Monday, February 19, 2024

Coaching Is Bigger Than Wins and Losses

I was talking to a good friend and coach who I worked with during my career, and we were talking about what we really do as coaches. After our conversation, I felt there is some valuable information coaches need to know if they want to excel in this profession. 

First, wins and losses matter. If we don't win enough games, or we lose the wrong games, or don't win the right games, we are going to need to find new employment. Coaches want to win games and work hard to do so. I don't want that to get lost in the message today. Winning games matters. 

With that said, the wins and losses are the least of what we do as coaches. The most important thing we do as coaches is the impact we make on our student-athletes. And that impact comes from what we do with our platform each day to equip them with the tools and skills they are going to need to be successful in life when they leave our program. 

We have an opportunity to use a sport as the avenue or conduit to teach life skills that our student-athletes will be able to use every day of their lives to be successful. If we only use our platform to win games, we will miss an opportunity. Through our coaching, we can develop their ability to work as a team and unite diverse groups to achieve a common goal. We can develop their sense of self, responsibility, accountability, teamwork, trust, mental toughness and resilience. 

Our coaching will either have a positive impact on our student-athletes, or it will have a negative impact. It will never be neutral. We are either teaching them skills to be successful, or we are teaching them skills that will mire them in mediocrity. No matter how many games we win or lose, these skills can and should be taught, developed, and nurtured. 

We are either developing a sense of empowerment, or we are developing a sense of entitlement. The key is the standards you set, and the level you hold your people accountable to those standards. Are you willing to hold your best athlete to the same level of standard you will hold a lesser athlete? Are you consistent with your accountability?

The quickest way to divide your locker room is to have one set of standards for one group of players, and a different set of standards for another group of players. This destroys the ability of your team to perform at its highest levels on game day. It also develops entitlement in one group of players and resentment in another. 

I have seen this very problem destroy teams and lead them to completely under achieving on the field. More importantly, it will lead them to underachieving in life. Everything you are doing with your team as far as standards and accountability will become a part of their character. You will not necessarily know if you have been successful with them until well after they leave your program. But everything you did as a coach will make an impact. The impact you make is up to you. 

Here is the best part of all of this. If you focus on the impact, you will win more games. You will win games you shouldn't win and you will rarely lose a game you shouldn't lose. If you don't set high standards and have high accountability, you will lose games you shouldn't have lost to teams with less talent. 

I challenge you as you prepare for the upcoming season to examine your standards and accountability. Are you consistent with your standards? Are you holding everyone accountable, or only certain players?  Are you developing a sense of empowerment, or are you developing a sense of entitlement? 

Check This Out! If you are looking for specific resource you can use to help you be more effective with your game planning and more explosive on offense, check out my offensive game planning packet at  https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/ 

It includes everything from a scouting report template, to practice plans, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today and start preparing for your first game right now! This helped us be able to be prepared to attack the defense and put more points on the board. It also helped us be much more efficient and targeted on the weekends when we were game planning. 
Here are a couple of screen shots to show you what our call sheet looks like: 

This shows you a small portion of it. It is a fully editable, customizable two sided call sheet. It gives you the ability to better organize and be prepared on game day. It helped us to be better play callers on game day. There are eight other fully customizable documents! Some of the top high school programs in the country use this, as do several college programs!

When I was a defensive coordinator we adapted this to our defensive preparation! 
Here is a link to the defensive game planning documents. It includes 12 fully editable and customizable documents. https://sellfy.com/p/AY1u/ These are what we used to post 6 shutouts when I was a defensive coordinator. Defensive coordinators at all levels of football are using this. 

And finally, I put together a special teams resource. This has everything you need, included drill tape, practice tape, and game footage. It includes teaching presentations and scouting forms just for special teams! https://sellfy.com/p/tJwz/ This helped us to build dominating special teams! 

I wanted these to be available at a very reasonable cost. These can help you to be more successful on the field and more efficient in the office! 

A while back I got hooked up with CoachTube and put together three courses for offensive football coaches. I put together two courses on RPO's, and a course on Building An Elite System of Communication. All of these courses will help you to score more points! 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint

All three of these courses are detailed, with everything you need to be more explosive and to score more points. 

The course on communication gives you a detailed approach to your gameday communication. I give you a system and a process to improve the quality of conversations, leading to improved play calling on game day. This course has received outstanding reviews from coaches at all level of football. A coach with multiple state titles told me this course helped them to be much more efficient and explosive this season. 

My two RPO courses take you through a systematic process of installing RPO's into your offensive system. RPO's put the defense in conflict, forcing them to defend all 53 yards of width and all 6 skill players every single play. I not only give you a system, but I teach you the methods to develop your own RPO concepts. 

Books

I published a couple of iBooks that can help your program with X's and O's. The first is on Installing RPO's into any offense. Here is a link to the iBooks version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1078061959. The ibooks version includes explanations, diagrams, and video clips on multiple RPO Concepts. It will give you a simple process for implementing them into your offense.
If you don't have an apple device, you can order the paperback version! It is available on Amazon! 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520447485
I also wrote a book on Tempo. It will greatly help you build a multiple tempo system with simple communication that will allow your kids to play with confidence. It also had over an hour of video clips! You can order the ibooks version here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1075902270.


Order the Amazon Kindle version here:

New Book

Over the last several months, I have stepped out of my comfort zone and wrote a new book about faith and purpose. The book is available as a paperback on Amazon, and as an eBook for the Kindle App. The cool thing about the Kindle app is that you can read the book on any device. I invite you to read it, and discover the power you receive when you make a decision to walk with the Lord. Here is a link to the book: Finding Faith

Since publishing the book, I have received numerous texts, calls, and emails, from people who are going through similar trials and tribulations. They were feeling many of the same things I was feeling. The found comfort in the book. They also found they had a desire to change and to live better. They wanted more joy. 

I would invite you to read the book and discover the possibilities that God has planned for your life. 


 

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Using a SWOT Analysis With A Struggling Offense

There is nothing more frustrating for an offensive coordinator than not being able to move the ball consistently. It is frustrating when you can't get first downs to keep the chains moving. You want to give your defense a chance to rest, while also controlling field position. Ultimately, you need to put some points on the board. 

When you are struggling on offense you have to look at why you are struggling. This is where I recommend a SWOT Analysis for coaches. SWOT stands for:

  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Opportunities 
  • Threats

This is a tool that has been used in the business world for decades, and also can be a powerful tool in sport. 

Listen, if you are struggling on offense I can tell you that I have been there. I have been in situations where we couldn't buy a first down. The SWOT analysis helps you to figure out what you are during currently, and what you need to change and adjust to improve. This is a valuable tool used in the business world that is also a valuable tool for coaches to use. 

At the end of the day you have two choices. You can keep doing what you have been doing and get what you have been getting, or you can make some adjustments and strive for a better, more desirable result. 

Before we perform the SWOT analysis, we are going to answer some overarching questions:

  • Are you doing simple things that it takes to be successful on offense?
    • Communicating the play to the unit, then QB/OL communication pre-snap
    • Lining Up Right
    • Base fundamentals- Eye Discipline, footwork, etc
  • Are you getting your best players touches?
  • Are your taking advantage of space?
  • Are you running into a loaded box?
  • Is there a particular front or coverage you are struggling with? 
  • Are you running your identity concept?

These questions will give us some background information we will use for our SWOT analysis. Great leaders Analyze, Adjust, and Adapt

SWOT Analysis

Strengths and Weaknesses

The first thing we are going to to is talk about our strengths and weaknesses. We are going to look at our personnel strengths and weaknesses, our concept strengths and weaknesses, our practice strengths and weaknesses, and our process strengths and weaknesses.

Personnel

With personnel, I want to look at our best players and our best position group. We are going to rank our offensive players from top to bottom with their position. Next we are going to rank our position groups. This helps us to determine our strongest and weakest players and position groups.

Is our offense designed to play to our strengths of our personnel? Are we doing things that ask too much of our weakest personnel or position groups? Are the best players on the field? Are we finding ways to get our best 11 on the field at the same time? 

Then we going to look at our data. Are we getting the ball to our best players the most? If so, what is the result of their touches? Do we need to change how we are getting them or trying to get them the ball? If we aren't, what do we need to do to get them more touches? Are we taking shots? This is a big one. We want to take a couple of shots each week.

I like to look at each player and look at their average yards per touch. Sometimes the really good athlete isn't as good with the ball in his hands, and the guy we think isn't as athletic is actually more explosive. We are going to look at that to determine if the right guys are in the right places, and the ball is getting to them in the best ways for us to gain the most yards.

Concepts

This is a great segway into our concept analysis. We are going to again look at the data. What concept has been our most effective? Who is the personnel involved in that concept? Do we have better personnel to execute that concept? What concepts are not effective? 

To determine effectiveness you need to have a metric. I look at average yards per play, negative plays, and explosive plays. We want a run concept to average 5 yards, with less than 5% negative plays and 15% explosive. With pass concepts we want to average 10 yards per play with less than 5% negative plays and 25% explosive. For fast screens we use our run metrics, as these are an extension of our run game. We look at each of our concepts and then rank them. Then we look at how many times we called each concept. 

Here is an example of an analysis on our run and pass concepts. You can do this with Excel, or you can use a report to find this information. We use Recon Football to generate this data. 

Are we calling our most effective concepts most? If not, why? How can we adjust our play calling so we call our best concepts more often? Do we have the right guys getting the ball? 

If we see that we have a bunch of negative concepts, we are going to figure out why. What do we need to do to fix those concepts? Is it a personnel issue, a practice or drill issue, or is it an issue that we can't fix. If we can't fix it, we are going to scrap the concept. 

In the image above we can see that when we call a run, 35% of our runs result in a pass. This is because we use pre and post snap RPO's. I can see that we need to look at some concepts in our pass game to figure out why they are less effective. Is it a formation issue or a protection issue? Is it a scheme issue or a coaching issue? What adjustments can we make to improve these concepts? How can we coach them better? 

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Win More Games By Eliminating Lost Yards on 4th Down

There are some things I saw this week that cost teams football games. Teams lost games they should have one because they didn't gave away too many yards. The most under coached area of football at the high school level is punt return. Most teams spend 5 minutes a weak coaching their punt returners, and the only time their punt returners catch kicks is during pregame. 

If you want to win more games, and beat people you shouldn't beat, you have to find areas where you can excel. Coaching your 4th down defensive unit will help you win more games. Not coaching your fourth down unit will lead you to lose more games. It is most glaring in seasons where you might not have as much talent or experience on the field. That is when the lost opportunities on 4th down. 

One of the biggest areas of lost yards is letting punts land and roll. Every ten yards the ball rolls is another first down your offense has to get to score. Last night I watched a team force 6 punts. One punt they fielded and started at their own 38. They ended up kicking a field goal. The other 5 punts they didn't field. Four of them the ball rolled anywhere from 15 to 30 yards. One of them was shanked and only went 20 yards. Overall, they lost 124 yards from punts rolling. They lost the game 28-10 because they lost the field position battle. 

The most difficult part of this is most coaches don't even realize the yards they are losing on 4th down, and the affect it has on the game. Every time you let a punt land, you give up an average of 12 additional yards. That's a first down. That also shortens the field for your opponent's offense when they get the ball back. If you start at your own 20 and go three and out, you are punting from inside your 30. If you start at your own 35 and go three and out, you lengthen the field for your opponent. Don't give away free yards. 

Too many coaches treat 4th down defense as an inconvenience. Because of this, they give up yards that negatively affect field position, which affects them on offense and defense. 

Let's talk about how to make your 4th down defensive unit become a strength rather than a liability. 

1. Practice Catching Punts

Break this into 3 parts. First, have your returners work technique with a coach coaching them. We are going to teach them how to properly catch a punt, throwing them the ball from close distance.

Work on catching balls kicked to you, kicked to the side, and kicked on the ground. Teach your players how to circle the ball and field a punt that is bouncing. Teach them how to recognize you have space. Do this with a coach throwing the ball, 15 to 20 yards from the players. 

Second, have a coach throw or punt to the players from 30 to 35 yards away. Start with the punts going to the returner. Then to the side, then short, then over their head. Move up if you have to. When you do this drill, have the returners not catching the punt aligned 10 yards from the returner on either side, as if they are cover guys. Have them moving towards the returner, but never getting within 3 yards of him. This gets your returners used to catching the ball in traffic. 

Third, have your punter punt the football to the returner. During the first two drills, your punter is warming up and your snappers are doing their snapping drills. Then have them punt live, with your snapper snapping and punt team protecting. We don't have them cover. We have 3 guys downfield simulate the cover team. We want our returner to get comfortable catching kicks with guys bearing down on him. 

Once our returner caught the ball, we wanted him to get vertical and make one guy miss. We wanted him to get 5 yards on every return. We told him to get five or six. This meant get five yards or six points. It all starts with fielding the kick. You can only return kicks that you actually field. 

2. If you aren't going to invest time catching punts, then block every punt

If 80% of the times the ball is punted to you you are going to let it roll, then you might as well try to block the punt. But coach, I don't want to get called for roughing the punter. Then practice blocking kicks. You get roughing penalties because guys don't know how to properly block a kick, and what angle to take. You can teach them how to block kicks. If you want to block more kicks, check this out: Coach Vint's Special Teams Resource

Now, better than catching punts or blocking punts is this... Do Both. Really Well. We always had someone going for the block, even when we were calling a return. I never wanted to waste an opportunity to get a block. If they were lazy in protection, we were going to get the block.

Winning With A Talent Deficiency

What do you do when you have a talent deficiency? This is a situation that most coaches will face at some point in their career. Sometimes you face this a few games a season, and sometimes you are going this every single game. What do you do? How do you handle this situation? 

No two programs are in the same place, and this will look different depending where you are, and what stage you are in with building your program. What remains consistent are the five keys to winning games when you are at a talent deficiency. 

  1. Play Mistake Free Football
  2. Play Together As A Unified Team
  3. Win The Takeaway Battle
  4. Make Big Plays On Special Teams
  5. Shorten the Game

    Play Mistake Free Football
    When you are at a talent deficiency, your window of opportunity and margin for error is going to be smaller. Every time you make a self-inflicted wound, you shrink your margin for error. Teams with a lot of talent have much more room for errors and can overcome mistakes. When you have less talent, you don't have room for mistakes. 

    What we are talking about are things that take zero talent. We are talking about lining up right, stepping with the correct foot, not committing pre-snap penalties, not jumping offsides on defense, and the like. Coaches need to make sure their are 11 guys on the field, not 10 or 12. These are things that take zero talent. Do the things that take zero talent really well and you will win more games. 

    Play Together As A Team
    This is so important. Everyone has to do their job, and only their job, to the best of their ability. They have to trust that the other 10 guys will take pride in their job every play. They have to trust that their teammates will give great effort. They have to trust that their teammates are going to be where they are supposed to be, when they are supposed to be there, doing what they are supposed to do. They have to trust their teammates will line up right and play with great effort. 

    When you are at a talent deficiency, you have to convince your team that the whole team playing together is much stronger than the sum of the parts. This is the definition of Synergy, and is a vital part of playing above your ability level. Guys have to be bought into each other, care about each other, and be willing to sacrifice for the success of the man next to them and the team. 

    Win the Takeaway Battle
    First and foremost, you have to have great ball security. You have to practice ball security and emphasize it everyday. If you want to win a game you shouldn't win on paper, you need to take care of the football. It takes zero talent to have great ball security. 

    You have to emphasize turnovers in practice. You have to have a period where you work on takeaways. When you are at a talent deficiency, stealing possessions is key. If we can finish three more possessions than our opponent, we increase our chances to win. Takeaways also create a short field. This gives us a better chance to score. 

    Early in my career we beat a team we were supposed to lose to by 30 points, according to the papers. We forced 5 turnovers in the game. 2 were pick 6's, and two of them we returned inside the 10 yeard line. We only had 5 first downs, but we won the game 36-34. We couldn't move the ball against our opponent, but we were able to score because of the short field. 

    Make Big Plays On Special Teams
    Special Teams will win you games you shouldn't win, and lose you games you shouldn't lose. We want to make sure we are really good in punt protection. We want to make sure we don't kick the ball or punt the ball to their good returners. We want to make sure that we get vertical on our returns and then try to find daylight. We want to field every kick cleanly, so we don't give up hidden yards. 

    The big one with this is blocking kicks. Blocking kicks are huge factors in beating teams you shouldn't beat. In the game I talked about earlier, we also blocked a punt, which gave us the ball inside their 5 yard line. This led to a short touchdown. The difference in the game was when we blocked their first extra point and returned it for two points. It was a huge momentum shift after they had gone up 13-0. 

    Practice blocking punts and extra points. Find out who your best kick block guys are and help them improve that skill throughout the year. Blocking kicks is huge for winning games you shouldn't win. 

    Let me also add that onside kicks can help you steal a possession. Find their weakness and install an onside kick to exploit it. You don't have to kick a traditional onside. Find the space in their return alignment and kick to that space. DO NOT KICK TO THEIR STUD RETURNER! I have made this mistake, and it rarely turns out good. There is nothing wrong with a pooch kick that won't be returned. They will start at the 25 or 30, and that is a win. 

    Field Punts! There are hundreds of lost yards each game because coaches don't teach their guys how to catch a punt. 

    Shorten the Game
    This is a big key, and can help you beat teams when you are less talented. You can control when you snap the ball and how much time runs off the clock between plays when you have the ball. If you are a huddle team, take a little more time before you send the play in. 

    A lot of guys tell me that tempo is a big key to what they do. Tempo is the great equalizer, but it can also be a double edged sword. If you are going 3 and out, your tempo will do more harm than good. But there are ways you can strategically use tempo. 

    You can go fast and snap the ball, which keeps the defense on their heels. They are going to tend to be more vanilla. You can also bluff the snap, where you make it look like you are going fast, but you don't snap the ball fast. When you say your snap count, or clap, they might jump. Take the free 5. When you signal the play, you can also signal another bluff snap. This might get them to jump. 

    Another thing to do is to bluff the snap, then signal in a whole new formation and play. Your guys now will get lined up and execute the play. The defense just made a call and now they have to adjust. This is a great way to run clock while using the concept of tempo.

    If you huddle, you can use what we called 6 seconds. We would tell our guys six seconds from clap to snap. That means we would clap when we said ready break, sprint to the line, and call our cadence quickly. This is especially effective with unbalanced sets where the defense has to recognize surfaces, eligibles, and backfield sets quickly. 

    When we were at a talent deficiency, we wanted to find a way to keep the game close in the fourth quarter. If we were within one score, our opponent might tense up. They suddenly are worried that this team they are far superior to was playing with them. 

    Find ways to shorten the game, which will give you chance to win the game in the fourth quarter. 

    Everyone Must Believe
    Sun-Tzu says Every Battle Is Won Before It Is Fought. You have to prepare to the point that your players believe they have earned the right to win. Saying we are going to win is not enough. You have to convince your players that they have done everything it takes to win the game in preparation, and they have earned the right to compete. 

    You also have to believe in each other. You have to believe the guy next to you is capable. The players have to believe in each other, and they have to believe their coaches will put them in the best position to be successful. The coaches have to believe in the players, and that the players will do things above their ability. The coaches also have to believe in each other. They have to believe that their colleagues will coach at a high level in preparation for the game and during the game.

    If your players believe in each other, believe in their coaches, and believe they have earned the right to compete, they will believe they can win the game. If they believe, they increase their chances of winning. If they don't believe, they will lose. Henry Ford said, "The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can't are both right." The question is, which man are you? 

    If you do these 5 things and you believe, you increase your chances of winning against a superior opponent talent wise. If you don't do these things, or you lack belief you can do these things, you won't have a chance. 

    When you go into a game where you are at a talent deficiency, take the focus off the ability of the players. Focus on taking care of the things you have total control over, and build that belief in your players. 

    I know we didn't talk about scheme, and scheme matters, but I wanted to focus on the things that every coach can do, regardless of talent level or what scheme they run. The biggest thing about scheme is finding ways to get your strengths attacking their weaknesses. If they are a team that flies around but has bad eye discipline, use reverse and misdirection. If they like to time up blitzes, change your snap count. To attack personnel, find the guy they are hiding, and attack him with your best guy. Everyone is hiding someone. 

    Let me add this... Preparation and Organization
    Being prepared for your opponent is a big part of beating people who are more talented than you are. If you want to be more prepared each week, I highly recommend you check out my game and practice planning resource. I spent much of my career as a coordinator. I was an offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and coached at both the high school and college levels. I have made available all of our game and practice planning resources that helped us win more games. These have everything you need to be more prepared. They are editable and customizable, and are available as an instant download.  https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/ 

    It includes everything from a scouting report template, to weekly practice plans and scripts, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today and start preparing for your first game right now! This helped us be able to be prepared to attack the defense and put more points on the board. It also helped us be much more efficient and targeted on the weekends when we were game planning. 

    Sunday, August 27, 2023

    The Team You Are Watching on Film Is Not The Same Team You Will Play This Week

    As you put your game plan together for this week's opponent, I wanted to give you something that hopefully will help you to be more prepared, and that you can use very week this season. This is a premise that is vital and can keep you from losing games to teams you should not lose to. 

    The Team You Are Watching on Film is Not the Same Team You Will Play Next Week. 

    When you watch film of the opponent you are getting ready to play, you are watching the most recent version of them. You are not watching the future version of them who you will see after another week of practice and preparation. They are going to add new wrinkles. Just like you are working to correct mistakes, they are going to correct mistakes. They are going to have a key guy back from an injury. They are going to be a much better team than they were last week. Hopefully you are also going to be a much better team than you were last week. 

    It is very easy to get caught up watching a team on film and thinking, "these guys shouldn't score a point on us." Or, "we should score 50 on these guys." I have been there and done that, and it almost never works out well. Statements like this lead to disappointment. Elite coaches expect to see the best version of the team you are going to play, not the worst version. Are you preparing for the the version of the team you saw on film last week, or the version of the team you will see this week? 

    Have you ever walked away from a game when you got beat and said, "what just happened?" If you haven't, you never want to. There is no worse feeling. Every single time it came down to our attitude towards our opponent. We were arrogant, and arrogance will always get you beat. 

    Most games are won or lost before they are ever played. One team is hungry, works hard, and believes they are going to win because they have earned it. The other team is overconfident, goes through the motions, and believes they are entitled to win. They believe the other team is going to lay down for them. Which won do you think has a better chance of winning the game? This is the recipe for upsets. 

    I see it most when people go from being hungry to fed, or when they go from being the hunter to the hunted. You fight so hard to reach a goal, and you forget the hard work and the mentality it took to get there.

    Beyond the scheme you are preparing this week, what are going to do to prepare your players to practice with a champions mindset? How will you develop their hunger to strive to become better every single day? Players are going to play scoreboard football, where they look at what your next opponent did against other teams. They will compare scores. Don't ever let yourself get caught up in this. You have to instill in your players and coaches that what they did against this team or that is irrelevant. It should not affect your preparation one bit. 

    As you begin to prepare for your game this week, keep these things in your mind and focus on being the best version of you, and being prepared to play the best version of your opponent. 

    Game And Practice Planning Resource: If you want to be more prepared each week, I highly recommend you check out my game and practice planning resource. I spent much of my career as a coordinator. I was an offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and coached at both the high school and college levels. I have made available all of our game and practice planning resources that helped us win more games. These have everything you need to be more prepared. They are editable and customizable, and are available as an instant download.  https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/ 

    It includes everything from a scouting report template, to practice plans, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today and start preparing for your first game right now! This helped us be able to be prepared to attack the defense and put more points on the board. It also helped us be much more efficient and targeted on the weekends when we were game planning. 

    Sunday, August 20, 2023

    In Season Self-Scout Reports

    One of the most important thing you can do as a coordinator is your self-scouting report. 

    In my 20+ years as a coordinator, I evolved greatly in how I performed a self scouting report. In the early days of my career we did everything by pen and paper. I had legal pads filled with information and I had to do a lot of math. 

    After a couple of years we evolved into using Excel. Then video programs began adding reports that could give us some actionable information. The latest evolution is called Recon Football, which I will talk more about later.

    Everything we do has a purpose, or a why. We don't do things just to do things. Looking at our self-scout reports helps us to be able to find valuable information that benefits us greatly in our game planning. There are three things we will focus on today. 

    1. Our tendencies that opponents will find
    2. Which concepts are most effective/least effective
    3. Which formations/personnel groups have led to the most success/least success
    Every defensive coordinator you play is going to look at data on your offense. They are going to look at your most recent games first. Most coaches are going to include at least 3 games of data in their scouting report, and many will include every game they can get for the season. I want to know our tendencies and find the same data the defensive coordinator is looking at. I want to see what he is seeing. 

    The defensive coordinator is going to prepare his defensive calls based on the data. He is most likely going to break it down by personnel group, down and distance, and field zone. He is probably going to look at our formation tendencies, trying to figure out what plays we run from each formation, and what formations we run from certain personnel groups. If we know what data he is seeing, we can then make adjustments to our game. 

    The first thing I run is look at our run/pass percentages for the last three games, as well as for the season to date. I am going to focus on the data for the last three games when we build our game plan. When the playoffs start I am going to look at our last 5 game tendencies and compare them to our tendencies for the season. Below is an example of an overview report for 3 games. This is from Recon Football, which saved us several hours each weekend with our data breakdown. Recon Demo


    This gives us a global view of our play calls, and shows us our Run/Pass Percentages. Overall we run the ball 64% of the time. 1% of the time there was a penalty. The conversion rate is the percentage of plays that result in a first down. I then look at our run/pass percentages based on backfield set, field zone, down and distance, and formation. I also look at our play frequency to see what plays we called most. Looking at our data I can see some tendencies that we might want to consider. 3rd and 1-3 we are 100% run. We might want to look at play action or a boot concept. We have some formations that we are over 80% run. We might want to look at throwing some play action from those formations. 

    If I just looked at this data, I would have some actionable information. But I know our opponent is going to dig deeper. They are going to look at every formation we ran and put every play we ran from every formation on their board. I know that they are going to look at more specifics of what we do from each formation. I am going to dig deeper into our down and distance data and formation data. and look at how we can break some of our tendencies. 

    I am going to look at our formations to see if there are tendencies that might give away what we are doing. I am also going to look at our hash tendencies. I also like to look at our pass game and run game. 

    After we look at our tendencies, I am going to focus on our concepts. Which concepts have we had the most success with in the run game and pass game? I want to know if there is something we are doing well that need to more of, or if there is something we aren't doing well that we need to fix or do less of. 

    I can see here that when we are on the right has we don't throw short and intermediate passes into the boundary or middle of the field. This is something we need to look at. We want to know why this is, and is it something we can adjust? I look at what concepts we call the most, then I sort by completion percentage and average gain. I want to see what pass concepts we have the most success.

    Thursday, August 17, 2023

    10 Keys to A Great Highlight Film

    If you are a prospect wanting to play college sports, you need to put effort and intentionality into building your highlight film. There are thousands of talented athletes who should be getting recruited, but they sabotaged themselves with a lazily thrown together highlight film. These 10 Keys will help you to put together a highlight film that will give you a better chance of being recruited. 

    Before I get to the 10 Keys, it is important you know why you are making a highlight film. Your highlight film is often the first introduction coaches will get to you. There are tens of thousands of prospects putting their highlight films together. What are you doing that will set you apart from the others? 

    10 Keys To A Great Highlight Film

    1. Only put highlights on your highlight film
    Too many guys put average plays on their highlight film. Your highlight film is called a highlight film because it has only highlights. You being on the field does not make it a highlight. If you aren't sure if it is a highlight, then you need to ask your coach to look at it. If you aren't sure, it probably isn't a highlight. Too many players put average plays on film because they worry about their film being too short. Your highlight film does not need to be longer than 3 minutes. If you only have one minute of highlights, don't add average on film to try to make it longer. 

    2. Put your most explosive plays first
    This is a huge mistake I see many players make. They hide their best plays in the middle of the film. Your BEST plays come first. Your most explosive plays should come first. If you had a 99 yard touchdown run, that play should be the first play on your film. Give the coach watching your film a reason to keep watching. I want to add that your highlight film does not need to be in chronological order. This is a huge mistake I see prospects make. Put your most explosive plays first. 

    3. Show them where you are before the ball is snapped
    This is another mistake I see made far too often. Put a circle around yourself or insert an arrow pointing to you before the ball is snapped. If they have to guess who you are they won't find you. 

    4. Don't put music on your film
    They are going to turn the volume down most likely. But if a coach is watching your film in an airport or anywhere in public, they don't want loud music blaring. Music doesn't help your recruiting. The wrong song can hurt your recruitment. 

    Wednesday, August 16, 2023

    Take Care of the Ball!

     I watched a couple of scrimmages this weekend and one thing that stuck out was how many fumbles I saw. I saw teams putting the ball on the ground far too often. If you want to win more games, start by not turning the ball over. John Heisman had a quote that resonated with me about fumbling. It might sound harsh, but it is also very true. 

    A young OC reached out to me to look at their offense after the 2021 season and figure out how to make improvements. He wanted to talk about their scheme, but the real issue was that they turned the ball over too often. They lost 21 fumbles in 11 games. 10 of those were in the red zone. They fumbled 31 times and lost 21 of them. I asked what they were doing to coach ball security. He said they "talk about it" all the time. Talking about it resulted in 21 giveaways. Let's find a better way. 

    My dad is a retired coach, and he used to tell me all the time that talking isn't coaching. You can talk about things all day long. What are you doing to coach the skill? Scheme wasn't their issue. Their issue was making a commitment to coaching the details. We started by focusing on taking care of the football. 

    We put a plan in place to teach ball security. First, we defined ball security. You must define ball security for your coaches and your players. If they don't know the definition, they don't know what ball security is. Our definition is "Wrist about the Elbow, Elbow tight to the body, ball glued to the chest." We show them pictures of good ball security and bad ball security. Then we have them hold a football properly and coach them through this in a stationary position. 

    Second, we have a coaching cue. This is a two or three word phrase that communicates the definition. We used "Chin the ball." Chin the ball reminds them that the wrist is above the elbow, the elbow is tight to the body, and the ball is glued to the chest. 

    Saturday, August 12, 2023

    Block More Kicks and Win More Games

    Back when we took over a program where we were at a huge talent deficiency, we needed to do things that would shorten the field offensively. We needed to lengthen the field defensively. Special teams was the way were were able to win games we should not have won on paper. A big part of this is blocking kicks. 

    If you look at big games of every level, special teams always play a factor. At the high school level special teams can give you an advantage over your opponent when you are at a talent deficiency. We won a lot of games over the years because we had really good special teams. We also lost a few because of poor special teams. 

    Block Kicks
    Blocking kicks will help you win more football games. Get really good at blocking kicks. You can't just do this with scheme. You also have to teach your guys how to take the ball off the kicker's foot. When you block a kick, you are going to greatly shorten the field for your offense. 

    Most high school punt teams do not have an efficient operation. The snap is not necessarily very consistent. Every single punt should have guys going for a block. Few high school punters are good enough to punt a ball that is going to be returned. Less than 20% of the balls punted to us were returnable. That means on 4 out of 5 punts we were not going to have a chance to change momentum. 

    We made a decision we were going to block kicks. In our first year we blocked 9 punts. In our second year we blocked 11 punts in 11 games. We had one game where we blocked 3 punts. 4 blocked punts were returned for touchdowns. The other 7 gave us a short field. 

    We also blocked extra points. We won a game 28-27 on a blocked extra point. We won another game 36-35 because we returned an extra point for 2 points early in the game. Too many teams treat extra points as a play off. You can tell a lot about a team by the effort they give defending extra points.

    Thursday, August 10, 2023

    Winning The Scrimmage

     As scrimmages across Texas and the country kick off, I wanted to talk to you about how you win your scrimmage. Every year we had one or two scrimmages depended on when we started practice. 

    Scrimmages are extremely beneficial to your program. My favorite part was having the opportunity to compete against another educational institution. Instead of beating on ourselves, we got to physically compete with someone else. 

    The first thing I ask as we begin preparing for a scrimmage, is what do we want to take away from this scrimmage? What do we need to learn about our team? This comes down to two things:

    1. Who
    2. What
    This leads us to our definition of winning the scrimmage. The scrimmage doesn't matter for your district standings or for your state playoff seeding. It doesn't count towards your win-loss record. Your scrimmages are about getting good work, evaluating your players and scheme, and coming out healthy.  


    It doesn't matter if we scored more times than our opponent, or if we busted off a bunch of big plays. What mattered most to us was having an opportunity to evaluate ourselves, and coming away from the scrimmage healthy. 

    Evaluating Our Team

    I mentioned previously we were going to evaluate the who and the what. 

    Who do we need to see compete to evaluate on our team? What concepts do we need to focus on during this scrimmage? 

    The Who
    We already know who are top guys are. There are always going to be some guys that are returning and proven. You already know what they can do. I wanted these guys to get some work, but they weren't the focus of our scrimmage. My focus was wanting to see the guys who we needed to evaluate further. 

    Saturday, August 5, 2023

    Call The Touchdown Play

    There are two things every man thinks he can do. Every man thinks he can run the BBQ grill, and every man thinks he can call offensive plays. Most people don't understand the preparation that offensive coordinators put into calling plays. They think its like Madden, where you click a button and the play is executed perfectly. Most people don't understand what goes into installing and building an offense, or the work that goes into preparation. Everyone wants to call the touchdown play, and hopefully I can give you some insight today that will help you all more touchdowns. 

    What I want to help you with today is being more efficient with your game planning, and ultimately, using your preparation to call more explosive plays. A lot of coaches I talk to and work with are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data that is available, and they get overwhelmed. That can be a difficult struggle when you are trying to prepare a game plan. There is so much data, that it becomes difficult to know what is important.

    I talk to coaches who love my game planning resource. They love how it helped them to be more organized, but they sometimes struggle with the call sheet. They don't know what to put in the call sheet, or how to manage it during a game. That struggle comes from not having easily accessible data that you can easily understand. Data always tells a story, but there are times I felt I was illiterate. 

    A big part of great play calls is about having great data. I am going to make a much better play call if I know what the defense is going to do. If I know when they are going to bring pressure, I am going to make a better play call. If I know what coverage they are going to play on a particular down and distance, I will give us a better chance of calling the "touchdown play."

    For several years I spent hours on end putting together excel spread sheets and trying to manipulate the spreadsheets to determine what a defense is going to do. In 2018 I ran into Danny Davis, who was a field artillery officer. He was taking data and analytics used in the military to make strategic decisions, and working on applying that to football. We got hooked up with him, and it revolutionized what we did. I want to show you how it saved us hours on the weekends, while giving us actionable data that helped us become more explosive. 

    The data we got from Danny gave me a very clear picture of what we were going to see from our opponent. We were able to know what front they were going to be in, what pressure they were bringing, where they were bringing it from, and what coverage they were playing behind it. It helped us call more touchdown plays, without having to spend hours putting the data together. 

    He built two dashboards for offensive coordinators that helped me to desegregate the data in a way that it made sense. It made it easier to understand what the data meant, and more importantly, gave us a much clearer picture of what the defense was going to do. No longer did I need to filter, sort, use VLookup, or any other excel function. I wanted to share this with you to help you to be a better play caller this season. If you want to schedule a demo with Danny, Click Here 

    Before I fill out my call sheet, we need to enter the data into our video program. We are going to enter all of the typical data, Down, Distance, Hash, Yd Line, Play Type, Result, Gain Loss, etc. We need that data to be able to build tendencies. The next part of labeling is we are going to add the formation, motion, and play name for every play run against the defense we are scouting. The reason we do this is we want to be able to look at what defense they played against each formation. 

    Once we label those three columns, we are then going to label the defensive information. We create some custom columns to get the data we need. We label the Front, Stunt, Blitz, Coverage, and then # of Blitzers. We then add some blitz direction data. To/Away is to the back or away from the back. Strong/Weak is strong or weak. Field/Boundary, is a blitz from the field or boundary. Those columns only get labeled if they blitz a second level player. 

    We divide and conquer to input the data, and we try to do at least three games. We want at least 180 plays if possible. The bigger the sample size, the more reliable the data becomes. Once we enter the data, we export the data to an excel spreadsheet from our video program and upload it into Recon. Once the data is in Recon, the magic happens. 

    This is what the Blitz Dashboard looks like, giving us a complete picture of the defense. This was from an opponent that we had broken down four games on. On the left we can see how many times they were in each field zone and what hash they were on, and we can see how many times they faced each down and distance situation. In the middle, we see their coverage and stunt percentages. On the right we see the number of times they brought 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 rushers. On the bottom right shows where the pressure came from. They are an odd front team who bases out of 1 high. 

    Monday, July 31, 2023

    Go Beyond the Results: 3 Keys to Success This Season

    Today I want to talk to you about something very important to consider during games, practice, and watching film. 

    One of the biggest mistakes I have seen made by coaches, and I have made as a coach, is focusing too much on the result. Sometimes you will have a very poorly executed play work out because your opponent jacked things up on their end. You might miss two blocks on a run play, but your running back breaks a tackle and ends up in the open field for a 75 yard run. Everyone gets so excited for the result, that they don't correct the mistake. 

    When you don't correct mistakes, it is going to be harder and harder to replicate success when all things are equal. I see this a lot with teams that are loaded with talent, or they have one or two really good players. They will have a bunch of big plays because they have players who are just better than everyone else. They are able to break tackles in the open field. Or they have a defensive lineman who is unblockable for most high school offensive linemen. 

    To avoid this issue, it there are a couple of things every head coach and coordinator should do. First, give your guys specific jobs during games. During a game, it is very important that every coach know what they are looking at, and actually look at that. Every coordinator should have guys assigned to watch different things. I have a sheet for each coach telling them where they should be during the game (sideline or box), and what they should be looking at. One simple rule is to have guys in the box watching away from our sideline, and having guys on the field watch the side nearest our sideline. 


    When you have specific roles, you don't miss anything. If everyone is watching the game, no one is going to see when a mistake is made. Game Planning Packet for OC's

    In addition to looking at mistakes, guys are looking at what the defense is doing. If you don't have a coach assigned to watch their secondary, you won't know if they are playing sky or cloud, and how they are reacting to certain routes and run actions. On defense, you need to have someone watching the offensive line, and someone watching the receivers on each side of the field. There is nothing worse than giving up a deep pass, and no one saw the route that was run. If you don't know what route was run, you don't know who made a mistake.

    When you have a great play, celebrate, but if there was a mistake on the play, don't let the result keep you from fixing the mistake. If a lineman missed a block but the back broke a tackle, fix the mistake. If a receiver ran the wrong route, but the QB scrambled and had a big gain, correct the mistake as soon as possible. This means every coach must have a job to do and they must do that job. If someone wants to watch the game, they can buy a ticket. There is nothing worse than having a player make the same mistake, but no one correcting the mistake until film on Saturday morning. That mistake should have been fixed during the game. 

    The same thing is true on the defensive side of the ball. You can't have everyone watching the game. You need to have guys assigned to watch different aspects of the offense. There is nothing worse than giving up a big play, and not knowing what route they ran, or what blocking scheme they used. You have to have specific roles for each coach and have those roles clearly laid out. You need to be able to correct mistakes immediately, not the next day. Defensive Game Planning Resource

    Saturday, July 29, 2023

    Defense Game Planning: Keys to Dominating Preparation

    In my career I was lucky to have had an opportunity be an offensive and defensive coordinator, and to spend time at the high school and college levels. I worked with some great football coaches who were masters at preparation. I wanted to give you a couple of things you can use to be more dominant on defense this season.

    We had one goal on defense. That was to get the ball back as quickly as possible. There are four ways to get the ball back. 

    We wanted to do everything we could to get the opposing offense off the field and to get our offense on the field. One of the most important factors in doing this was being prepared. 

    The first key to preparation is to have good data. We never went a game without entering data on our opponent. If coaches share the responsibility of entering the data, you can knock out a game in less than 15 minutes. 

    If you are a young coach who has the responsibility of entering data, take the responsibility serious. The data you enter is going to be the difference between knowing what a team will do and not knowing.

    Once we enter the data, we then focus on the two keys to stopping our opponent. 

    We want to stop their dude, and take away what is is that they do. We want to make sure that they aren't going to beat us with their best player or their best play. If they are going to score it is going to have to be with someone else running something else.

    The data we enter is going to give us two things. First, it is going to give us tendencies. A tendency is something done 65% of the time. I want to know what it is they do most frequently. We are going to look at down and distance tendencies, field/boundary tendencies, personnel tendencies, field/zone tendencies, backfield tendencies, and formation tendencies. We will first look at run/pass tendencies for each of these.

    Below is an example of run/pass tendencies for 3 games. This is from a company called Recon Sports

    All we did was take the data we were already entering, upload it to Recon, and we had beautiful reports that helped us to be better prepared. Instead of spending hours with pen and paper, and filtering and sorting excel spreadsheets, these reports were ready to give us the tendencies we needed. This helped me to know what defensive calls would be good in certain situations, and what calls might not be as good. 

    Saturday, July 15, 2023

    Three Keys to Building a Dominating Offensive Line

    Coaching offensive line is a privilege for any coach. There is no other position like offensive line. In my career I was blessed to have an opportunity to coach every position on the field, and I can tell you that there was no experience that comes close to what it was like to coach the offensive line. It also helped me early in my career as an offensive coordinator. It is vital that an offensive coordinator not only understand the blocking schemes they install, but it is very important they understand the techniques involved in making the blocking schemes work. 

    This summer I had an opportunity to work with some offensive line coaches in preparation for the upcoming season. We were able to spend some time talking about what it takes to build a successful offensive line. One thing you have to understand is that the level of talent you have does not have any impact on your coaching. There are going to be seasons where you have better talent than other seasons. That should have no impact on your intensity as a coach. On Friday night and Saturday afternoons there are no excuses. Everything you have done to prepare your offensive line will be on full display. 

    If you are a new offensive line coach or you are a veteran, having a successful offensive line comes down to three things. But before I get into the three keys, I want to talk about leverage. Leverage is a huge part of success in football. We define leverage as an advantage. If you have leverage, you want to keep it. If you don't have leverage you need to go get it. We want to have leverage at the point of attack. Sometimes we are blocking a player who has us leveraged. What does that mean? It means he has the advantage. We need to move our feet to work to get our hat to a leveraged position. Sometimes we are blocking a guy where we have leverage. What do we want to do? We want to keep leverage. 

    With that said, here are the three keys to building a dominating offensive line. 

    First, you have to build unity within your group. This might be the most important factor to having success on your offensive line. You have five guys on the field at a time. If you also coach the tight ends, you might have 7 on the field for some plays. No other position has the same number of players on the field. There must be complete unity among the offensive line. They are a team within a team, and they must function as one. 

    There are many ways to build unity, but I have found there is no substitute for spending time together outside of the locker room and field. Have your offensive line guys to the house for dinner. Spend time with them talking about goals as a group. Each year I had the offensive line over before the season and we talked about our unit goals. We spent time talking about what we needed to do to be the best we could be. I took every opportunity I could find to help them to bond as a group. 

    When they trust and care about each other, they will work better together. They will communicate in the meeting room and pre-snap. They will be more vocal with their line calls, and they will gain more confidence in the ability of the guy next to them. They will not have to rely on their own strength, but they will draw strength from the group.