Please Don't Run the Pistol

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.

Stop Screwing With Football! (Part Two)

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)

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.

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

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.

Why I Hate Bellevue High School

(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)
Available from Authorhouse Publishing

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

Losing Games the Professional Way!

(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

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)
Available from Authorhouse Publishing

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"