Sunday, August 25, 2024

What If You Were Dominated In Your Scrimmages?

 As fall camp begins, everyone is excited. The players are excited, the coaches are excited, and the fans are excited. Everyone has an extra bounce in their step. Coaches in Texas just finished their scrimmage or scrimmages, and are preparing for their first real game. The first real test for their teams. Coaches in some states have already played their first game, and other states are a week or two away. 

Scrimmages give you an opportunity to answer questions about your team. Until you have a chance to hit someone from another school, you don't really know your team. Remember, winning a scrimmage is about everyone staying healthy, building some depth, finding where you need to improve, and learning what your team does really well. Sometimes scrimmages don't go as we planned. 

I talked to a coach today that had two really bad scrimmages. They have several seniors, but only a handful were starters last season. They have some young guys providing depth who are very talented, but are still developing. They scrimmaged two elite programs and struggled. They couldn't move the ball with any consistency on offense and they gave up several big plays on defense.

They open their season with a perennial powerhouse and he is worried about the confidence of his players. After the second scrimmage they were mentally drained. 

How do you handle this as a coach? When things are going well everyone has confidence. But how do you handle when things go really poor? How do you handle when you aren't meeting expectations? 

Four Thoughts

First, find areas you did well. There is always something that went well that you can build off. Find things to show your players that will build confidence in what they are capable of. 

Second, when something didn't go well, look at the fundamentals. Did we step with the proper foot? Were our eyes in the right place? Did we use the proper technique? Show your players film and talk about how you will use this to grow. As you prepare your practice plan, include time for your coaches to reteach your players to develop these fundamental skills. 

Third, evaluate who your dudes really are and who you dudes aren't. Someone you didn't expect to step up has done something to grab your attention. Someone you thought would be a dude wasn't as good as expected. What personnel changes do you need to make? What can you do as you prepare for week one to make sure your best players are in a position to be successful? Everyone loves a tall safety, but maybe that guy is a better outside backer. Maybe you have an outside backer that should be playing with his hand in the dirt. 

Fourth, what schematic adjustments do you need to make? I am not talking about installing a new offense or defense. I am talking about adjustments to your current scheme to help your players be more successful. 

One example of this is when we had a very young offensive line. They were not able to win off the ball consistently and hold blocks. They were going to get better, but we had to help them. We adjusted our read concepts to make sure we were reading defenders where we had little chance of a good block. We also used some misdirection to slow the pursuit of the defense. We needed them to be less decisive to help our offensive line. 

We also realized if we could get the ball on the perimeter where we had to block less players, that we could have some success. This took pressure off our offensive line. We spent time with screen concepts to get our guys the ball in space. 

Defensively, we had struggled with getting blown off the ball. We could not sit in our base against the better teams we would play. We made some adjustments to create some gap exchanges that gave us a chance to disrupt our opponents. 

As you prepare for that first week, you need to ask yourself where you want to be when district starts and when the playoffs start. What do you want to have installed? What are your goals for your non-district schedule? Of course you want to win all your games, but what do you need to accomplish in non-district to prepare for your district schedule? What do you need to do to prepare to make a deep playoff run?

Great coaches are able to find a way to maximize the success of their teams, regardless of talent. How good you at developing your players to the best they are capable of being its the true measure of a coach. 

A while back I put together some thoughts on Winning With A Talent Deficiency. I also recorded those thoughts on my YouTube Channel: 


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. 


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. 







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