I've been on both ends of it. I've stood in a locker room at 0-10, looking at kids who had stopped believing anything I said, and I've stood in one years later at 10-0 with a program that had never won anything before I got there.
Most coaches try to fix a stalled offense by adding plays. New season, new install, ten more calls in the wristband. I understand the instinct, but it's backwards.
Every August I watch youth coaches make the same mistake, and I made it myself once, so I'm not throwing stones. They install way too much. Thirty plays in a binder, a formation for every situation, a wrinkle they saw a college team run on Saturday.
Every coach says they believe in depth right up until Tuesday's practice, when the ones take rep after rep and the twos stand on the sideline watching.
You know the feeling. It's the middle of the second quarter, you're down two scores, the crowd is quiet on your side and loud on theirs, and the headset is a mess of voices all talking at once.
People remember how something starts and how it ends. Coach the bookends of your practice on purpose. I picked this idea up from a martial arts instructor who grew his school from twenty-five students to two hundred and fifty.
The day you get the job as a new head football coach is the day everybody starts watching you, and most of them are hoping you fail a little so they were right about you.
Every coach has had the season where the stud graduates and everybody starts wondering if the offense goes with him. I have been there, standing in the spring looking at a room of good, tough, ordinary kids and knowing none of them run a 4.5.
You don't need twenty RPOs. You need a couple of good answers that stress two defenders on every snap. A lot of coaches hear "RPO" and picture a thick packet of plays nobody can keep straight.
There is a moment every defensive coordinator dreads, and it happens the first time your jet man crosses the formation at full speed and the ball is gone before the linebackers get their feet moving.
If you can't throw the curl against man coverage, you shouldn't be throwing the ball. Here's how to teach it right. When it's third-and-eight and you have to have it, you need a pass concept you trust against anything.
The gap between a confused player and a confident one usually isn't talent. It's the system. Watch a young or struggling team long enough and you'll see the same thing.
Defensive coordinators don't lose sleep over how many plays you run. They lose sleep over how many pictures you show. Here's something worth remembering the next time you're tempted to add another play.
The fastest way to get the ball to your best athlete, and the play that makes everything else hit harder. The jet sweep, or speed sweep, is one of the simplest ways to put real stress on a defense.
An honest look back at a hard first season, and what I'd tell any coach making the jump. Switching to a new offense is humbling. A lot of coaches make the move to the Gun T expecting the wins to show up right away, and then reality sets in.
The buck sweep is the heartbeat of the Gun T. Here's how to build everything else off of it. Every offense eventually finds the one play the defense knows is coming and still can't stop.
