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.
The second key is to build an aggressive, hunter's mentality with your offensive line. This is something that is not easy to do. Some guys have some dog in them where they are naturally confident and aggressive. Those guys often end up playing defensive line or linebacker. I have found that many offensive linemen are naturally timid. There are a variety of reasons for this, but we need to develop some aggressiveness inside of them. I liked to call it controlled aggression.
A big part of building this mentality starts with developing confidence. If they know who to block, they are going to play with more confidence. If they are unsure of who they are going to block, they will play with less confidence. Your ability to teach scheme is going to help with developing their mentality.
A second part of this mentality is having competitive drills. I want them to compete in practice to develop a competitive spirit. I don't care if they don't win the drill if they compete. Are you willing to compete from snap through the whistle, even when you are getting beat? We work a drill called win-lose-draw. This is a great drill for teaching mentality. I put them in a position where they have lost leverage, and they have to compete to get leverage back. The player they are going against has leverage and has to compete to keep leverage. Then we set the drill up where no player has a leverage advantage. They have to compete to win leverage. This drill will help your players to compete to win the leverage point, which is a vital component of winning games up front. In each drill we will have a winner. They need to understand that someone always wins.
The third aspect of developing this mentality is your belief in your players. See your guys for what they can be and coach them to get there. If you see a guy as a career third team player, you are going to coach him to be exactly that. And he will pick up on that and will never improve. If you see him for the best he can be, you will coach him to be there. You are always going to coach guys to the level where you see them. If you coach them where they are now, that is where they will stay.
This is important because we are often coaching a group that might have one or two guys that aren't very talented. One year we averaged 8.2 yards a carry with four offensive linemen and a guy who wore a lineman number. But we didn't ever tell the fifth guy he wasn't very good. We coached him to the be the best he could be. What he lacked in talent and athleticism he made up for in effort. He always played hard and competed every single snap, regardless of who he was going against.
The third aspect of being successful as an offensive line is how well you teach your guys on their technique. Being a great technical coach is very important to having a great offensive line. Great technique will help an average player become above average, and an above average player become elite. Spend time learning from other coaches who are successful and emulate what they do. Always be looking for a better way to teach technique.
One of the hardest parts of coaching offensive line is getting everyone reps. The only way to improve technique is through repetition and feedback. One way to solve this is to use grid squares. I would put my first line 5 across at the goal line. 5 yards behind them I would put the next 5. Then the next 5 would be 5 yards behind them. There were years where I had 25 offensive linemen between the JV and varsity during individual time. By using grid squares I could give them a command and have all 25 players going at once. I could also go one line at a time, where now 5 guys go. I could then give feedback and quickly move to the next group.
Some guys say, coach, we don't have cameras at practice. Yes you do. If you have a smartphone you have a camera. You can film or you can have a hurt kid film. I almost always had a kid who was hurt who could hold a camera. Sometimes I would rotate through with different guys filming who were not in the current rep. By filming the drills, I could then give everyone feedback. I would take 15 minutes to watch reps of Indy and share feedback with guys. That is a great way to make sure everyone gets coached.
There are of course other things that are important to building a successful offensive line, but these three set the tone for who you are as a group. If you can develop a group that is unified and trusts and loves each other, has a competitive mindset, and develops their technique, you will be able to be very successful up front.
If you are an offensive line coach, I congratulate you. There is no better position to coach on the field. It is the one position where the only time you get noticed is when you screw up. You rarely get your name in the paper, but you are responsible for ensuring the running backs have space to run and the quarterback has time to throw. It all starts up front.
When I was a defensive coordinator we adapted this to our defensive preparation!
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
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.
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.
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