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:
- Who
- 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.
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.
