting a defender off and shoving him to the side rather than meeting him head up when he may be stronger than you. (Which is traditional "cup" protection.) If the middle linebacker stunts from the picture below, instead of a center standing still and catching his charge, there's an angling guard (or even tackle) crossing his face automatically to earhole him. Odds are, at the youth level, he won't even see this one coming.

Sliding to the field looks like this:

The way it works is actually pretty simple. All offensive linemen take a sharp, angled step towards the wide side of the field. Their goal is to engage, not the defender aligned on them, but the defender one gap or more to the inside. They're seeking to get their head and upfield shoulder across the defender and "lock" him into the 90-degree angle between their earhole and their shoulder pad. Then, if they just keep driving, even if the man penetrates the line, he's shoved far enough off-course that he can't get to the quarterback before the throw.

Pay attention to the running back. In the play above, we have "Field, Away" as a protection call. This mean our offensive line blocks towards the field, and our running back blocks away from them, to the boundary. His job is to pick up the first man outside the offensive tackle's outside foot. To do this, he needs to start out with an aiming point at the tackle's inside hip. (He can be beaten outside if the defensive end takes a wide path-- we can live with that. However, if he's beaten to the inside gap, he should be beaten-- with a stick-- after the game. Don't really do that.) If the defender arcs wide outside, he can come up underneath and run them upfield. If the defender cuts inside sharp, the running back meets him near the line.

Don't forget that, at the youth level, your running back is one of the top three athletes on your team, and that defensive end is one of the middle guys, talent-wise.

Now, if we want to roll or half-roll into the field to force the defense to commit one way or another, we can make a slightly different blocking call: "Field, towards."

In a towards call, we can assume that the defensive end is coming wider-- he has to in order to escape the playside tackle's block. For this reason we want our running back to take a more arced path to the point of the block, and try to meet the defender with his shoulders square to the line. If the running back can cross the defensive end's face, is springs the perimeter open if the quarterback wants to run with the ball. Again, we've got a stellar athlete on an average one (although wide side ends tend to be higher up on the talent chain than short side ends).

As you can see, with some basic adjustments to the formation and the addition of a couple of blocking calls, we can make our offense much more dangerous.

~D.

Four Wides of Death (Part One)

2011-08-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

Understand right here that I can't stand the Spread offense, particularly at the youth football levels. Other blog articles will detail my reasons for this intense dislike, but the main reason is because it's not well suited as a system for the natural abilities that young players have and the skills they usually already have developed when they first come to you. It takes a lot of practice at the mechanics, throwing and catching, just to make a reception possible, and that's not even considering the lousy pattern development some youth coaches do because they don't really understand how the defense covers the field.

Of course, the only thing worse than the way some youth coaches teach throwing, catching, and pattern running, is the way they teach pass blocking.

Despite that, I spend a lot of time studying the Spread offense because I see so much of it now at the high school level. This last year I attended a coaching clinic at NC State University that was just fantastic, particularly when the NC State coaches were speaking. There were a few coaches there who wandered somewhat off topic-- one coach spent more time explaining that he requires his players to take showers than he spent explaining his offensive system.

But then there was coach Mike Newsome, of the Butler Bulldogs, a 4AA North Carolina High School Championship coach, who broke down his four vertical system in astonishing detail.

I'm only going to give you the parts that I think will work for the youth game. Feel free to adapt this into whatever system you're running if it fits! If you're a Wing-T or a Wishbone coach, you probably won't be able to get much done with this formation and style of attack. However, if you're running Ted Seay's Spread Option Run and Shoot (SORS), or my Pistol for youth football you may find it useful.

The basic four vertical attack comes from the traditional "Doubles" formation.

I show it here against a common youth defense, the 5-3. If the 5-3 aligns in man coverage (which you can determine by sneaking in a little motion-- or by doing a comprehensive scouting report before you play), you need to ascertain two things: which of your receivers is faster than the man covering him, and which of your receivers can catch. If the world is perfect, these will be the same guy.

The basic 4 vertical play Coach Newsome runs is called "California." He simply yells a formation (In my terminology, this would be "Base" or "Pistol" if you put the QB back about four yards in a mini-shotgun look.), and then "California." Because the offensive players execute a defensive read, he doesn't particularly care if the defense hears the play call.

At the snap, the inside two receivers will adjust their paths to run down the inside of the hash marks, while the outer two receivers will run down the outside of the numbers. Assuming that the defenders are in man, it will look something like this:

I believe very strongly in giving my quarterbacks only a couple of reads so, I would probably make a call like "California Left" to make him look at his left hand side of the field. You can code this out: "California, Zelda!" Zelda featured the main character "Link." "Links" is German for "left."

This is just one corny example. There are dozens of others you can use. Yell a series of numbers out: "One thousand, two hundred, nineteen!" That's an odd number, and all the odds in my terminology are on the left.

Pick a receiver, throw the ball.

The next adaptation is when the defense shows a zone coverage.

When this happens, you need to spread the zones as far as possible apart. If you look at the basic Cover-3 shown, the free safety is on something of an island. When we're on offense, we like that sort of thing. If we can make sure our outside receivers stay outside the numbers, we force that free safety to stay in the middle of the field with no help from his corners. Our inside receivers fit nicely into the natural gaps in the coverage, and we need only flash our shoulder away from our intended receiver before throwing back to him and we should be able to get the safety to move as well. (A little play action will help this nicely as well.)

What if the defense shows a Cover-2 look? With more Spread offenses leeching down into the youth levels, we're starting to see more two deep and umbrella coverages.

Coach Newsome teaches his receivers to read the defenders. This is not difficult! Simply teach your players that if there is a defender in front of them at five yards past the line of scrimmage, that they should continue straight down the field until that defender turns his hips and then break inward!

We do have to worry now about the middle linebacker undercutting our routes. This shouldn't be that difficult if you rep it well. You have two receivers crossing behind the MLB. Pick the receiver you want to throw to and turn your shoulder towards the other one. When you see the MLB step towards your shoulder, reverse and throw to the open man.

This is somewhat more complex than the basic passing systems I routinely advocate in my writing, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible. If you're going to run a passing system, you need to rep these sorts of things constantly.

Here's a quick way to rep the receiver read. Have a defender hold a shield in front of himself so the receiver can't see his jersey. At the four yard point, have the defender drop the shield (There is now an ugly jersey in front of me: I cut inward) or maintain the shield (I see no jersey: I continue straight.)

For the quarterback, put two receivers about six yards behind a middle linebacker and spread out to about ten yards to either side of him. Have the quarterback practice pointing a shoulder at one receiver, and then snapping quickly back to throw to the other. As he gains proficiency, have these receivers jog towards one another, gradually increasing the pace until they are running at game speed.

There are dozens of other drills you can run to improve this simply play. If you've got a favorite, shoot me an email and let me know what it is.

Next week we'll continue this discussion with some insight into trips packages and pass blocking. I can hardly wait.

~D.

Stop Screwing With Football! (Part Two)

2011-08-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I wrote about the defensive side of the ball when a league has some ridiculous rule like:

Six defensive players must be aligned no more than one yard off the line of scrimmage and head up on the offensive guards, tackles, and ends. No defender may align on the center, and all other defensive players must be at least five yards from the line of scrimmage. Blitzing is not allowed.

My opinion of these horsesh!t rules is pretty well known. If you want your kid to play football, sign him up for the sport. If you want him to take dancing, find a dancing instructor. Football has rules that have existed in pretty much standard form for over a century now with little adjustment. No group of mommies and daddies sitting in pizza parlor having a "board meeting" for a youth football league is going to improve on this sport when officials who spend their entire lives playing it, coaching it, and refereeing it can't. The NFHS rule book is written by a group of people with about 500 combined years of football knowledge. They know how to seal the gaps when a coach does something borderline unsportsmanlike (Look up the A-ll Offense sometime.), and they can do it competently and efficiently without throwing the rest of the game out of balance.

Not so, mommy leagues, so to help demonstrate the stupid that falls out of these cheesy rule changes, I'm going to show you how to obliterate the standard mandated defenses.

First off, if the defensive alignment that is required looks anything like the description above, you'll score 800 points a game. Here's how: the defense is required to be head up on all players except the center, so take your guards and split them thirty yards to each side. Have them take a knee, and have your tackles align just outside them and do the same. Ends, of course, do the same as well.

Behind the ends, align your two wingbacks. This should leave you with a formation in the middle of the field that looks like this:

Catch on yet? Because of that stupid rule, no defender on the line is allowed to be within thirty yards of the ball at the snap! Do you think any of your players, if given a 30 yard head start, could fail to score in one play? The only two things that could possibly prevent you from scoring are a fumble or if your ball carrier trips over his own feet on the way to the end zone.

I specifically pointed out to have your non-essential players take a knee. This is because I'm a smart ass and I'm pushing it to the ultimate to show the absurdity. In practice, I'd have my players fool with three to six yard gaps between center and guard. It makes the same point without really being quite as sarcastic.

So what will the league do to prevent this from happening again? Well, because leagues like this operate on a knee jerk basis, if they don't kick you out of your coaching position, they'll probably hold an emergency meeting and add a rule that says:

Okay, we have to prevent coaches from taking advantage of the blind spots in our ability to understand the game, so now no member of the offense from tackle to tackle is allowed to split more than one yard.

Fine. I would run just two plays: toss sweep and counter trap. Call the trap about every fifth play. You might put in a pass just to look good, and I’d run about six different formations and four or five motion tags, but that’s all I’d install. You’ll be really good at blocking them because there is still no possibility a defender will ever be in an unexpected position. Bunch up with no splits at all and put the defense shoulder to shoulder. This will make it easier to wall them off. Every sixth or seventh play, chuck the ball deep just to make the defensive coordinator holler out helpful things like, "Watch the pass!"

If you're not catching on yet, I don't care for leagues that try to hamstring my sport. Football is an excellent, detailed, strategic and tactical competition that has been a hundred and sixteen years in the making! A group of parents, at least 50% of which have never played the sport in their lives, is not going to improve on this game.

As I mentioned last week, what they will do is stifle innovation, turn good coaches into lazy ones, bore and demotivate their players, and make a pig's breakfast out of the game we love.

If you have to coach in one of these leagues, get hold of their bastardized rule book as early as possible and start thinking of creative ways to screw with the rules. Remember, the football rule book lists only what you can not do. If it's not expressly forbidden, it's within bounds. (With obvious exceptions. Do not give your car keys to your running back with instructions to "Drive this ball to that goalpost over there at the snap.")

But don't be afraid to have a little fun.

~D.

Stop Screwing With Football! (Part One)

2011-08-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Probably the number one question I get asked goes something like this:

My league requires six defensive players on the line of scrimmage. No one can be head up on the center, and the linebackers can't be moving towards the line at the snap. I coach 9-year-olds and would like to run the Gap-8. Do you have any advice for modifying the defense for these rules?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but no, I really don't. I do, on the other hand, have some excellent advice on another topic: get your ass out of that league.

Rules like this are absurd and unnecessary. Worse, they are actively interfering with the players' ability to learn and enjoy football. These rules are usually put in place by well-meaning parents and board members seeking to "ease" their kids into the game.

Well, I say "usually." On occasion these idiot rules are put in place specifically to stifle an innovative coach who tried something that is completely legal and within the regular high school rules of football but that his opposing coaches were not competent to coach against.

Rather than encourage the maroons to get out there and get better at coaching this great sport, the board and rules committee decided instead to hamper the innovating and hard working coach. This is repulsive to me on a number of levels.

1) Youth sports are supposed to be about the kids. This is what always prefaces these asinine rules. Here's the problem with that thinking, though: the kids are learning less about football.

Take a linebacker on that defense up there. Because he cannot be moving forward at the snap, he will go the entire season without learning how to blitz through a gap and secure it properly! Is that fair to him? Is it okay to tell him, "Billy, kids your age in other programs are learning to play football, but we just don't think you're smart enough for it."?

Now consider that offensive lineman across from Billy. Because Billy is not allowed to blitz, he will go the entire season without learning how to react and respond to a blitzing linebacker! Again, is that fair to him?

You mean to seriously tell me that a 9-year-old can figure out the button combinations on Madden and can't figure out how to play real football, even when patiently coached by a competent adult? This kid can turn 720s on a skateboard and bunny hop from one end of town to another on a bike, and you think he can't play football!

2) These rules ruin the chess match by forcing you to leave a section of the field undefended. Why should the offense run anywhere else?

Football defenses generally clog the middle of the field by design because they are arranged to defense the area of greatest threat, and the likelihood of a particular zone being the point of immediate attack goes up the closer the ball is to that zone. This, the middle of the field where the ball starts is usually the most highly defended zone in football.

As a result of this natural defensive stacking, most youth coaches figure out early that the sweep can be effective if you have decent speed. The reasons why are deceptive. It's not because you're some kind of super-coach. It's because the whole defense is stuffed into a 10X12yard section of field and tripping over one another. You give the ball to the fastest kid you have and let him do what comes naturally.

He runs away from the clogged defense-- and simultaneously away from the offensive line you really don't have any need to have on the field other than as a series of slightly mobile obstacles. The fact that six out of eleven defensive players are forced by rule into the middle of the field just makes it easier to clog them up.

3) These rules obliterate motivation.

Not only are good coaches forced to be lazy because they literally can't find new ways to play to their team strengths, but the players are screwed over as well. Imagine being an offensive lineman in that sweep-only system. Down after down, play after play, you do the same thing: coach says you're supposed to block the guy in front of you and "knock him on his ass," but the guy with the ball always runs away from you. How many plays do you think it would take before you started to crash into the guy across from you and then immediately turn and watch the ball carrier? Three? Six? Would you ever sustain a block? If so, why on earth would you?

4) These rules force the defense into an unsound alignment, and that cheapens every success the offense has.

Look, it sucks when a youth team goes an entire season without scoring a touchdown. It's rough to stay motivated and keep the players happy. I've been there as a coach and as a player, both. In fact, I was in my second season as a player before a team I was on scored a touchdown, and in my first three years as a player, we scored precisely twelve points!

And I wouldn't trade those points for a free Super Bowl ring. We earned those points, thank you. The first touchdown came in my 8th grade season, and we drove from our own 18 to score against Edgemont Junior High in the last twelve seconds of the game. We still lost, and I still remember that magical drive.

I can also tell you about the interception return that set up our second score, my freshman year, when I got the best hit of my playing career on the Ballou Junior High quarterback. I hope he still has "Riddell" imprinted on his chest.

Here's the point: we earned those points. They have meaning. They weren't handed to us and cheapened by a set of rules that hampered the defense. If we scored against a team's third string, fine-- they practiced as hard as we did and we played as well as we could.

We were all trying our best. Isn't that what we're trying to coach players to do, anyway? Try their best and leave it all on the field? Well, looking back now I can tell you that my coaches rarely tried their best. I'm not talking about Pat Kelly, the wrestling/football coach that talked me into playing football, I mean the inexperienced and out of their depth coaches who didn't understand the game and thought it was all about yelling "Hit somebody!"

Why in God's name would you try to turn a coach into that? Why on earth would you lower the bar for the offense by forcing the defense to play an alignment that literally cannot properly defense the field? Do you think scoring a cheap touchdown has more value than never scoring at all? Do you think the players will never notice? Do you think the coaches won't?

Instead of superior coaching and teamwork prevailing, the players are forced into a situation where coaching means nothing; the team with the fastest kid will simply run him wide until he scores.

So, if you're stuck in one of those leagues, I wish you the best of luck, but frankly, you'd be better off if you quit and coached elsewhere. Paradoxically, so would the league. Here's why: the only reason they can have these dumbass rules is because coaches tolerate them. If every coach that was given a mandated offense or defense politely handed it back and took themselves and their kids elsewhere, these damnfool leagues would have neither coaches, nor players, and would have to fix their houses!

The problem is, too many incompetent coaches are willing to settle for half a loaf-- lousy coaching-- just so they can carry a whistle and clipboard. They'll happily take the title, but never bother to earn it. The worst part? They're teaching their players that cheap success is still success.

I prefer to do it the hard way. That way it means something.

~D.

We're BAACK!

2011-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just a little message here to let you know that we are live, large, and in charge here at our new blog site. Blogger is vastly easier to use than Livejournal, and offers more options for me to make the content more enjoyable.

After today, the FB4Y blog will update EVERY WEDNESDAY at 09:30AM.

Also, take a look at the right hand side of your screen (over THERE------>). You'll see a nifty little appointment scheduling tool. If you're interested in a free online 30 minute clinic of my coaching materials, click on over and set up a time. I use Skype, which is available for free download, and I can whiteboard out the answers to any questions you have. We can also set up a time for a voice only conference call with your coaching staff so I can help you out as well.

~D.

The High School Coach is Interfering With Your Son's Education!

2011-06-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Originally posted April 27, 2009

You read that right, but if you'd like to make sure, go ahead and read that title a couple more times.

I just had a discussion with a high school football coach of a local program who has completely failed to understand the reason and purpose for middle school and junior high football. Seriously, he's lost his damn mind.

His premise, which is one I've never endorsed, by the way, is that he "needs" (His word, and one that indicates how effective a coach he must be.) the middle schools to run his system so that he can stay competitive.

Go back and read that again, too.

I'm going to shred that argument piece by piece. I encourage you to print this blog out and take it to the next meeting you have with your coaching organization where they try to tell you that you must run what the high school runs.

The following is a word-for-word depiction of his side of our conversation and my accompanying replies, to the best of my memory. I don't think he is going to put me on his Christmas card list.

Point one: "I need the middle school to run the same things I run..."

Counterpoint: Why does a coaching professional paid a $3,000 stipend to coach at a Class AAA school in Washington State 'need' a middle school coach to prepare players for his program? Why is said coaching 'professional' unable to adequately prepare those players himself with his eight man coaching staff, $1.4 million field, $35,000 weight room, $6,000 film study equipment, and approximately nine weeks of off-season summer and spring training time?

Why does it a fall to a middle school program with a two-man staff making $900 between them, broken sled, antiquated equipment, prohibition against scouting (because it leads to 'overcompetitiveness,' whatever the hell that is), eight week season, and almost zero support from the district to teach a system you were hired to bring to us? Aren't you supposed to be the expert on this system? Isn't that why you were hired? If not, then why were you hired?

Point Two: "...so that when they get to me they already know the system."

Counterpoint: In your previous coaching history you have never remained in any position longer than four years. Your average is three seasons. Does this not indicate that it is useless to train a group of seventh graders to run your system when odds are high that you will have moved on to a greener pasture somewhere by the time they make it to the varsity level? Furthermore, I refer you to my previous counterpoint. If you're such a damn expert on the system, why the hell do you need someone else to teach it for you?

Additionally, this middle school feeds three high schools, one of which is in another district. What makes you think you're even going to get enough athletes from this program to your high school to make this a worthwhile pursuit? According to the research at JACK REED'S WEBSITE as well as the NYSCA statistics, fewer than 24% of youth football players go on to play high school football. What do you get by dividing 24% by three, and is it worth damaging the success of the middle school program?

Point Three: "At this level that's the only way I can stay competitive."

Counterpoint: No, as a matter of fact it's not. Tomales High School in Northern California has no feeder program and remains competitive-- and more so-- every year. Puyallup High in Washington has six feeder schools, only one of which runs the same system they run (and not because it is required). They consistently finish in the top 25 in Washington AAAA rankings. For every school you point to that is successful with this method, I can point to one that is just as successful without it, and probably two that are not successful with it.

Furthermore, at what point did anyone start to care about your ability to remain competitive? You are not the one on the field, and this game doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the players.

Point Four: "Middle school football doesn't really count, anyway."

Counterpoint: It counts to the middle school players who sweat and bleed to be successful. It counts to the parents who pay the bills so their sons can compete safely and successfully. It counts to the teachers who come to me looking for ways to use my sports programs to motivate students who are struggling academically. It counts to the administration that tries every year to justify keeping a program with sliding numbers due to lack of success.

In short, the only person that really thinks it doesn't count is you, and the only reason you feel that way is that you're not associated with the middle school in any capacity other than demanding that they do your job for you.

Point Five: "It's only there to develop players for high school game."

Counterpoint: That's an interesting and totally false point that indicates a complete lack of understanding of the role of athletics in the scholastic environment. Athletics has a clearly-defined purpose in school. It helps to teach life-lessons that can't be worked into the curriculum any other way. At the middle school level it also serves as a hook to assist struggling or de-motivated students who need something to cling to in order to keep the grades and learn the behaviors and social interactions that will allow them to be successful in life.

Preparing players to play football at the high school level is only an insignificant by-product of a successful middle school program. Ideally a middle school program should prepare student-athletes for life at the high school level.

Point Six: "Besides, you should run my stuff because it works!"

Counterpoint: You'll pardon me if I disagree. You've run two different systems at each of your last four schools. In the last six years you have had two winning seasons (2006 and 2008) and won one playoff game (2008). And you are supposed to be the expert with your system. Why are you making so many significant and program-altering changes to the system if it's so perfect, and why have you yourself not established a track record of significant success if this program is so great?

Furthermore, your program was developed for the high school level. Your varsity is comprised of student athletes who are considered by our state to be responsible enough to drive a motorized vehicle. Some of the student-athletes I coach are not legally allowed to be left home alone by their parents yet.

Your athletes are physically in the early adulthood stage of development. They have more finely-developed motor control, more testosterone, greater muscle development, stronger bones, and greater cognitive processing facility.

By contrast, the athletes you are demanding to run the same program are in the middle stage of childhood or early adolescence at best. Some of them have not even entered their secondary growth spurt yet. An adolescent may grow between three and six inches per year. Rapid growth of this nature generally results in a corresponding lack of coordination, while at the same time their muscle tissues are just beginning to thicken to adulthood. Fine motor control in the wrists doesn't complete development until age sixteen or later. There's a lot more to running a competent system at the youth level than simply handing your playbook to the middle school coach and pretending that you've given them a successful system.

Point Seven: "A successful high school program will help those kids go to college by providing scholarships and motivation in school."

Counterpoint: In the first place, colleges generally don't care what the won/loss percentage is for the athlete's high school. They are looking at basic skill development and raw athleticism. In the second place, you are actually harming the middle school athletes with your misguided philosophy.

If--and only if-- the middle school students stay in sports then sports can be used as a motivator. However, if they quit participating in athletics then sports will provide no motivation or encouragement for them. Coaches won't be involved in their lives, and the life lessons we got into coaching to teach will not be learned. The number one thing that drives youth players out of athletics, according to the NYSCA, is "not having fun." In most cases, "not having fun" can also be translated as, "getting the ass beat out of me every week because my coach doesn't know what the hell he's doing." (In fact, among my coaching colleagues I can point to at least twenty excellent coaches who left playing or got into coaching for precisely that reason.) More kids are going to quit middle school programs this year due to incompetent coaching than for any other reason. Every kid that quits football in middle school is one less athlete on your team, and one less successful athlete in the school in general. You should be doing everything you possibly can to promote and develop the middle school program.

In short, coach, your plan actually interferes with the education of a middle school student by driving them away from one of the aspects of school that could encourage them, motivate them, and embolden them to keep their grades up and keep themselves out of trouble. By sabotaging the middle school program in an attempt to develop your high school system with some mythical, magical idea that doing so enhances your own team is nothing more than active stupidity disguised as altruism. Before you make demands on the middle schools, try doing some research and study of football at the middle school level.

You'll be surprised what you'll learn.

~D.

NOTE: Child development information taken from:

Bee, H., & Boyd, D. (2002). Lifespan development. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

It's All YOUR Fault.

2011-06-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted March 13, 2009)

It's been a while since I've had time to write here. Student teaching and finishing up the last of my schoolwork for my teaching certification has gotten in the way of everything I've tried to do lately (Sorry, Senator McCain. I was busy.)

But I've had some thoughts about a blog for a long time. I believe that time is linear, and that a chain of events is set in motion by a single choice.

In my case, that choice wasn't made by me. In 1985 I was a sixth grade wrestler for a local youth wrestling program that was run by a man named Pat Kelly. Coach Kelly was the wrestling coach for Sumner Junior High, and he developed his feeder programs by running off-season clinics where meatheads like myself could come and blow off some steam and get interested in the sport.

The next year I entered Sumner Junior High as a seventh grader. I can clearly remember walking into the school and seeing the mascot, a stuffed bobcat named "Scipio" after Scipio Africanus, the Roman who finally kicked Hannibal's ass. I can remember the confusion of trying to find my classes; how dark the gym was during first period PE because the sodium arc lights hadn't warmed up yet.

I can also remember that Coach Kelly's classroom was across from the gym's main entrance. As I headed to the hall juggling my notebooks and the papers that were handed out that day, he was standing in his classroom door. He beckoned to me and when I walked over to him he didn't waste any time with a preamble. "You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I'd wrestled for this man. He'd chewed my ADD ass several times. I'd probably done more punishment pushups for screwing off at practice than anyone else in the history of his program, and yet he sought me out to tell me I should play football.

I don't have a clue what my next class was. I went straight to the office and called my mom at work. (This was in the days before every fourth grader was chained to a cellular tether.) I told her the words most moms don't want to hear, "I'm staying after school for football practice."

I won't lie to you. We sucked. Coach Kelly was a varsity coach and I was on the JV. We lost every game that year, and the year after, and the year after that. I was a sophomore before we ever won a game.

But football started to take on a sort of mythical significance in my mind. A sport I'd never understood (I learned to actually throw a football that year-- at age eleven.) slowly moved into the realm of the sport I'd ride a bike for fourteen miles to practice.

In 1992 I coached youth football for the first time. In 1993 I was busy flipping burgers because I'd dropped out of college and couldn't coach. In 1999 I returned to coaching in Kodiak, Alaska, where I tried not to interfere too much as my Lions obliterated everyone on the way to an undefeated season. I realized, in October of that year, as the Gatorade dried in the crack of my ass after the championship shower, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life coaching kids.

I went back to school. I got my first degree in 2004 and my second in 2007. At the moment I'm working on a teaching certificate, but I've been able to return to my home town and coach wrestling and football both while teaching at a middle school that was, ironically, our biggest rival when I was in junior high.

If life is a chain of events then my life was changed one day, by one man, who took the time from his day to coach me and make me better than I am, and then took more time to say just two simple sentences.

"You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I am here now, because of that conversation.

It's the off-season right now, so while you're studying football and getting ready for next year, or maybe working on the other sports you might happen to coach, I want you to think about this: one man, ten seconds, changed my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the last ten years happened because of the things I learned in football and wrestling. I made it through grueling boot camp-- because wrestling taught me not to quit or give up. I made it through college on the second try-- because football taught me that when you're knocked down you get back on your feet.

Pat Kelly is now the principal of Orting Middle School, down the road from where I live. He still has the same smile and the same blue eyes. Whenever we play Orting I like to seek him out and remind him, "Hey Coach, this is all your fault!"

Some of you might be thinking about giving it up. Your kids have moved on, or you just want more time with the family in the fall. After all, Dancing with the Stars is a damn fine show, and missing it every week because of football practice gets frustrating.

Before you head to eBay to offload your coaching library and take your cleats to Goodwill, consider this:

It's all your fault.

~D.

Cuts and How to Deal With Them

2011-06-21T18:14:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted January 23, 2009)

I was on the phone with a good friend of mine from North Carolina yesterday named Bill Bollman. We were tossing ideas back and forth about coaching, and he came up with a real doozy.

I've never liked cuts in football. The lessons this sport has to teach are simply too important to restrict them to a magic few players. Not to mention that I'd be second-guessing my choices constantly. "We cut Billy, but did you see him today? He grew three inches and gained twenty pounds. Is he living in the weight room?" I'd be further terrified that I'd cut some young man who would have eventually filled that critical position we always seem to get every year. You know the one; at least once a season we all look to our assistant coaches and say, "You know, we have no one else that can play Center/Tight End/Free safety/Etc. If Bobby sprains an ankle we are in serious trouble."

Worse yet, when do you cut? After conditioning week, usually. Conditioning week is usually performed without pads. That means you might cut a player who looks like Jane, but would play like Tarzan in pads, in favor of one who looks like Tarzan but plays like crap! Until you've seen a player in a few tackling drills, you really can't consider whether or not he should be cut-- but you can't see him in tackling drills unless he has equipment.

I'm paranoid about that sort of thing, which is why I'm glad I talked to Bill. He came up with an idea that is stunning in its simplicity, and yet so powerful that it bears a lengthy look.

Bill gets some 72 players out each season. He's only got about 38 sets of gear. That leaves, unfortunately, 34 players who spend football season watching from the stands.

But what if we could take those players and create a special team for them? What if we could keep them involved, keep them learning football, keep them working? What if we could use a method that professional and NCAA teams use all the time: the practice squad.

The way it works is like this. Each player gets two sets of cuts. The first cut drops him to the practice squad. That's where he will play out his season unless he quits or you pull him up to the game squad. A second cut drops him from the team entirely. These I would use primarily for "attitude." Any player that wants to stick with the team is welcome to do so.

Practice squad players would be issued team tee-shirts. They come to every practice and they work on similar drills to the game squad. They practice tackling, blocking, and other crucial skills of football using non-contact or low-contact drills such as the ones popularized by HUGH WYATT. Only the Game Squad actually receives helmets, pads, and uniforms for game day.

They hold bags for scout team, allowing you to get more reps for your game team players. They are a legitimate part of the football team; entitled to all awards and praise-- or punishment-- thereof. They are held to the same behavior and academic standards, and considered nearly as elite as the game squad.

They are also available if you suddenly lose a player and need to pull someone up from the practice squad. In one week I had three offensive linemen go down, two from injury and one from a behavioral incident. A practice squad to draw from would have been awfully nice when we were reshuffling our entire team. (Not that we cut anyone. We've never had the numbers.)

You'd have to approach this in a certain manner. Where a young man's pride is involved things are never easy. I think that Bill is right, though. If you put enough focus on it, start in the preseason long before you hold a tryout or a camp, and start talking about how the practice squad is going to make the team better, how the practice squad gets privileges and entitlements just like the game squad, how the practice squad is composed of football players who need more work and practice, not wannabes who can't make it, there's a good chance you could turn this into a valuable resource for developing talent.

I have always thought it's a crying shame that there are young football players out there that won't get to play football this season because there aren't resources available to let them become a part of the team. I believe that it should be a major goal of any program that cuts because of equipment issues to gradually increase the amount of available equipment until every young man (or woman) that wants to play is able to do so.

Some programs cut because they can't get the coaches. If there are players, there are coaches. Every player has at least one parent or guardian. Every parent or guardian is a potential assistant coach, if approached the right way and carefully trained by a competent head coach.

Some programs cut because they can't get the equipment. Football gear costs money. We all know that, but there are ways to get more equipment. Seek out grants and gifts from local businesses. Create and sell a program at your home games and sell advertising in it. Hold lift-a-thons and get the players to work on getting sponsors for each ten pounds they lift. Hold a charity basketball game. Sell concessions at your games. Talk to the local schools about gifts of their old equipment as "handme downs."

If all else fails, just try to buy one or two more helmets and pad sets per season until you can suit up any player that wants to play.

As coaches, we have to remember that we can't coach the players that aren't on the field. We need to get them, and keep them, on grass. Bill's practice squad idea is the start of that process, but after that we need to get our players equipped and make them a part of the team.

~D.

Taking Over a New Program

2011-06-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on January 30, 2009)

Most youth coaches coach their sons for a couple of seasons and are done with it. They move on into other things; take the promotion at work, change to a different job, whatever.

A rare few, however, can't find an antidote for the coaching bug. There are meetings where you can confess alcoholism, but so far I've yet to find a gathering of people in sweats and ball caps where you can stand up and say, "My name is Derek and I love teaching young people to tackle each other."

For those coaches, taking over a program is inevitable at some point in their careers. They'll either move from youth to a school program, (possibly vice versa), start a new organization from scratch, or otherwise find a way to bring decades of experience and study to a program that desperately needs it.

Sadly, a large number of those programs will be bad ones at the start. They'll have seemingly intractable problems. Remember, unless he's moving to a better job somewhere, most coaches don't leave willingly. If he's enjoying even modest success, the average coach would rather hang out where he is than go on a job search and move his family around.

Which means you're going to be walking into a difficult situation, and there's no easy way to untangle the Gordian Knot you're facing. The previous coach might have been beloved, especially if he left behind a good program, and you have to fill some large shoes. You can expect to hear someone use the phrase, "That's not how we did it last year," at least once per week for the first season.

This blog is specifically written with an eye towards taking over a school program that has not been more than moderately successful in recent years. You already know that you need to win the trust and respect of your players. Remember that anything you tell them they are accountable for, you have to hold them accountable for, or you'll lose their trust. There's a saying from the Armed Forces: "The enlisted man will forgive his officers any indiscretion save two: cowardice and inconsistency." It applies to football, too.

To begin with, I would look up the students that played football last season as sophomores and juniors, and I would also put some focus on the junior highs that feed into your program (or on the youth programs that feed into your junior high program).

One situation that drives me insane is youth programs and junior highs competing for the same players. I don't think that many football players have the physical ability to play for two teams at once, and most school coaches seem to have it in for the youth programs. I've been told twice by high school programs that they aren't interested in letting me coach any of their freshmen. Personally, I think this is a little dumb. At large high schools, some of those freshmen that could start for the youth program (or at least be guaranteed a certain number of plays because of the Minimum Play Rules) spend entire seasons sitting on the bench. Many of them quit after that one year, and never really get better at football. (It may or may not be relevant, but both school programs had losing traditions.)

If you're the school coach, consider what is best for the player, not your program. More often than not, if you encourage a younger player to play for his youth program, he's going to have more success, stay in football longer, and may even turn into a good player for you down the stretch. If you've taken the time to respectfully work with the local youth programs as I mentioned in a previous blog, you should have no problem with the idea of letting another coach develop your younger talent.

When it comes to the lower levels, junior highs if you're a high school coach and youth programs if you're a middle school coach, I would be campaigning harder than Hillary to make sure that every player who even walks past a football at Wal-Mart comes out for the new team. (In fact, that's a good recruiting tool, especially for youth football. Ask the manager of the local sporting goods and department stores if you can hang a flier on their rack of footballs advertising your program. Also put up fliers in the local gyms, on bulletin boards at grocery stores and coffee shops, and the like. You can also make sandwich boards like real estate agents use for open houses quite cheaply. Get permission to put them up in front of community events, like town meetings, high school plays, farmer's markets, and things like that. Be creative. Radio stations and cable access channels are required to offer Public Service Announcement time-- go to the stations and ask if you can put together a thirty second commercial for your program. Make sure there is a sign for your program on each of the main roads into your town. Stuff post office boxes with mailers. There are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do, most quite cheaply or even free with a little work.)

Your goal should be to increase your roster size by a minimum of 5%. Losing programs tend to hemmorrhage players. You need to get them back, or better yet, don't lose them in the first place.

The very instant you are given the handshake promise that you have the position, you need to schedule a meeting with the upper-classmen that played this season and will be playing for you next year. For a middle school, this means seeking out the 6th and 7th graders and getting them into a classroom with you for a few minutes. At the high school level, this means finding the sophomores and juniors that will make up your varsity team. (Do not neglect your junior varsity program! It is very tempting to rape the JV of players during a difficult season. Resist that temptation at all costs. The longer you let those JV players work together, the more success they have as a team at the JV level, the more likely it is that they will grow accustomed to that success and bring it out at the varsity level next year.)

I have some very high expectations for my players in the off-season. My football players do not just succeed, they excel. (Note that there is a difference between a goal and an expectation. A goal is something you hope your players will reach. An expectation is something you require your players to reach.) My expectations start with this:

1. GPA of 2.8, minimum. No excuses. Season GPA requirement is 2.5 to play, 2.8 to start. All other things being equal, the higher GPA wins the slot.

If you're a school coach, you might consider asking for a few minutes at the staff meeting to discuss your academic goals. I've noticed a bit of a division between academicians and athletes in schools, and it's best to nip that in the bud by reminding your colleagues that athletics teaches as much as academics, and that you are in this thing together for the good of the students.

2. At the high school level I require 75 Weight room log ins from December before you get your helmet for practice. (There are about 38 weeks from December to August, so that's less than two per week.) At the junior high/middle school level I would require about 35 log ins, or one per week.

3. You must play at least one sport other than football unless you a) Work a job more than 15 hours per week, or b) have a GPA of 3.5. (For middle schoolers this stays the same. I especially encourage wrestling, basketball, and track as sports that condition and teach toughness, footwork, and running form.)

4. High School players are required to perform ten hours of community volunteering to be done from December to opening weekend. (Talk with the local Boy Scout Troop, they have lists of stuff that needs volunteers.) Middle Schoolers are required to perform just as much, however this might involve some creativity since most of them don't drive. You might have to do more organization to get your team out as a group doing stuff like building picnic tables for the local parks, picking up trash along the roads, helping out at the senior center, and the like. (High school players have it easy-- they can always volunteer to help coach the local youth sports teams!)

5. Match up the varsity players with an incoming JV player from the local junior highs. Varsity players are required to call them a minimum of one time per week from January to the start of practice. Middle school/junior high players are required to call members of the local youth feeder program once per week. This is just a simple, five minute phone call, "Hi. How are you doing? Are your grades keeping up? Looking forward to football? How's your basketball team doing right now? Did you see that game on TV last night? I know! We better not do a sack dance like that or Coach Wade will run us until he's tired! Okay, I've got some homework to do, but I just wanted to see how you were doing. Get studying for that history test!"

6. No hazing. No bullshit. We are ALL Braves/Lions/Spartans, etc. We do not abuse the underclassmen, we lead them. If they do not respect you, that is YOUR fault, not theirs. I absolutely do not bend on this one, and my policy goes beyond zero-tolerance. My players are the elite, to be looked up to by the entire school. They are not thugs or abusers. Given the choice by school administration, I do not remove players from the team for hazing. Removing a player means that they no longer get to learn the lessons that our sport can teach. (I'm not a big fan of kicking a student out of my classes, either.) I do, however, make damn sure that they don't continue the hazing. We start with a thousand yards of bellies and a thousand yards of bear crawls at each practice for the next two weeks and a demotion to the bench.

One of the things that offends me the most about hazing is what it tells you about your team. They obviously are not pulling together and making a coherent unit. Even if the varsity is a tightly knit group, abusing the underclassmen means that a) those younger players aren't having fun playing football, and aren't as likely to play next year, b) those underclassmen are not going to "fit in" to the team when they move to varsity if they stay, and possibly worst of all, 3) those underclassmen will someday be upperclassmen who will think that hazing is normal, accepted, and enjoyable. That establishes a long-term precedent of cancer in your program. Kill it immediately before it spreads.

I would visit the junior highs at least once a month from about February until school ends to hold meetings with the incoming players. Just like the upperclassmen phone call, this is a quick little meeting for five or ten minutes to tell them about some exciting stuff they'll be doing, and to get involved in their lives. Players are more likely to want to play for a coach who takes an interest in them, remembers their names and the stuff they are involved in, and comes to see them. It's going to take time out of your day, but it's worth it. Trust me. Come to the basketball games and wrestling meets for the junior highs and cheer until you can't talk. The players will know that you support them and will want to play for you. (I once tripped over a garbage can celebrating a home run at a player's baseball game. The audience got a good laugh-- and several freshmen who had not played football that year came out the next year as sophomores. One told me it was because he thought it was cool that I got right back up and started cheering again. Maybe it wasn't the whole reason, but it certainly didn't hurt!)

If you're a middle school or junior high coach this is going to be more difficult. Obviously you can, and should, drop by the local youth practice fields every so often to say high to the players and talk to them (with permission of their coaches, of course. I never set foot on a practice field without the consent of the coach in charge.) You want to avoid disrupting elementary school classrooms, but you can still approach the teachers about meeting with their students here and there throughout the school year. Failing all else, talk to the elementary P.E. teacher. Ask for five minutes a month to talk to their students about playing for you next season.

One thing I want to caution you about when you talk to coaches of programs younger than yours. Don't say a word about what you run unless they ask. Ask them how you can help them do what they do better. Ask them to consider teaching only your blocking and tackling progression, not your schemes or playbooks. You already know the contempt I have for high school coaches that try to shove their ill-advised systems down the throats of middle school and youth teams. Those teams belong to their coaches, and they have the right to coach them with systems they have developed, even if you think they could do better with the stuff you give them.

When it comes to working with lower levels, I take a line from Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! "She was a kind-hearted woman out for all she could give." You need to have the same approach. I continually talk up the feeder programs. I'll give them anything I can give them, time on my fields, extra equipment, any help I can possibly spare, and even players that are not necessarily going to spend much time on my fields. Remember that your future players are on those teams, and the more successful you can make them, the more success you are going to have, because those young men are going to stay in football, keep playing, and keep expecting to have success. (You had better, by the way, meet those expectations!)

One thing you should notice is that this entire, lengthy blog hasn't really covered anything about what weights to lift, when you should start practicing, putting together a summer contact camp (You should have two: one for your team, and one for the lower levels where your players actually coach the youth/middle school teams). The whole point of this blog is to remind you that a program isn't just a bunch of called plays on game day. It's not a jersey color or a clipboard or a cool mascot name like Raptors. A program starts at the earliest age you can get a young person involved in sports, and it lasts only as long as you can keep him interested in participation. Don't ask your players to specialize in football. It's not good for them physically, can cause repetitive stress injuries, and it leads to burnout. Yeah, you might lose a good athlete to an unscrupulous basketball coach who wants him to join a year-round traveling team, but that's not going to happen very often, and odds are the respect you show the other programs will come back to you when your season begins and they're encouraging their basketball players to put on some pads. (Respect, by the way ALWAYS goes out before it comes back.)

Don't forget the importance of grades, and remember that leadership is a difficult thing to master. It's something that takes practice and commitment. The only way your upperclassmen are ever going to get good at it is if you give them a chance to practice it. Put the onus on them; give them the responsibility for taking care of the younger players. They will grow to love it, your team will be better for it, and your players will be better for it.

It goes without saying that your program will, too.

~D.

The Most Important Part of Football... REALLY!

2011-06-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, last week I intentionally misspoke myself when I called stance and start the most important part of football. When it comes to tactics and techniques, that's true, but there are things that are more important than winning.

Sportsmanship is one of them. In today's society there is a lot of emphasis placed on winning, and that's fine. American society has always been competitive, and the more we can teach our kids about coming out on top, the better they will do in life.

The problem is that some people tend to take things too far. Winning should never take precedence over the game itself, and it should definitely not take precedence over the respect we show our opponents.

In the first chapter of the excellent text, Let's Kill 'Em: Understanding and Controlling Violence in Sports, the author, Jon Leizman quotes a Sports Illustrated article, "Way Out of Control," in which the writer, Jack McCallum, comments on a friend of his taking his son to a ball game:

"Jeez, Dad,' the boy said, "I hope we see one today. I've never seen one."
"A homer?" The dad asked.
'No, a brawl." (P.1)

It's sad, but we can take that story even further and think of the number of kids today that have seen brawls-- and think they are acceptable.

Sportsmanship is something you need to work on every single day, just like stance and start, and tackling and blocking. Remember that your players go home and turn on the television, where they see things like Bill Romanowski putting a teammate in the hospital during a practice-field fight, Terrel Owens and his celebratory antics, and of course they can see the actions of Randy Moss, like his disgraceful stunt at Lambeau Field on January 9th, 2005. For those of my readers who missed it, Randy pantomimed dropping his pants and "mooning" the crowd, for which he was fined the princely sum of $5,000.

(It's no wonder the NFL can't keep a handle on their players. I don't think any other cross-section of American society with a population of 1,600 members would have as many flat-out criminals. Randy Moss's behavior has always been contemptible, and the fines have been equally as pathetic: $10,000 for squirting water on an official. $25,000 for a vehicular assault charge that was dropped to a misdemeanor when Moss intentionally knocked down a meter maid with his SUV. Remember that Moss's last contract in Minnesota signed him for $3.8 million a year.)

Your players will probably see at least one example of poor class and sportsmanship in every single game they watch during the 2007 NFL season. If it's not wide receivers screeching at officials for not getting a pass interference penalty when blanketed by coverage (or defensive backs complaining about flags they drew while covering those wide receivers), then it will be an excessive touchdown celebration or chest-thumping demonstration after a routine tackle.

These displays have only one purpose, to humiliate the opponent. I'll be blunt: it really asses me off that I have to spend my practice time every season carefully UN-teaching the things my players see on television.

But it has to be done, and you need to do it, too.

We start during the first days of practice, with a discussion of proper behavior during the coaches' introduction. We go on with an actual full discussion of sportsmanship on day two at the end of practice. During this discussion we also specifically warn the players that we will be testing them, and to be ready for it.

Periodically we reinforce things with a drill I stole from John Torres (formerly of Manteca, California) and Rich Scott (Who is still in Manteca.) called the Walk-Away Drill. Briefly put, pull one of your players aside and give him instructions to pick a fight with another player at some point during the practice. It should be completely verbal, but have him get in someone's face and be loud about it. (It works best if he picks the fight with a friend. A pretend fight can escalate to a real one and screw up this whole drill-- plus maybe even get you sued!) During the chalk talk we actually demonstrate this by having a coach start screaming at another coach who has to walk away.

Here's what your players should see: during a normal tackling drill, Billy gets taken to the ground too hard by Bobby, and leaps to his feet, yelling offensively. (With older kids, it's all right to have a little profanity during this drill, but I'd bring it up to the parents in the preseason so they understand what you're trying to do as well as how it will be done.)

Stop the drill at this point, when all eyes are on on Billy's antics, and reinforce exactly what he is to do.

I'll spell it out in three steps.

1) Smile.
2) Turn around.
3) Walk back to the huddle.

It's that simple. Run this at least once in the preseason, and probably once a month after that. It's sad, but there are also some teams out there that you're going to play that like to talk trash. If you know one of them is on your schedule, then you should probably run this drill the week prior to that game. (For example, if you're going to play a team coached by "Snoop Dogg" you should probably run this drill about every ten minutes during the preceding week.)

But wait, there's more! Sportsmanship is more than just learning to walk away from a fight. Being a good coach involves actively promoting sportsmanship in your players.

Here's one idea I got from the outstanding coaches and players of King's Academy High School in Northern California. After each game the players of this Christian school gather with their opponents at midfield in a giant circle, alternating each King's Academy player with an opponent. The coaches meet in the middle, and, King's Academy being a Christian school, everyone prays.

Now, I'm not here to tell you that you need to suddenly find Jesus (I didn't even know he was missing.), but this is a great idea for reinforcing sportsmanship!

I have taken this remarkable idea and added my own spin on it: what if we were to do precisely the same thing, but instead of praying (which is by no means a bad thing) just thank our opponents for being there? Wouldn't that stick in our players' heads? Wouldn't they remember that for the rest of their lives?

There are other things you can do to reinforce sportsmanship that aren't quite the production. Little things are just as important. For example, when your players score a touchdown, instead of a funky dance, or excessive screaming, just have them turn and thank their offensive linemen. Not only does this reinforce the idea of not taunting our opponent, but it also helps support the importance of the offensive line.

The final thing I'd like to bring up is the idea of backing down on the number of individual awards given out. I've seen helmets so covered with stickers that I'm surprised the players can hold their heads up above their pads. While this is cool, and makes them feel like a "big-time" player, it also tends to reinforce an "I'm better than you," attitude. I don't take this dislike of individual awards to absolute extremes, though. A speaker at a recent coaching clinic I attended commented that youth coaches should never keep individual statistics. I completely disagree with this idea. The players love seeing their stats, and they are a very important troubleshooting and encouragement aid.

There are only two individual awards that I give out. The first is the BLACK LION. I encourage you to visit the link and sign your team up for this program. The second is the Hardest Working Lineman of the week, which is an award given to the laziest running back we have. (Okay, I said that just to see if you were paying attention.) We actually get together as a coaching staff once a week before the first game and vote on the hardest working lineman in the program.

In my experience, the the more players work as a team, the less individual taunting they exhibit, and the more sportsmanship they display. This is because sportsmanship, class, and character are part of a culture. Unfortunately, so are trash-talking, taunting, and showboating. Your job as a coach is to create, reinforce, and maintain the right culture.

Sportsmanship doesn't just happen. If you don't actively encourage your players to treat the game and their opponents with respect, the miserable examples they have on television will do it for them.

And that's exactly what we don't want to teach.

If you're looking for further information on developing character and sportsmanship in your players, here are some books to look for:

Positive Coaching by Jim Thomson (ISBN: 1-886346-00-3)
Coaching for Character by Craig Clifford and Randolph M. Feezell (ISBN: 0-88011-512-2)
Let's Kill 'Em by Jon Leizman (ISBN: 0-7618-1378-0)

~D.

The Most Important Skills in Football

2011-06-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted July 23, 2008)

I get asked all the time what the best drills are for football, how to plan practices, and whether or not the Gap-8 really works as a defense.

1) Jerry Vallotton's Timing Drill (DoubleWing.org), and my Hammer Drill (Coming in a later article here on the FB4Y Blog.)

2) By breaking down the necessary skills you need to teach and developing a practical program that first teaches, then reinforces, and finally perfects them in a consistent manner.

3) YES!

But one question I wish someone would ask is, "Coach Wade, what's the most important part of football?"

I think a guy named Lombardi said it best, "Football is, and always will be, a game of blocking and tackling."

When you break these two fundamental skills down into their most important aspects, you have one foundation that applies to both: stance and start.

The biggest problem that youth football coaches face, at least when it comes to on-field skills, is coaching explosive movement. All-too frequently they simply don't know how to coach it, so they let it get lost in the shuffle. The result is what you see in the diagram above.

It's not natural to play low. Youth players are human, and it's a very human tendency to want to pop up and look around. Unfortunately, it's a very real truth that the quickest way to end up lying down on a football field is to stand up.

My intention here is to focus your attention on your players and they way they both go into and come out of their stances. Proper stance and start is the most important thing a football player has to learn. We begin working on it on day one, and several times a day we correct our players in their basic stances. We progress naturally from there to explosive linear movement forward, in what Tim Murphy of Clovis East calls, "Hitting on the rise." In a perfect world our players make contact while they are still low and compressed like a tightly-coiled spring, and their follow-through steps take them under their opponent while gradually lifting, which takes the defender off his balance.

It has to be practiced, and it's so important that I believe it should be practiced not just every day, but several times each day.

Here's the way this works: we break practice into five minute increments called segments. A two-hour practice is composed of twenty-four segments, and an offensive or defensive period is usually composed of between five and seven segments. The first portion of these periods is usually a brief individual drills period to refresh skills and get the players warmed up for their positions.

Since each aspect of the team has their own coach (On offense these are Offensive Line, Backfield, and Tight Ends/Receivers. On defense these are Linebackers, Defensive Line, and Defensive Backs.) we have a perfect opportunity to check relevant stances consistently and constantly throughout the practice.

Let's say you and I are coaching together, and you're my defensive backs coach. When the defensive period begins I blow my whistle three times, loudly, to get every player and coaches' attention. Then I call out, "Defensive indo," (Individual time.) "Go to your coach!" The players have ten seconds to get to their coach, no matter where you happen to be.

When they get to you, they'll break down into a good hit position, which is the fundamental movement position in all athletics. (Seriously, compare it to basketball stance, a defensive tennis stance, even the way soccer players stand when they're not falling down because an opposing player came too close to them.) You'll take a quick glance at their body position, making corrections as needed and as quickly as possible, and then give them a set of brief calisthenics to perform, such as Ten push ups, or Fifteen sit ups. As they finish these exercises, you'll give them a second stance to demonstrate, such as Three-point-Stance. Like you just did, you'll look them over and make brief corrections as needed.

You can even take an extra few seconds and have them execute a get-off, popping out to block your extended hands, one player at a time as you move down the line. Or you can have them execute a dip and rip drill (arm over or arm under) against you, one at a time, moving swiftly along the line and reinforcing this vital escape technique. Or you can hold a dummy and have them hit, lock, and wrap up in the first part of a proper tackle. The possibilities are endless, and as this only takes seconds to work in you can get through an entire group of eleven offensive linemen in less than a minute. (Since there are five offensive linemen on an offensive unit, but only one-to-three running backs, one quarterback, and two-to-four receivers at any one time, the offensive line unit comprised of starters and backups tends to be larger than any other part of the team. In a typical 26-man roster, about ten to fourteen players will be offensive linemen, and the remainder will be spread among the "skill" positions. When planning drills into your practice plan, always consider the time it takes for each group to pass through each drill the required number of times for mastery.)

What have we just done? Well, we not only checked two stances (hit position and one extra), but we also worked a conditioning exercise (sprint to the coach) and a core strength-building exercise (push ups, sit ups, etc.) into the practice in a very time-efficient manner. Executing this practice method takes mere moments. Even adding in the extra get-offs only takes a few extra seconds, and provides an incredible return on investment. Some coaches may go their whole seasons without spending any real time on this important fundamental, and in mere moments we can check it, correct it, and reinforce it every day, from the first day of practice until the day we say our goodbyes.

Stance and start are the most important fundamental foundations in football. A proper stance allows for explosive movement into the opponent, and the correct start allows you to deliver the first blow. By taking just a few seconds throughout practice to focus on them, you can continually reinforce these skills, and proper execution in these areas will improve your team, no matter what offense or defense you choose to run.

~D.

Blocking Schemes and the Wing-T

2011-06-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on July 16th, 2008)

Lately I have been receiving some very good questions via email, and for some reason there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the Wing-T as an offensive system. Whether it has to do with the mighty Bellevue Wolverines and the hammerings they’ve been doling out or some other factor, I think it’s a good thing.

Most of the questions I’ve been asked tend to revolve around blocking schemes for the system. This is the aspect of offensive football that most youth coaches have trouble with, because it’s the most complex, and also the least covered by network TV analysts and professional camera angles. (Another reason I find NFL football boring, since the offensive line, and not the ball, is the most fun for me to watch.)

I got the following via email, and I think it’s a good question:

Hi Coach Wade.

You have some great articles on your site. I'm an experienced basketball and flag football coach, but have been asked to be the OC for 13-14 year old team this year. Many of our players have played in the wing-T for a few years, and I have a decent laymans understanding of the plays/concepts. That said, my understanding of the blocking rules & techniques is poor. As I try to learn more I see a lot of incomplete or inconsistent info available on blocking rules. Do you have a summary of the blocking rules for the base wing-T series? I have seen the playbook download on the site, but this does not address changing fronts. Any other advice would be great also.

There’s a lot of ground to cover when we’re talking about blocking rules, especially when we’re talking about blocking rules for the Wing-T. At last count there were two dozen potential series available for the basic Wing-T, and coaches are developing new ways to use the common formations to attack the defense all the time.

The Wing-T can be a very complex offense to use, not least because it's so damn versatile. An example is Gene Cox's Multiple Offense (ISBN: 0966967208) from his book by the same name. His 'basic' terminology alone takes up four full pages. Sometimes the same play is blocked three or four ways against the same front, with no real explanation as to why.

Thanks to a decade or more of coaching experience, much of it under the patient and expert tutelage of Leon Feliciano at Tomales high school, I can now figure out that what these alternative blocking schemes give you is a different way to attack stud players in various positions. A stud defensive tackle, for example, can be charlie blocked. A stud outside linebacker can be kicked out, and the ultimate target is still the same point of the defensive line.

This is way too complex for youth coaches. It's too complex for most high school coaches (but they would never admit it in a million years). I have no idea at all how Gene Cox won 323 games with that system, but he's a better coach than me, that's for sure.

I talk a great deal about the Wing-T, but I choose not to run it myself. There are some very valid reasons for that, in my opinion. I'm a Double Wing guy, through and through. I think the Double Wing is a little further down the evolutionary road from the Wing-T. I would run the Wing-T as an offense by itself for two main reasons: I wanted to throw the ball more than I do (because I had an awesome in-space receiver I wanted to split as an end) or if I wanted to run the option. Other than that, I think the Double Wing answers a lot of the questions that the Wing-T asks, like line splits. What's the most effective distance for my age group? Who knows? The Wing-T can demand specific splits because of the timing of the plays, and finding the exact distance for your age level is as much trial and error as "book learnin'" from the playbook.

The Wing-T is a very precise offense, and tightening the line splits too much can have deleterious effects on certain things. For example, it will help you with the sweep, because the perimeter is closer, but it interferes with the trap because the FB is deeper-- the hole can open and close before he gets there instead of opening AS he gets there. (By the way, I'm not trash-talking the Wing-T. It's my third place offense I would run behind the Double Wing and the Veer. When I say that it's not as 'evolved' as the Double Wing I mean that the Double Wing went in one direction and the Wing-T went in another, and I prefer the angle that the Double Wing takes.)

But we want to talk about specific blocking schemes. Unfortunately, since there are no restrictions on defensive alignment (unless you’re in one of those miserable leagues that mandates a specific defense, in which case I encourage you to find another place to coach as soon as possible), we need to consider schemes whose rules allow for various defensive fronts, or our plays will fail for the worst of all possible reasons: because we failed to teach our players who to block.

When it comes to developing a playbook suitable for changing fronts, you need to start with a good scouting report and then give your players a base set of rules for each play. You can do this yourself if you find a playbook that has stuff left out of it. (Except when I do it, all my blocking schemes look like the Double Wing. I think I'm over trained.)

To keep things simple, I want to talk mostly about the most basic play in any offensive arsenal: the straight-up-the-pipe to the fullback. There are several ways to block this, as you can see from the diagram.

1) Base block - everyone fires out low and hammers the guy in front of them. If no one, continue in a path until you hit someone. This is typical youth blocking and as a result is rarely useful. (It can be, if you call it on occasion and catch the defense unaware, thinking you were going to angle block or something.) It relies on surprise as much as pure power.

2) Counter trap - Backside guard pulls through the center's hips and lays out the defensive tackle. For this you need two sets of basic rules; one has to be for the odd fronts you see, and the other has to be for the evens. You also might need some kind of call from guard to guard. (I use inlaw and outlaw. Inlaw means that the guy on my playside guard is inside, so he's going to be blocked by the playside guard. Outlaw means that the guy on the playside guard is outside him, and is the trap victim.) the basic rule here is: No one outside the trap touches a man on the line, period. EVERYONE goes to second level.

3) Charlie - This looks similar to the trap, except that we're not sending anyone to second level. Everyone base blocks except, in this case, the center and playside guard. Usually the outside man goes first, and he earholes anyone over center. The center delays for a heartbeat (gives him time to snap) and then, when the guard passes in front of him, he whacks the man over the guard. This gives both players inside leverage, but, it sacrifices speed because the punch is delayed. (You can even consider this a short trap. It works well on draw plays, too, BECAUSE of the slight delay.)

What you need to do is take a find a decent playbook with rules already in place. However if you're looking for some basic stuff to match what your kids already know, look at the series you run and consider this:

1) When attacking outside, there are two main blocking schemes: down block and reach block. Reach blocking only works with proper technique and when the defense has seen enough down blocks that they try to fight hard to the inside to beat that particular block. Then reach them.

2) Apply two points of leverage at every hole: inside and outside. So, for example, if you wanted to run a power with the halfback carrying off tackle, you need to apply leverage to the inside (down block) and to the outside (kickout with the FB) to pry the hole open. This is Hugh Wyatt's Jaws of Life blocking scheme and is employed in almost all Double Wing plays.

3) Trap on misdirection plays. Series are groups of interconnected plays that look similar (preferably identical)at the start of the play and immediately following the snap. A Buck series, for example, uses the dive, sweep, and a QB keep/rollout pass in the opposite direction from the sweep. This is prime time for the trap to the FB (dive) when the defense sees sweep and the lixbnebackers start to chase.

4) Charlie blocking only works when it is quick and the players stay low. If the center pops up, he's going to miss his block and the fullback will get buried.

I hope this helps.

~D.

Why I Hate Bellevue High School

2011-06-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on December 17th, 2007)

For those who haven’t had a chance to follow them, Bellevue is a high school located in a suburb of Seattle. They achieved national prominence in 2004 by being the first football team to defeat De La Salle High School since 1992 and snapping the Spartans’ 151-game, thirteen-year winning streak.

So why would I hate this program? Bellevue is a model of success. They play inspired football. The offensive system they use is the Wing-T, and they are good. I happened to be at the game where they defeated De La Salle. Bellevue scored on their first play from scrimmage and hung thirty-nine points on De La Salle without ever throwing a single pass. It was impossible, even from our vantage point in the stands and superior angle, to find the football during a play, often for as long as two full seconds. Defensively, Bellevue’s 4-3 swarmed, gang tackled, pressured, and played sound fundamental football. The players and coaches were, and are, respectful and courteous to their opponents and to their fans. They’re a model of how a good high school program should look.

Why would I hate them so much if they are a living embodiment of everything I hold dear in football? The answer is actually pretty simple. I hate them because too many programs and administrations are making the mistake of thinking that because Bellevue does something, they need to do it in order to be successful.

I’m actually speaking of one specific thing. In Bellevue, the local youth program runs the same offensive system and terminology as the high school. The middle school runs the same system and terminology as the high school. It’s not quite to the level of Odessa-Permian in Texas, where male babies in the hospital are given a fabric football with their future number on it, but it’s close.

And, at the risk of sounding contrarian, it is not how you build a successful program.

Bellevue’s head coach is a very smart man named Butch Goncharoff. Coach Goncharoff did not simply wander into Bellevue and demand that the local youth organizations run his system. He was smart enough to realize that unless he demonstrated success with it, there was no reason that they would want to run his program.

Coach Goncharoff started as a youth coach, and he was absolutely not running the same system as the local high school. For five seasons he coached his system, gradually moving up the food chain until he reached the high school level.

First he showed that it was possible to win with his system, and now he has a comprehensive feeder program in place that gives him experienced players every year. The athletes in the Bellevue program run the same system from age eight to age eighteen, and they are only going to get better. Don’t look for anyone to knock them off any time soon.

Let’s contrast this with the attempts by a local school district I know of to follow in the Bellevue footsteps. Like Bellevue, they, too, mandate that the middle schools in the district run the same programs as the high schools they feed. Unfortunately, unlike Bellevue, they don’t have a track record of proven success to point to. In fact, the two high schools in the district were a combined 7-13 this last season. One of them has won an astounding four games in two seasons.

Possibly worst of all, the high school coaches did not come up through the system, they were hired from outside it. This means that the hapless middle school coach that has been there coaching his program with some success since 2000 can suddenly have his system yanked out from under him when a new high school coach is hired that wants to do something different.

Let's think about that. Imagine that you are the head coach at one of the middle schools. Imagine that you have put thousands of hours of research and development time into the creation of your own program. This is not an unlikely scenario by any means. The best youth coaches I know of put in about three to five hundred hours during the season, and about two thousand hours of study and development time during the off-season. Imagine that you have enjoyed some modest success with the system you have developed. (Actually, the odds are that the success you have enjoyed is probably more than modest if you are putting that kind of effort into your personal education and development.)

Now, standing in front of you is a high school coach that has had back-to-back 2-8 seasons. Only twice in the last two years has his offense scored more than three touchdowns in a game. He was shut out three times in the last season alone. He is going to tell you what offense and defense to run. He will probably never step on your practice field, yet he will mandate to you the systems that you will teach to your players. He will disregard your own personal research, experience, and study in favor of his own. Worst of all, you will probably not even be successful with the systems he wants you to run!

After all, he is not even successful, and he is supposed to be the “expert” in the system, hired by the district at the high school level and paid to teach his program to high school players.

This is the fundamental flaw that comes from misunderstanding and misapplying the methods used by Bellevue High School to build their program.

The short-sightedness of high school coaches never fails to amaze me. They think nothing of forcing a lower level coach to run a program completely unsuited to his personnel if it makes it slightly easier for them. They never seem to understand that an unsuccessful junior high coach in their feeder program is not going to send them players of any caliber. They are perfectly content to watch the junior high go 0-8 as long as they use the same terminology, and they just don’t seem to understand that youth football players that play for losing football teams do not usually go on to play successful high school football!

Youth football players are human. In a society that is desperately trying to drag kids away from video games and off the Internet, hamstringing their coaches, putting any stumbling block at all in their potential success is one more brick for that player to lay on the foundation of quitting. Why on earth would a freshman football player that lost every game as a sixth grader, lost every game as a seventh grader, and lost every game but one as an eighth grader want to continue playing football?

I’ll tell you, because I was that player once: he doesn’t. You will lose that player to soccer, band, drama club, or “hanging out” just as surely as if you personally cut him from the team.

Logically, it doesn’t even make sense to force a middle school program to run a high school system. High school programs are not designed with middle schools in mind, they are designed with high school athletes in mind. Why is this so difficult for the high school coaches to catch on to? This isn’t rocket science. Half of the middle school team hasn’t even hit puberty yet.

Probably the stupidest aspect of this situation is explained by the player study performed by Jack Reed in 2001. In the article on his web site at http://www.johntreed.com, Coach Reed tracked his 1995 youth football team and discovered that fewer than twenty percent of them went on to play high school football. Now, you can call this statistically insignificant because it is only one team out of thousands, but what verification is there that forcing a youth program to run a high school offense will make them more successful when they get to high school?

It is perfectly possible to take junior varsity players that have never once in their lives taken a three-point-stance and teach them to play successful, even triumphant, football. I know this for a fact because I have done it. I have taken my freshmen with flag-football experience and faced off against programs with established tackle feeder programs going down to age six—and defeated them. Why does this happen? Because I do not depend on another coach to teach my program. I teach my program. I teach safe and sound fundamental football.

Why me? Because it is my program. I am responsible for its success. The levels below me are not responsible for my wins and losses. It makes as much sense to demand that they run my program as it makes for the local junior college to order the high schools in their area to run whatever systems they approve. Actually, that makes more sense; fewer than twenty percent of youth football players may play in high school, but almost all junior college players played high school ball.

There is a horrible down side to the feeder-program mentality as well. In 1999 I was an active duty member of the United States Coast Guard stationed in Kodiak, Alaska. I was fortunate to work for a fantastic supervisor named Del who gave me time to coach football and rekindle my love of being on grass with young people.

In 2002 I ran into Del again after I was stationed in Petaluma, CA. Del had moved to a radio navigation site in Wyoming and brought his young son with him.

Del’s son was a hockey player in Alaska. If you haven’t had a chance to meet some youth hockey players, take my word for it: they are tough, very tough. More than that, Del’s son was also an Alaskan state record holder in the 100-meter hurdles.

Can anyone say, “broken field runner?” I’ll admit that my mouth started watering at the prospect of a young athlete with that kind of speed, toughness, and natural elusiveness carrying the football in my Double Wing offense.

So what happened to him? When I spoke with Del, he told me that his son had never played high school football. Why? Because the high school coach in that area told him to his face, “You can come out for football, but you’ll never play. My players have been in my program since they were eight years old. I don’t have time to teach you to play football!”

Del’s son walked away from the sport. Frankly, I’m disgusted with that coach, and ashamed to consider him a part of my peer base. Unfortunately, that is the sort of mentality that arises when you put too much emphasis on the presence of a feeder program for your high school. What are you supposed to do with transfer students? In 2005 the Tomales High School Football team had a player who was an exchange student from France! Not only had he not played football before, he hadn’t even seen an entire football game before he played in one!

Of course, if the only players we really care about are the ones that play in our programs from the moment they first put on a pair of cleats, then I suppose it’s not really a big deal that our young Frenchman was able to play football, now is it?

I don’t deny that having a good feeder program is a boon to a high school football team. All football experience is good for young athletes, and all football experienced athletes will improve a high school program. However, before you start talking about the responsibilities of the youth program to your high school system, you first need to understand your responsibilities to the youth program.

Bellevue High School is a fine example of a football program, but a disingenuous understanding of their program philosophy and errors in its application are throwing thousands of youth football programs under the bus every season. A high school coach has no right to order anyone not on his practice field to do anything. An unsuccessful high school coach has even less right.

Success is not always defined by wins and losses, but when you approach a feeder program to ask them to run your system, unless you have something to show, don’t be surprised if they respectfully decline. The youth football coach is not a supplicant to or lackey of the high school coach. The youth football coach, and this means the junior high or middle school coach as well, is the colleague of the high school coach. He should be treated as such.

And that means understanding that his program means his system. Let him run it.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com
Find me on Skype: CoachWade

Author: Impact! Coaching Successful Youth Football
                Volume One: The Program
                Volume Two: Coaching Special Teams (Now Available!)
                Volume Three: Coaching Defense (July 2011)
                Volume Four: Coaching Offense (May 2012)
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then we've helped twenty kids!"

Losing Games the Professional Way!

2011-06-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on December 10th, 2007)

Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals, December 9th, 2007

As a football coach, one of the most important things you have to learn is how and when to get out of your team's way. It's an axiom: it is always easier to LOSE a game, than it is to WIN one.

On Sunday, December 10th, 2006, the Seattle Seahawks played a game in Sun Devil Stadium against the Arizona Cardinals. The odds-makers had Seattle by eight and a half. A win locks Seattle in to the NFC West Championship and guarantees them a playoff appearance. (Remember, this is a Seattle team that barely lost a Superbowl last year.)

The Hawks' many blunders included penalties at key moments: the very first play of the game was a holding call against them. I understand that the offensive linemen are playing against the most effective defensive athletes in the world, but aren't they themselves supposed to be of similar caliber?

Seattle finished the game with nine fumbles, including a key by Mack Strong in the third quarter. As they get set to put the game away after briefly taking the lead, a swing pass to the flat hits Strong in stride. He turns, makes three steps, and the defensive end makes contact with him. Because Strong is not protecting the football properly, it is stripped, and Arizona recovers. They go on to score and take the lead for the final time.

When Seattle gets the ball back, on the ensuing drive, a block in the back gives them a first and seventeen after the ten yard penalty is assessed and the down is replayed. Block in the back is one of the easiest penalties to avoid; all it takes is competent coaching to discipline the athletes until they pay attention. There's no excuse for it at the youth level, much less from a professional making $3.4 million a year. (Or approximately 100 times the salary of a high school teacher.)

Seattle completed their next pass over the middle, and the receiver fumbles because he never puts the ball away. Seattle recovers, but LOSES nine yards, leaving them with an eventual 4th and six inches from their thirty. (These are pros? Why can't they execute the most basic fundamental in football: hanging onto the ball properly?)

Right here is where Mike Homgren lost the game for Seattle. With less than ten inches for the first down and the league MVP from 2005 at running back, instead of going for it in a game that would clinch the championship (with a San Francisco loss) Holmgren chooses to instead punt the ball away.

Arizona also blundered. After the punt they ran five straight plays to Edgerrin James in which he gained, at minimum, four yards per carry. If they'd kept giving the ball to James they would have scored. Instead, they went to the drop-back and killed their drive with incompletes.

The punt leaves Seattle on their own four yard line.

Just under eight minutes in the game and Seattle now gets to drive the length of the field if they want to win the game. Or three and out, which is sort of expected. The punt leaves Arizona on the SEATTLE 44 yard line. Defensive penalties give Arizona a nice free first down and a chance to kill more clock after they already take two and a half minutes off. The field goal pretty much ends it for Seattle: 27-21. They end up six inches short of a conversion on the Arizona six with 53 seconds left.

Exciting finish? NO! Am I the only person that's sick and tired of seeing these "exciting finishes" that only come about because of flat out blundering in the first 58 minutes of the game?

There's a lesson in there, I think. Youth and high school coaches can learn a lot from the pros, even if it's how NOT to run a football team. I wish I could stop being a Seattle fan, so coaching blunders wouldn't be quite so offensive, but I've been following them for thirty of my thirty-three years.

Here's where we get to profit from the experience of the pros. If I'm coaching Seattle, I'm going to re-evaluate my game plan for practices.

Next week would focus on two major points in practice:

1) Ball security. I would run some form of gauntlet drill every day with all potential ball carriers.
2) Penalty avoidance. Each and every penalty yard would result in some form of team punishment, with an extra focus on sportsmanship and safety penalties. Generally, a good rule of thumb is ten yards of sprints or bellies for every yard of penalties incurred in a game.

Additionally, as a head coach for a potential champion, I don't think that it's good coaching to be tentative or demonstrate anything other than complete confidence in my team. Facing a fourth and six inches with one of the best running backs in the league on my team, it's preposterous that Holmgren chose to kick the ball away instead of going for the first down. Remember the statistics analyzed by Carroll, Palmer, and Thorn in The Hidden Game of Football (ISBN: 189212901-9) indicate that going for it on fourth down, even when deep in your own territory, is almost always a good idea. The consequences of failing are rarely as bad as one thinks, and the return on investment usually outweighs the potential drawbacks. Seattle was on their own thirty-four, hardly "deep" in their territory, and a first down could win the game for them.

What Holmgren showed his team was that he didn't have confidence in them as a unit when the chips were down. This is not surprising in a coach that once told the press that "Seattle will never be better than 8-8 with Jon Kitna at quarterback," but it is just as contemptible now as it was in 1998 when he said that about his starting offensive leader.

Tentative coaching and technical mistakes killed Seattle in a crucial game. Good coaching means learning from those errors and not making similar mistakes when your own championship is on the line.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com
Find me on Skype: CoachWade