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. 

Next, we clicked the button that gave us play frequency. We then were able to determine what they ran the most and went right down the list. Play frequency is what they ran the most times, then the next most times, etc. This helps us to build what we call the Big 12. Most teams have 8 to 14 play calls that make up 90% of their offense. A call is the formation, motion, and play. Once we determine those 8 to 14 calls, we will use those to build our scout books for the week. Have you ever had a scout book with 145 pages because we try to put everything they do in the book? You have a coach trying to keep the book in order but the wind is blowing the pages out. 

We all have fought that battle. When we started using the Big 12, our scout book became much more manageable. We now focused our scout book on 90% of their offense. It made us much better prepared and more efficient. Here is an example of the Big 12 from an opponent a few years ago.

Once we have our data entered, we begin to build our scouting report and call sheet. Each position coach lists the strengths and weaknesses of the players their position groups will go up against. This allows us to find their best and worst guys. We use Excel for their starters and backups. 

We wanted to find who their best guy was in each position group, who their dude was, and who their 11th guy was. Who is the guy that is the worst in pass pro? Who is their weak link? Everyone is hiding someone. We wanted to find the guy they were hiding and find a way to get our #1 on their #11 if possible. 

As you start fall camp, take some time to evaluate what you are doing to prepare each week. As you can see, preparation will not only make you more effective in preparation, it will help your kids to be able to play faster and make fewer mistakes. Uploading our data to Recon Sports also saved us several hours each week, which gave us more time to focus on the details, as well as some well needed family time. It is very inexpensive. If you want to schedule a demo with Danny Davis from Recon, Click here

Here is a youtube video I put together to talk about some keys to defensive game planning:

We posted 6 shutouts my last year as a DC, and I wanted to make our defensive game planning resources available to coaches. Here is a link to the defensive game planning documents. It includes 12 fully editable and customizable documents. https://sellfy.com/p/AY1u/  Defensive coordinators at all levels of football are using this. 

Check This Out! If you are looking for specific resource you can use to help you be more effective with your offensive 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!

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

Installing Post-Snap RPO's

Installing Pre-Snap RPO's To Get Your Skill Guys More Touches

Building An Elite System of Gameday Communication

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Using-Multiple-Tempos-Create-Explosive-ebook/dp/B01ATOL46A/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

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.