Three Keys to Eliminating Chaos on the Headsets

One of the biggest challenges for play callers is making a play call when you have chaos on the headsets. I am sure no one reading this has ever had this problem. 

Yes, I was being sarcastic. Everyone who has coached a down of football has had chaos on the headset. Football is an emotional game with a large group of people invested in the success of the team. 

How many times did the chaos on the headsets make it tougher to call a game? How much better would you be if you could eliminate chaos and have your coaches focused on their individual job during the game? It's hard to call the touchdown play when you have chaos on the headsets. 

I speak at several coaching clinics each year, and this is the most popular clinic topic I talk about. Every single coach who attends this session tells me this is the topic they took the most out of. 

I am going to give you three keys from my clinic talk to help you eliminate some of the chaos on the headset. 

1. Have Clearly Defined Roles
2. Have a Communication Plan
3. Have a Game Plan and Call Sheet

Have A Communication Plan

When I first became a coordinator, we had chaos on the headset. It was mayhem. If the play went well we all screamed and cheered. If a play went bad we all yelling about who screwed up. We had to get a play call in and we were still talking about the last play. This went on for an entire season. I complained to my head coach. He said, maybe you should tell guys what you want. What an innovative thought.

Too often, we assume everyone is going to know what you want to them to do. We think that everyone magically end up on the same page. No one will be on the same page if you haven't given them a plan. You have to be intentional in everything you do if you want to be elite. 

We evaluated the strengths of our staff. We then discussed this as a staff to make sure everyone was in the best place to ensure team success. This might mean you put a guy upstairs that has been on the field. It might mean you move a guy from the box to the field. 

Our plan was broken into three parts. 

1. Who is in the box and who is on the field?
2. What is each coach watching?
3. What is each coach saying?

I was our OC and QB coach. I had been on the field calling plays, but I moved to the box. Our OL coach stayed on the field. Our WR coach moved to the field from the box. Our RB coach was going to be on the field. We had a JV coach who would be with me in the box charting plays. 

We had specific things each coach was watching for. We had what we called our "batting order" for who would speak and what they would say after each play. This coach says this, then this coach says this, then this coach says this. We worked under the rule that less is more. 

We had a specific language we used. If one coach says we have an under front when we have a 1-5 technique to the tight end, but another coach calls that a field eagle, then we can't have elite communication. I put a simple terminology sheet together that would help me as a play caller understand what each coach is saying. 

We had a procedure for how we communicate between series. Our players and coaches knew where to go and what our process would look like. This helped us to be better at making adjustments and greatly improved our coach to player communication. You have to have a plan in place. 

We practiced our communication in the office before we ever put the headsets on for a game. We would pull up a quarter of a game and go through two or three series, practicing our communication. If the first time you ever put the headsets on is when your first game starts, you are setting yourselves up for failure. 

Have Cleary Defined Roles

If no one knows what they are supposed to do, how can they do what you need them to do, when you need them to do it? Every coordinator should define the roles of each of their coaches. You should define these roles on paper. Each coach should then be given these roles, in writing. You then should discuss what each coach's role is during the game.

Each coach had a role that defined exactly what they were supposed to be looking at during the game. Each coach had a specific thing they were supposed to say between plays and during plays. This eliminated any confusion. Our OL coach was watching the box. Our receiver coach was watching near side secondary. Our RB coach was watching the linebackers. The JV coach next to me was watching far side secondary and charting plays. As the OC I was watching the big picture. 

Because each coach knew their role, we eliminated much of the confusion. 

Have A Game Plan and Call Sheet

This was a big piece of reducing chaos and being more efficient with our communication. We built a game plan with each coach being involved in putting together part of the plan. Each coach was filling in certain areas of our call sheet. On gameday, each coach had a copy of the call sheet. We discussed the call sheet on Sunday and made sure every single coach understood the game plan.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we would have a live period that was mostly unscripted. We would put the headsets on and practice our communication. We would work through different situations, just like it was a game. This helped us find where we needed to make adjustments to our call sheet. We would almost never add anything to the call sheet, but we would take some things away.

This shows one area of our call sheet. We had the defensive blitz percentages and the percentages of man coverage they play in each situation. We then had a small menu of plays we liked. Every coach was on the same page and coach anticipate what the next call would be. If you don't have a call sheet and you don't want to create one from scratch, check out my Offensive Organizational Resource. 

Adjust this to Your Staff

Your plan has to fit your staff. When I was in the Bronx, we did not have a lot of coaches. We had to adjust the plan to fit the size of our staff. When I was in Texas, we had many more coaches, so we could break things up further. You have to determine what fits your staff and put a plan in place. 

If you have a chance to see this talk at a Glazier Clinic, come up and introduce yourself. If you haven't, I have put together an on-demand session on CoachTube on Building an Elite System of Gameday Communication. The price is also dropped for a limited time. You will have lifetime access to this session, and it includes some in-game downloadable! 

Coaches tell me this session on CoachTube helped them to greatly reduce chaos on the headsets and score more points! 

If you want to incorporate simple RPO concepts to get your skill guys more touches, I have two additional video courses on CoachTube. Installing Pre-Snap RPOs to Get Your Skill Guys More Touches While Protecting Your Runs and Designing and Installing Post Snap RPOs to Create Explosive Plays.  This will help you score more points while getting your dudes touches! If you want to save a few $$, here is a link to get all three videos at a huge discount! Coach Vint Bundle Deal

Earlier I mentioned our Call Sheet and gave you a link to our Offensive Game Planning Resource. This includes editable and customizable templates for you to use with your team to be more organized and score more points! 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!

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, templates, and scouting forms just for special teams! This helped us to build dominating special teams! 

How Much Is Too Much? 5 Negatives When You Install To Much

How much is too much? This is the age old question of offensive coordinators everywhere. At what point do we have too much installed? Why does this even matter? Is there such a thing as too much?

The first thing I will say is that I never once thought we had too little installed. There never was a season where I said, man, we didn't have enough in our system. There have, however, been several seasons where we felt we had too much installed. And often, it showed on the field. 

When you have too much installed, there are 5 things that you will find. 

1. You never get good at anything

2. Your players can't execute at a high level

3. Your coaches struggle to troubleshoot during games

4. It becomes harder to call plays, especially the right plays

5. You don't have an identity. 

    When you have too much installed, it is hard to be good at anything. You will find that you become really good at being average. How many times have you called the perfect play, only to have a kid bust on assignments? This is going to happen at times, but it is going to happen far more often when you have too much installed. 

    I equate installation to a jar full of sand. Once that jar gets full, you put the lid on. You can't add any more sand because there isn't any room. When you add some more sand to the jar, you can't put the lid back on. If you do get the lid on, you risk the jar breaking. How many times have you overloaded your players to the point they can't execute? Everything you install has to be practiced. It has to be rehearsed. You have to be able to run it against any front. The more things you try to do, the less time you have to practice each thing. 

    Another big issue that comes up is troubleshooting. When you have too many plays in your playbook it makes it really difficult to troubleshoot. Your guys come to the sideline after a series, only to be overloaded with information. They are not going to be able to process that information.  Your kids won't be able to make adjustments on the fly. If I am a receiver who has to adjust my blocking based on who the force guy is, I have to be able to determine if this is one high or two high. I have to know based on depth, eyes, and leverage if the corner is a force guy, or a deep zone dropper, or playing man. The more I have to remember, the harder it is going to be for me to make an adjustment and block the right guy. It is why we have receivers blocking no one. They are unsure. This happens all the time in games. Or, a guy will run the wrong route. An offensive lineman will step with the wrong foot. Having too much creates confusion and makes it harder to troubleshoot. 

    The hardest thing to do as a play caller is choose the right play to call when you have too much installed. You are looking at your call sheet, and it is just filled with information. There are really great things on your call sheet, and you can't pick what to call. Or, you can't find something you are looking for. You become indecisive. When you are indecisive you are not going to be as effective as a play caller. If you are targeted in your preparation, you will find yourself being a better play caller. 

    What is your identity? You have to have an identity concept if you are gong to be successful. What is the one play that you can run in your sleep when you need a first down? What is the one thing people must be able to stop if they are going to beat you? That doesn't mean you aren't good at other things, but knowing your identity and identity concept are vital for you to be explosive on offense. Your kids also feed into your identity. When you don't know your identity, they won't know your identity. 

    This is the big challenge coaches face each season, and each game week. How much is too much? It is going to be different for each team. What works for one team may not work for another. Some teams have a higher football aptitude. When a backup is in the game, your call sheet might be limited even further. The less they have to learn, the more effective they will be able to be. 

    As you prepare for the upcoming season, ask yourself these three questions.

3 Keys to Being A Champion

Winning is not something that happens easily for any program. Regardless of how much talent you have, it is very difficult to step out on the field and be a consistent winner. There are three keys-- three things you need to build a championship program.

1. Talent
2. Championship Mentality
3. Unconditional Love

Talent

Everyone agrees that talent is key to winning a championship. But talent is just a starting point. Talent is important, but what is more important is maximizing the talent you have. If you have a group of talented athletes but you don't develop them mentally and physically, you will underachieve. Too many coaches blame a lack of success on not having enough talent, and too many coaches who have a lot of talent don't work to develop that talent to the play at elite levels. 

The one key factor, regardless of the talent on your roster, is to coach players to be their best. Are you coaching to the level of the talent on your roster, or are you coaching to make the most out of the talent on your roster? Our job as coaches is to make the very best out of what we have. 

The weight room is a great equalizer. A great strength, speed, and conditioning program can help to develop the players you have. There is no substitute for strength, and no excuse for a lack of it. 

Building a program goes far beyond talent. 

Championship Mentality

A championship mentality does not just happen. It is something that must be developed on a daily basis. Everything you do either builds a championship mentality, or destroys a championship mentality. Building this mentality is a process, and it is a process that takes time. There is no such thing as waking up one day and all of a sudden you are mentally tough and focused.

The process starts with your expectations. Your expectations will give you a focal point for your standards. Bill Walsh said you have to act like a champion before you can be a champion. Your standards then drive your accountability. This is simply what you will allow and what you won't allow. What you permit is what you promote. If you permit people to be late, you are promoting lateness. If you allow people to loaf in practice, you are giving everyone permission to loaf. 

When you hold people accountable to your standards and meeting high expectations, you are setting them up for success. When you allow them to perform below your standards you are setting them up for failure. Here is the key: you do not know when success will show on the scoreboard. But building success in the details of your process will lead to success on the scoreboard.

Accountability is something you must constantly be striving for. Accountability is not easy, because it requires difficult conversations. No one wants to hear that they are not doing something right or doing something well. No one wants to face consequences. But it is through these difficult conversations and consequences that success is developed. 

The first thing you must do is define what you want your mentality to look like. Then you must train your people on how to live with that mentality. Our definition for mental toughness is simple.

Mental toughness is the ability to face adversity and failure with a positive attitude, and without a loss of enthusiasm, effort, and faith in the process. 

You must teach mental toughness as part of your championship mentality. When things get difficult, you have a choice. You can blame, complain, and make excuses. Or you can stick to the process and fight for a solution. It is very easy to blame others. It is very easy to complain about how things aren't fair. It is easy to make excuses about why you aren't performing. Those are things that mediocre people are very good at. Mediocre teams are some of the best at justifying why they are mediocre. 

Championship teams and organizations are willing to persevere through adversity. When things are not going their way they focus on doing things right. They don't blame others. They don't make excuses. They simply get better. A few years back we had a corner who was matched up with a big time receiver. The receiver ran by him on a vertical. Our corner came to the sideline and didn't make excuses. His position coach told him he was so worried about getting beat that he didn't move his feet. He walked through his speed turn on the sideline. The next possession the receiver tried to run by him, but the corner did the little things right with his feet, played the ball, and knocked the pass away. He found a way. 

You can't wait to teach championship mentality during the season. You have to build your mentality from January through July. Every single day you are either building a championship mentality, or you're not. The weight room allows you to instill high standards, and hold athletes to those standards. Your speed and conditioning program allow you to push your athletes beyond what they think they can do. 

A championship mentality doesn't guarantee you will win a championship, but it gives you an opportunity to play at the highest level possible. 

Unconditional Love 

Unconditional love is what bonds everything and everyone together. Many young people today never experience unconditional love. They don’t know how it feels to have someone love them without conditions. Unconditional love means we love you as much on your worst day as we do on your best day. We don’t love you because you are a good player, and don’t stop loving you when you get in trouble. 

It is important to understand that unconditional love means we are going to hold you accountable. Because we love you we are going to make sure you are accountable to meeting our standard. This is where a lot of coaches fail. They don’t hold players accountable for not meeting the standard. Or, you won’t hold them fully accountable. This often happens with really good players, and I would guess we have all been there. We have to hold them accountable if we are going to be our best as a team, and if we truly care about the player. It hurts to hold someone accountable, I get it. But it hurts the kid more when we enable them. 

Taking this a step further, everything you do as a coach is going to impact your athletes far beyond the football field. What skills are you giving them that will help them be more successful in life? Are you teaching them values they can use to be better leaders? Are you teaching them about accountability? Are you teaching them how to persevere? Regardless of your record on the field, the impact you make on their lives off the field is what will be lasting. No one can remember who won the third game of the season three years ago. But everyone will remember the impact you had on their lives as their coach. 

Never sacrifice winning for making a positive impact. If you win games but enable kids, you did not do your job as a coach. If you won’t hold your best players accountable, you will do two things. First, you will make the kid think the rules don’t apply to him, and second, you will begin to erode your culture. 

Sometimes a kid has to fail to learn a lesson. Sometimes they have to face a consequence that is painful. David Diaz, who I worked for at Columbus High School, was a master at accountability. It didn't matter if you were the running back with 30 offers, or you were the 3rd string guard who rarely played. You were going to be held accountable. Every single guy was held to a high standard, and there is a reason so many guys who played for him went on to be successful. 

Does talent matter? We all know it does. But there are plenty of talented teams that don't do very well, and many less talented teams that exceed expectations. You can't always control the level of talent you have in your program. But you can control your development of that talent. You can control how you develop the mentality of your team. You can control the love you have for your players, and the love they have for each other. 

I would challenge every single coach reading this to coach to make an impact. People always ask how the team is going to be. My good friend, Blake Sandford, used to say, "I will let you know in 20 years." The hard work we put in with our players will show when they are grown men and face adversity. Did we give them the tools they need to be great fathers and husbands? Did we set high standards and hold them accountable? Did we get them to see the greatness they have inside? Were we able to help them bring that greatness out? 

Don't measure yourself as a coach solely by the scoreboard. Your value as a coach goes far beyond what you teach on the field. No player will thank you in 10 years for teaching them how to double team block, or to run a slant route. They will, however, remember the lessons you taught and the values you helped to instill in them. 

Preparation Resources

As you prepare for the upcoming season, I wanted to make available our game planning resources for you! These helped us to have one of the most explosive offenses at every level I have coached. Coaches from some of the top high school programs in the country use these documents to prepare. Coaches at more than a dozen BCS programs have also downloaded these documents to help them in their preparation.

Here is a link to my offensive game planning documents: 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!

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.

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/

 Last year 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. 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint

If you want to learn more about installing RPO's, I wrote a book called Installing Explosive RPO Concepts Into Any Offense. I wrote it for iBooks, which includes cut-ups to reinforce the application of these concepts. In the book I give you a systematic process for installing 2nd and 3rd level RPO's. Coaches at all level of football tell me this is a game changer! The book can be found for iBooks here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1078061959

The iBooks version can be viewed on any iPhone, Mac, or iPad. It is a game changer in book technology! This book will give you everything you need to build RPO's 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

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. 

Follow me @coachvint on Twitter! 

I hope you found something in this post you can use with your program! Good luck with your program.