Going to San Francisco

Headed to San Francisco the week. I hope Ed Harris isn't planning a trip also...

A Tragic Timeline

Book Review: Patriot Reign

In Michael Holley's book, Patriot Reign, he gives a glimpse inside Bill Belichick's football machine. From managing assistant coaches, dealing with owners, and evaluating players this book provides insight into how the most successful NFL franchise in recent memory goes about their business. Most enjoyable, for me, was the inside look at how Belichick manages his players, coaches, and his responsibilities as a head coach.

"Lets put it this way: when you're the head coach you're the head coach twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No matters what happens, it's on your watch and, to a degree, it's your problem... It doesn't matter what. Some guy can run a stop sign and get pulled over by the police, and they are calling you. If the fertilizer doesn't come and the grass is going to be brown, you might get a call, "What are we going to do?" It's everything." 


One thing that every coach can relate with is an anecdote from early in the book regarding the Drew Bledsoe/Tom Brady issue that arouse in New England during the 2001-2002 season. Drew Bledsoe was the face of the franchise and a fan favorite. To Belichick, Bledsoe's game was full of holes. Brady, on the other hand, was the ideal quarterback for his franchise. In addition to his high football IQ and skill set he was intelligent, charismatic, and put the team first.

Another thing the stood out to me was the evaluation process that every player of the team was subject to. Strengths, weaknesses, comments, anecdotes, statistics, performance, weight room numbers, attitude, and ability to be coached are just some of the areas that players were evaluated in. Each player is given scores for each category and then compared to others at his position.

Perhaps, the greatest lesson that can be taken from the book is Belichick's attention to detail in self evaluation. "They don't put their feet on tables and reflect on their greatness. They are analysts, stalking themselves for loopholes and weaknesses. When they find them, especially, in retrospect, they want to perform autopsies on the errors so they won't happen again." This is a lesson we can all learn from. I feel that a lot of times we spend a lot of time focusing on the next opponent and we fail to look back and learn from past successes and failures. It is easy look look with a critical eye when we lose a game, but looking for things to improve upon following a victory is just as important. We have to strive to constantly improve to be the best that we can be.

This book gives some great insight into managing people and a program. It would be a great read for anyone aspiring to break into the coaching profession and also for people who are looking to move up  the chain of command.

Coaching with my Dad

My first paid football coaching job was coaching under my dad at the middle school level. My dad's background is as a multi-sport athlete at a D2 school. He played football and baseball, and his claim to fame is striking out Joe Carter. I was brought on as a defensive coordinator and my dad coached offense. He has been at the school now for 9 years and has been very successful. He has a winning record against every school in the league and has finished second in the standings multiple times. However these past two years he has had undefeated teams and has won winning league championships. I was so happy to have been a part of the first one.

The first year as a defensive coordinator I was still in college and had a 45 minute drive to and from practice every day. It was a great experience and a lot of fun to be involved with this team. We started a lot of 7th graders and we were a small team, but our kids enjoyed the game and flat out got after it. We finished 5-2 that season and were pretty close to finishing 6-1. I was happy with how my first season of coaching went and coaching with my dad was certainly an awesome experience.

My dad has commented, "I have never had one of my assistants question what I was doing let alone say, "why the hell are you doing that?" The father/son dynamic made for an interesting coaching staff (the third coach on staff was one of my best friends). We were able to get on each other in ways that other people would and I think it made us both better coaches. We were free to express ourselves and out thoughts in a way a lot of staffs cannot do. 

That being said, it drove our family insane with the constant football talk (it still does). This talk has really never stopped. My mother and younger sister were annoyed constantly as we started planning for the next season as soon as the first ended. My brother is currently getting ready to begin his senior year at a D1 school where he is entering into his third year as a starter. The poor ladies of the house never get a break from the football talk.

Season two I was entrusted with the reigns of the offense. While I expanded a bit on the base offense my dad had run for years the heart of it stayed the same (breakdown coming when I can figure out how to get cutups on here). We finished the season 7-0 and set a lot of schools records. While it was an awesome season, perhaps making it better was that I was doing my student teaching at our biggest rival's middle school that season. I got a lot trash talk thrown at me the week we played, but when we won our game on a Thursday night all I had to do was walk into class with a big smile on my face the next day. 

Coaching with my dad has been my favorite coaching experience I have had, and I am sure it will always be amongst my favorites. I learned a lot and I am sure he did too. The next season I moved on to my first teaching/coaching job and my dad kept his undefeated streak alive for a second season. He took the offense back over and kept a lot of the things I had added to it and was just short of our scoring record we set the season before. His team is having camp this week as they are looking to add a third straight league championship to the trophy case. I am excited to be closer to home where I can make it to some of his games and throw in some much unneeded advice when I see fit. 

Tuesday Morning Links

Chris over at Smart Football has an amazingly in depth post on the history and evolution of the Air Raid offense.

One of my favorite blitzes over at Blitzology, this is NASTY.

Pursuit Drills over at Coach Hoover's Football Site. These will come in handy with camps opening up this week here in Kansas.

Brophy gives us a look at Nick Saban's process.

Matt Bowen, at the National Football Post, gives safetys a cheat sheet on Cover 2 reads.

Royals fans are pissed! Of course if you cheered for the worst professional sports franchise of the last 20 years you would be pissed too.

A preview of the upcoming Presidential Election.

Inside Veer from a Shotgun Set

Option football has been popular for a long time, but recently it has undergone a facelift. Now you have teams running a zone read triple option, you have the inverted veer, and you have teams like Georgia Tech running a flexbone attack that is predicated on the inside veer play.

(As a disclaimer I am working on my PlayMaker Pro skills, if anyone has any advice or pointers please leave a comment.)

At my last coaching stop we ran inside veer from multiple shotgun formations. While we were in the shotgun we were not a spread team. We almost always had two backs in the backfield and were almost always in a "pro" set. We were the only team running triple option in our league and this gave us an advantage in that teams had to prepare for something that they hadn't played against yet. The option proved to be great equalizer of talent because while we were rarely the most talented team on the field we went two rounds deep in the state playoffs.

The inside veer was the bread and butter of our offense like most option teams. Here is what the play looks like in a traditional split back set vs. a 4-4 defense, which is what we saw most of last season:

Utilizing an inside zone/down blocking scheme up front made things easier for our offensive linemen as we could tweak small things up front and still run multiple plays with the blocking scheme. It was also beneficial due to our small offensive line (we averaged about 175 lbs per player). 

So we take the same blocking scheme and put our quarterback deeper into the backfield (Heels are at 4 yards):

I feel that the quarterback's read in the shotgun is easier than being under center. It also doesn't have to happen as fast. We coach the dive back to squeeze the play-side guard's down-block on the nose-guard. This makes it very difficult for the defensive end to ever be in a position to make a play on the dive back. 

As a staff we always got a laugh out of opposing coaches screaming, "DE has QB on option!" If that is the case we will be able to run this all night! 

We really coached up our guards on down-blocking and we would often have the PSG drive the NG into the opposite A gap. When we got our guards blocking like that this play worked incredibly well. We had out best linemen playing OG for this purpose.

While there certainly are benefits to the option game from a shotgun set there are also some drawbacks. The most glaring deficiency, for us, was that we were never able to get outside veer and midline to work for us. We also started to see more 5 man fronts with a double eagle alignments. This gave our offensive linemen fits because we had to do more base blocking which was not a strength of ours. Our center wrestled at 152 lbs following the football season and often times would have to base block a 300+ lb NG. We ran a lot of speed option and load option when we saw these fronts.

 

One last note, a team we played in a district game had watched some film on us and saw that we liked to run inside veer to the weak side of our pro set. I suppose their logic was something along the lines of "If we put a 3 tech to the weak side they won't be able to run inside veer" So this was the look we got...

I guess they hadn't thought out their strategy very well. If a 5 tech struggles to get to the dive back what chance does a 9 have? Down-blocks anyone?

Best part is they didn't change out of this the whole game. Our dive back went for 300+ yards on the game leading the team to a 600+ yard night on the ground. It amazes me the people who fall into (and keep) coaching jobs...

The Education of a Coach

When it comes to coaching football, my philosophy of the game and how it should be played has been derived from my experiences playing/working under two coaches.

The first was my high school coach. He was spreading the field, running multiple formations with shifts and motion a long time before it was en vogue at the college level. He is a run and shoot guy and a big fan of Houston Gamblers. During his tenure at my alma matter he has become the winningest coach in school history, won a plethora of playoff games, and has had numerous all-state quarterbacks running his system. 

The other coach shaped me perhaps more than any other, and that is my father. I was fortunate enough to coach under him at the middle school level for two seasons. He is an old-school smash-mouth football guy. Before he handed the reigns of the offense over to me my second year with him the offense revolved around FB dive, a counter off the dive, a double ISO, and a toss sweep play. Throw in a few gadget plays and play action and you have his offense. Did I mention all of this was ran out of a double tight I formation or wishbone?

I spent my first season with him as a DC running a base 5-3 but also being able to get into a 4-4 and 6-2 without changing personnel. The second season I moved over to the offense where I was spoiled to death with some of the fastest middle school kids I have ever seen. I had one back average 44 yards per carry on the season (seriously)! Needless to say, that season my dad won his first league championship and I am so glad I got to be a part of it. There will be a post in the near future on coaching under my dad.

I have been lucky enough to coach with some great people along the way that have all been gracious enough to share their knowledge with me. Along the way I have also worked in a college setting putting together scouting reports and breaking down film, coached quarterbacks and running backs in a split back veer offense, and I am now taking over as the offensive line coach at a large inner city school where we will be a five wide no-huddle offense.

 I am very excited about taking on this new position and have been fortunate enough to have spent some time talking with some very knowledgable coaches about the nuances of coaching the offensive line. I was in dire need of chatting with those guys because while I understand blocking schemes, the technique involved has been foreign to me speaking with them.

Looking ahead to the season I am excited to be coaching a new position group in a large school setting. It will be an adventure. 

Review: HOW GOOD DO YOU WANT TO BE?

People who follow college football usually fall into one of two catagories. People that love Nick Saban and people who hate him. Personally, I fall into the first category. Not only do I have a great deal of respect for Coach Saban and the success that he has had over his career, but I also admire his work ethic and ideas for what a program should be. In his book, How Good Do You Want To Be?, Saban outlines his blueprint for success. This is not an X&Os book, and though his anecdotes relate to football, the lessons learned can easily be incorporated into other walks of life.

This is the first "coaching book" that I have suggested to people outside the coaching profession. As stated previously, Saban uses football stories to get his points across, but that does not mean the lessons are relegated only to the gridiron. An individual could use this book to motivate himself/herself to achieve their own personal goals just as a business owner could read this book and get a few pointers on how to motivate and manage employees.

One of my favorite principals outlined in the book is to not focus on the scoreboard, but rather worry about the process. How often do you see players let up because they are ahead or behind in a game, or how many of you have had players focus so much on the end result that they neglect the here and now? Saban illustrates this point with is LSU players, "Every time you think of winning the national championship - stop. Instead, think of what you have to do to dominate your opponent for sixty minutes." By focusing on dominating your opponent you can focus on improving in the here and now on the practice field, in the film room, and in the weight room so you can dominate your opponents during games.

Coach Saban truly wants his players to focus on dominating their opponents on every play and not let up. What coach doesn't love this principal? He uses companies, teams, and even the Roman Empire as examples of how dominating your opponents leads to competitive advantages in the future. "When we step onto the field, we want to so greatly dominate our opponents in every phase of the game that they walk off of the field at the end saying to themselves, "I never want to play LSU again... From the players' standpoint, it changes the outlook - from the score to individual responsibility. If each player dominates the player across from him, then the team will dominate."

This is a great book for anyone to read, in my opinion it is a must read for any coach.

Happy Independence Day!!!

The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorites holidays. When I was younger this had to do with "blowing stuff up." Today, I like to think of what this day stands for. The Declaration of Independence is a timeless document that truly has as much value today as it did when our country was founded. It has since then been a blueprint for countries around the world to gain their independence. While the country has it's share of black eyes it is nonetheless the best country in the world. My hope is that it continues to be so, so long as we do not tear ourselves apart between now and November. 

Enjoy the day and be safe. Here a few 4th of July Articles for your reading pleasure...

The Declaration of Independence's still stirring words

Love of Country, 2012

What Life Was Like in 1776

In the Beginning...

My hope with this blog is to articulate my thoughts as I venture into my coaching "career." Along the way I hope to review books I have read, examine X&Os, philosophize, and offer occasional commentary on current issues, both in the realm of football and society at large. I am a self professed football junkie and history nerd. I am sure this will come out in my posts.

I am a 25 year old second year Social Studies teacher starting a new job in a very large and diverse school. Previously, I was teaching and coaching in a small rural school with less than 200 students in it. Prior to that I spent a brief stint working with the coaching staff at a BCS level college while I was working on my undergraduate degree. After that adventure was over I was able to coach middle school football (under my father, more to come later) and high school wrestling. 

I know this will be a learning experience for me. I hope that I am able to contribute to others along the way.