nstanley

Sorry for being late to the party. I'll link a presentation I did on the topic a few years ago. I haven't coached in three seasons (I'm an administrator now) so I only pop in every once in a while as it can be hard to read the great things you guys share and not be able to incorporate them.

No but I saw it online the other day and was wondering if it was any good.

I'm currently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. It is really interesting and I'm trying to read it through the lens of a football coach. I have the Kindle version which allows you to highlight the text and then copy and paste all of the highlights into a Google Doc that I refer to when needed. James Clear has a blog that I think you'd find a great read and introduction into his work.

Great stuff again Jim. I know several years ago, you ran Power and then I believe went away from it. You do a great job of cycling through plays (rocket, power, belly sweep, option, etc.) from season to season which I assume keeps the opposition having to adjust their plan to defend you. How are you making that decision on what you add back in and what you take out? Is is personnel? Other factors?

Good stuff.

When I was the D-line coach for a team that two platooned, we did this every Wednesday. We had the big hoops and we would do figure 8's with them, then we'd do what we call "NASCAR" and have them race one another. We'd race until we had an overall champion each week. Lots of strategy and shoving, bumping, running and come from behind wins. We'd then do Sumo (we call it ring of fire). The one way o-linemen wanted to come over and compete too. It was a lot of fun and the kids and coaches looked forward to it.

In his book Win Forever, Pete Carroll talks about how he tries to, "fascinate his players every day." My buddy who is a Texas HS FB coach uses this as a cornerstone of his program and has been very effective in turning around programs with it. I thought I'd start a thread for coaches to share ideas of how they capture the imagination, hearts, minds, etc., of their players. In looking at the declining participation numbers around my area, I think that many coaches are stuck in a paradigm where they only focus on the tactical/technical part of the game and kids are looking for something else and leaving the game. Regardless of the reason, I'm hoping others will share ideas on how they improve their practices/meetings/workouts. One thing we did was play tag. We did this both during our pre-season workouts and occasionally for conditioning at the start of a practice. I got the idea from Dale Mueller of Highlands HS in Northern Kentucky who coached something like 10 state championship teams. The basic idea is that your linemen chase, and the backs/receivers run. The "skill players" are cutting, decelerating, accelerating and being "athletes," whereas the linemen are trying to keep the faster, more athletic player in front of them. It's very applicable to the skills we're trying to teach and the kids don't view it as work. We would do 1 on 1, 2 on 1, 3 on 2 and 4 on 3, keep away, etc.

We used a full slide which is simple enough it shouldn't matter if they flip or flop. We used another protection where we manned the front side and the fanned the back side. We didn't have too many issues w/ kids and protection in those instance. Keep in mind we were unbalanced and so our fan side included our Center.

Coach, In 2013, we had a team with about 50% sophomores starting, with the rest being Juniors or Seniors who were not returning varsity players. We had a rough year but we were leading in almost every game. I think that it is a good indicator that the offense is a great equalizer. Over the course of the game, we "regressed to the mean" but, I think those early leads showed that it was a tough offense to defend and took some time to adjust to, even with superior personnel.

No.

I was just trying to describe Magic Boot to a friend last night!

I managed that with when I called the play. If we were shifting, I'd call the play on the ready for play whistle. If we were going to just snap the football and run the play, I'd wait a few seconds before calling the play. We muddle huddled so it's not like it was a long journey to the LOS. Note: If we were in run-the-clock mode with a lead late in the game, I always made the QB come to me and get the play. I'd never give the call before the ready for play whistle blew. This almost always gets you to about 5 seconds left on the play clock. Otherwise you can teach your QB to start his cadence when the back judge put his hand up with 5 seconds left on the play clock. All of this is dependent on NFHS rules and referee mechanics in your association.

Coach, We had this issue in 2016. I went to taking every second off of the clock that I could and spending as much time as possible in between plays, including change of possessions. When we started doing that we went from 0-3 (and scoring a lot of points) to a play from the league title and another play from the state semi-finals. Shortening the game was good for us and took away from the rhythm of all the spread offenses we played against but the actual rest we gave kids really helped as well. We also spent a lot of time moving kids around with shifts and motions to hide tendencies. We also used tendencies to set up teams. For example, one shift we used had the TE line up at X and vice versa. When teams reconized this and were getting ready for us to shift, we'd run Power on first sound and really mess with kids.

Really enjoying following the team. Please keep posting.

We did.