2012 In Review

Whew! Well, it's over. Having lost the league championship, yet finishing 7-1 on the season, many would say that was a great year. I think, however, that this past season has been one of the most unbelievable rides I've ever been on. I want to take time out to share this with you, and maybe you can see some of my shortcomings and some things we did to take advantage of some of our situations etc. Hell, analyze my situations and see what you'd have done differently, I'm all for that. Whatever you can take from this season, I'd be glad to, and whatever you can add, please, by all means shoot me an email at footballislifeblog@yahoo.com.

Lessons Learned
The first thing I learned is that the Unbalanced Single Wing (UBSW) is a pretty cool offense.  My hat's off to Dave Cisar's system as we were able to install it from the ground up and had great success with it.  We ended up having the Power series, the Spin series and Jet series in at the start of the season and never really added anything after that.  Our Jet series really came alive in the latter part of the season once folks had film on us and knew what we were going to be doing.  The other thing is the UBSW is one of the most fun offenses I've ever coached in (yes including Flexbone).  The simplicity of it is so simple, yet because so many folks have not seen the offense in decades, it creates quite a bit of confusion for the defense.  Anyhow, it was very fun to coach in, and I got numerous questions from parents, coaches and even the officials!

I have had tragedy strike during football season, but none like this season.  I've never lost a player, and I've never had this much tragedy strike.  Losing two parents, and a player in the span of four days was the most incredibly terrible thing I've had to witness as a human being.  Then having to put it all together and put it out there on the field was pretty tough too.  I was amazed at the resiliency of the young men I coached.  I actually think THEY helped ME deal with it all.  Then in the end, we lost a player to a very serious back injury, that may have ended his football career.  Thankfully enough, the young man will walk, however football is probably out for the rest of his life.  In all this tragedy I felt like the young men were able to keep it together, keep things in perspective and lose themselves in the game, exactly like I would have them do.  I can't say enough about the quality of the young men I coached this year, as our character shined through time and time again this season.

I have to learn to enjoy the season more.  I have just went through a 7-1 season, in which we set the record for best season in school history, and I feel as though we failed.  The season ended two weeks ago, and yet I cannot come to the realization that we did good, despite not winning our league title.  I'm not sure how you ever get over what we had happen at the end of the season where we come up short on a goal we set out to accomplish, but if you have any suggestions, send them my way, as I'm still hurting.

The 46 defense is a great defense, but it does have its limitations.  I found out exactly what those were this season.  The seven technique in that defense nearly got us killed this year and I didn't have that kid to fill that position.  A year ago, we in our league we faced no 21 personnel teams whatsoever.  The breakdown was as follows:

• 5- 10 personnel teams
• 2- 20 personnel teams

So as you can see the need for a dominant seven technique was not needed.  In comes the 2012 season, and boy look at how things change:

• 3-21 personnel teams
• 1- 11 personnel team
• 3- 10 personnel teams

Much different mix than a year before.  Anyhow, the addition of the tight end to the scheme really hurt us as I just did not have that player to sacrifice at the seven technique position.  Now, normally I'm a four man front guy, but I work for somebody and he likes the odd front, so I ran the 46 with 3-3 personnel.  Well, I moved to a true 3-3 for two games to try and stunt/blitz my way into some things, and I did not care for this at all.  The kids liked it, but we were sloppy with our execution of the blitzes and when you are sloppy in the 3-3, the holes show up BIG TIME.  So then I moved back to my old staple, the 4-2-5.  I played cover 3 with it and mixed in some man to man, and things started to tighten up.  Now I have the blessings of my boss, I get to run whatever I want next season.  Looks like I'm going back to the ol' 4-2-5!

Be ready for anything.  Here I was cruising along as a coordinator, and BAM, all of a sudden I got the head coach title slapped on me.   Three weeks before the season comes up, my boss, the head coach, has a mild heart attack. Now, I'm freaking out because this is a guy who has been a mentor of mine for years and is the epitome of a class act. Now I'm sitting there in a hospital room with him telling me, "You're it, go coach em' up kid". To which I dang near soil myself! Now, I've been a head coach in career twice, and I have to say this, I didn't care for it to be honest. The politics, the whining parents, the nagging administration, it just wasn't for me. I like my job as the defensive coordinator as I'm free to do what I want, when I want, and how I want. Sure, you do have some of that freedom as the head guy, but there's just too much political BS involved for my taste.  Anyhow, things went smooth and I didn't have much in the way of headaches from the parents, but then again winning cures everything.  Just be ready for anything, you never know what you will face, or what you will come up against.  In retrospect, looking back on the past season being able to do what we did with the tragedy we had AND an interim coach, I'm really quite amazed. 

Be ready for anything grasshopper...

Don't do too much.  I really put too much on my defense at times.  Our offense and special teams won us a lot of games, which is the EXACT opposite of how my other successful teams have won (in the past I've been more like UF is now).  Anyhow, winning is winning, so I'll take it, but not playing solid defense came down to me.  I have to do better in that department and keep less on the defense and just "let them play".

Special teams are special.  Our special teams unit single handily was the most outstanding unit on the field this season, with our punt team and kickoff return team leading all groups.  We returned a school record (and league most) 8 kickoffs for touchdowns this season.  Punting-wise we averaged 43.4 yards per punt in JUNIOR HIGH (yes, my punter was a stud) and we converted EVERY fake we attempted this season (four for four).  We only had to punt a grand total of 10 times this season, which is a third less than last season (34 times).  We did give up one blocked punt this season and had one bad snap, which was our total from a year ago, so we did not get better there.  We did not allow a single kickoff return for a touchdown as we followed the "onside every time" philosophy this year (that's after giving up 4 KOR's for touchdowns the year before).  Now, we did not have a very accurate field goal kicker, so we did not even have a field goal team, but we averaged a dismal 43% on our two-point conversions this season, which must get better.  All in all, I was impressed with our special teams, and our ability to flip the field position on our opponent was second-to-none in our league.

Get everyone involved.  Another lesson I took from Dave Cisar, was to get as many players involved as you can.  Our retention rate was unreal this season.  We had 44 kids show up day one, and by the start of the first game we had all 38 uniforms filled, and did not have to have cuts (we had three kids quit, one get hurt, and two others did not have the grades).  By the end of the season we finished our final game dressing 34 players due to injuries.  NOBODY quit after the initial 38 were selected.  This is after a season in which we finished with 22 kids after starting with 28 (four quit, 1 was kicked off, and 1 was injured).  Our ability to get everyone involved both in practice and in games was essential to this retention rate.  Another thing I implemented was the "Buddy System".  Each eighth grader was responsible for a seventh grade teammate.  They exchanged phone numbers and had to answer weekly questions about their partners in front of the team.  I think the Buddy System really helped our overall team chemistry and kept us from having individual "cliques" within our group of 38. 

Tackle everyday.  The head coach and I disagreed on this originally, but since implementing this in his absence he has seen the light.  We were AWESOME tacklers this season compared to last.  Last year it took three to four guys to slow a ball carrier up, whereas this season we had several guys make solo tackles.  On film, the biggest difference is that the first guy would get the ball carrier down instead of holding on why the others got there.  We literally tackled everyday for the first month of the season.  After that we tackled on Monday and Wednesday with Monday being full bore tackling stations, and Wednesday being fit and freeze only.  The last two weeks of the season we tapered off to just fit and freeze type drills on Monday only. 

Alignment and Assignment and Fit-and-Freeze drills are essential at this age.  I have always been a big team guy.  I want to see reps and I want to see them live.  Well, in researching practice methodology over the past few years, I have found the good ones don't do this.  They do a lot of FNF and AA drills instead.  I cut our live team time on offense in half this season and we rarely went live on defense.  Offensively we did FNF on Monday, with live team on Tuesday and all plays on air on Wednesday, which included simulating game situations.  Defensively, we did FNF on Monday, Inside Drill on Tuesday and Seven-on-Seven on Wednesday.  Now if a team we were facing had very little passing threat we would do a live defensive team on Tuesday and then do Inside Drill on Wednesday.  Special teams we did at least one live per week.  Early on in preseason we did all of them live, but as the season progressed we cut that down to 2 a week, then at the end we did not do any live special teams.  FNF really improved, not only our technique, but our younger players confidence as well.  There's a lot you take for granted when it comes to coaching and one thing was my players level of development, and boy did I undershoot it.  That was clearly evident from my coaching last season.  This season was much better as we took the approach that our players knew absolutely nothing about the game and we were starting at the ground floor. 

The No-Huddle offense is the way to go.  I have dabbled with no-huddle in the past, but not like I did this season.  Now we were no Oregon, but in our live team sessions we averaged about 25 plays a session, which is better than a play a minute.  We had two speeds, regular and 9-1-1.  9-1-1 was our hurry up stuff and we really did well with that.  In three out of our eight games we scored right before halftime using our up-tempo pace and the largest amount of time we had was 1:18.  In game three we scored on a four play 61 yard drive with 55 seconds left in the half and one timeout.  In game five we scored on a five play 77 yard drive with 1:09 left and two timeouts.  In game seven we scored on a five play 48 yard drive with 1:18 left to go and one timeout remaining.  These were points we'd not have gotten last season, and in games four and seven they were the difference in the game.  If you are still huddling, you are wasting a lot of time, and I don't mean in the games.  The benefit we saw from going no-huddle is not in the games, but in practice.  We doubled our reps on practice, by far and in the games you automatically have a two-minute offense built in.  We can't go hurry up because a lot of our players play both ways, but still, we went no-huddle to improve efficiency in practice time and eliminate wasted time. 

Things to Improve On

Practice efficiency.  There was still a lot of wasted time in practice.  Now, mind you, we were practicing for easily two-and-a-half hours a year ago, and cut that down to two hours on average this season.  Still, there are areas where we need to improve and be able to get these kids home at a decent hour.  I have pushed and pushed, but the coaches I have are not really taking to the up-tempo like I am.  I don't have the luxury of firing anyone either as I was glad to have the other two helping me.  Anyhow, I will continue to work with them and push for MAXIMUM efficiency until we get it.

Relaxing.  I have a tough time turning off football, and even though this is Junior High football, I still constantly watched film, breaking things down and even took things so far as creating scouting reports (our league allows us to scout and trade film).  I also have a tough time detaching from the game, even in the off-season.  I simply cannot get my mind off the game, and I have to, or else I'm afraid burn-out is coming.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Finding a kicker.  Holy cow, thank goodness we onside every time, or else I'm not sure what we'd have done.  Also, we could have used a couple of field goals, that thankfully didn't come back to haunt us during the season.   I need to learn more about the individual technique of kicking, as to be honest I'm clueless.

Getting over the wall.  Our player development went good for the first six games.  Then we seemed to hit a wall where nobody really improved except for the younger players.  This concerns me, because it's the second year in a row I felt this way.  I even felt as though some of our players went backwards in their development, which is a really bad scenario.  Several players plateaued about that time in the season, and our toughest games were towards the end of the season.  I need to find ways to keep the young men motivated for an entire season, and keep developing their skills.  I know there comes a point in the season where getting any better is slim to none, but you CAN improve at least a little bit every day...right?

Handling a loss.  My favorite quote is one I live by..."I hate to lose even more than I love to win".  This is me in a nutshell.  A win to me is a win, nothing big about it, you did your job, you won.  A loss is failure though, and unacceptable.  I have a hard time coming to grips with losing, and when you lose the league championship on the last game of the season when you've gone 7-0, it really becomes are a hard pill to swallow. 

Dealing with officials.  I guess I'm getting a bit crotchety in my old age, as I had a few of those yeller' hankies thrown on me this season.  However, I must say, our referees made the NFL replacement refs look like officiating scholars.  Anyhow, this does not bode well when teaching young men about dealing with adversity.  I'm sure that official did not need me to bite his head off, I should merely "explain" my point of view, rather than trying to stuff it down his throat.  Point taken!

Do you kiss your mom with that mouth?

Well, that's my 2012 in review.  I feel with what my little guys went through this season, and where they came from, it has been a success story.  I'd love to have a trophy to put in the case (believe me, we need one, that damn thing is bare), but the memories of this season will go down as a special one in my book.  I have to say, watching young men conquer adversity like this bunch did, was quite a site to see.  I only hope next year we can do the same...

Duece

P.S.- For those headed to the playoffs, now's not the time to let up, keep on keepin' on!!!  Good luck!

Team Building...



"Together"

Team building is an often used, yet little understood axiom in the world of football these days.  I want to take the time to look closer in to this all to often overlooked topic.  I think coaches should invest as much time as they can in to building their teams, even if you feel your team is a tight knit unit, you can never really do too much team building.

Team building has many key elements, the most important elements, in my opinion are earning trust, communication, and teamwork.  These elements can be built in many different ways, however I feel the order they are listed in above, is how you should approach team building.  A great book, that helped me when I was a young coach was 101 Teambuilding Activities.  This book is a must have for any coach that is about to implement an off-season team building experience in their football program.  Let's look closer at these items.

Trust
I joked in my last article about trust falls, but I've actually done this, and it works quite well.  Simply put trust falls involve either pairs or groups of players that are set up where an individual allows himself to fall and be caught by his teammates or teammate.  Seems simple, but it's a very good bonding experience and is simple and easy to do.  A twist I added, was that when I had the players pair up, every time a player caught another player he had to make the statement "I got you".  This reinforced the element of trust between the 2 players.


Trust fall!


Another excellent trust builder is an exercise I called "What you mean to us".  Every player was given sheets of paper, and at the top of the paper was a player's name on the team.  This was usually done with the varsity only, and should be done in small groups as it does take some time.  The players then write a positive element that their teammate brings to the team.  The papers are then compiled by name and distributed to their owners to read.  The idea here is that people are more likely to write things than say them, and it shows the important elements that individuals bring to the table as a teammate.  I have left it at this stage, or even opened the floor for discussion.  There is no right or wrong way here, the key is to keep things positive.




Be positive, stay positive...Banana Hands!

Another exercise is 1 you can do anytime, but is a very good graphic exercise.  Take a box of toothpicks and wrap with a rubber band.  Call up a player and have him try to break this banded group of toothpicks.  As we all know, this will not happen.  Now, call another player up, remove 1 of the toothpicks and have him break it.  What this illustrates is that together we can't be broken, and are strong, however by ourselves, we are weak, and easily broken.  Another way to do this, if you don't have toothpicks is simply to have a player stand up, make a fist and have another player come up and try to dig out 1 of his fingers and bend it (obviously not to the point of breaking it or anything).  This will be nearly impossible to accomplish.  After a few attempts, have the player who initially made the fist hold his fingers out and retry the exercises.  Obviously this will end quickly as the fingers will bend easily.  Again, this shows the team, separate we are vulnerable, yet together we are strong.




Can't be broken...


Communication
As coaches all know, without communication, you cannot possibly achieve success.  Communication is 1 of the most underrated skills that humans have.  How many times have you seen a wide receiver on television get behind a defensive back for a touchdown, only to have the defensive back throw his hands up and argue with another teammate about what the coverage was?  Clearly there was a lack of communication there.  Here are some things I've used to facilitate and show the importance of communication.




Good communication is essential!


The old "telephone game" is a very easy way to show the effects of communication in a group setting.  What I did was put the team in a room, then take one of the captains, and whisper in his ear a statement.  This player was then to transfer this message to the next teammate.  The message would get passed around the room until the final player was asked what the message was.  99% of the time, the answer you would get was not the original 1 you started with.  This exercise shows the importance of listening, and how listening relates to communication.  Another good idea is to also do this between the coaches.  I did this when I was a head coach in front of the team.  This showed the players the coaches were only human, and that we too had to work on listening to facilitate communication.




Learn to listen before you speak.


Another game I used to have the players play, was what I simply called the noise game.  We would create an obstacle course, usually in the gym, but you can do it anywhere.  Players were paired up with a teammate and one was blindfolded.  The partners could not touch, and the commander (unblindfolded) player could not whisper instructions.  The remaining members of the team would surround the obstacle course and would begin shouting when I blew the whistle to start.  The objective was for the pair to navigate through the obstacle course from beginning to end with the best time.  The commander could only give directional commands to the blindfolded player.  If an obstacle was struck it was a 10 second penalty.  What the underlying goal of this drill was is it taught players to focus on the communication by having to listen through the "noise" of the commander.  It also had a competitive element to it as well, which made even more fun.


Teamwork
There are a myriad of teamwork drills out there, and I've used several.  The general goal of these drills is to see the group develop a leader, and then follow instructions, work through problems, use multiple ideas and work through problems for a common solution.  There's one in particular where each team is equipped with a bucket of water, and a bungee cord. The goal is to navigate an obstacle course from one end to the other and dump the bucket of water in a larger bucket without spilling the contents.  This drill involves creating a device, with only the supplies provided, that the group comes up with.  You will easily see who the alpha males are and who are the followers.  Too many alphas can lead to indecision and arguing.  Not enough, or none at all, lead to indecision through lack of communication and effort.  As a coach it's a great tool to see who sticks out as a leader.  To the team, though, this is a chance for guys to step up, that may have otherwise been quiet or withdrawn.  It also puts some of the players out of their comfort zone by forcing them to work with the others.  All of these items are important to facilitating the development of teamwork. 

Alpha Male

Again, I'm not going to list all the drills, as there are so many it would be pointless.  The general idea with teamwork drills are what is paramount.  Find a drill you can do, and then execute it.  Always remember to evaluate the end result of every drill.  This way, you have some ideas who may give you problems in the future, who you can lean on, and who you don't need to put too much pressure on.  As you can clearly see, teamwork drills do more than just facilitate teamwork, they give you, the coach, a clear window into the leadership and cohesiveness of you overall team's framework.  This is why it is so important to record the results, either written, or actually recorded (yes I've videoed these exercises).

Now, I'm going to step on my soap box here some, and if you don't care for religious views, click the little "x" at the upper right corner of the screen!  The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) is a great resource when it comes to team building.  FCA also does good with the building of individuals, and is the best resource I have found in all my years of coaching.  Their camps are second to none when it comes to team building, and team building exercises.  I went with the team last summer to a team camp, and what an experience!  I felt our team came out of that camp much closer and more bonded than when it went in.  I also felt, certain individuals really benefited from going to the camp, and got a lot out of the spiritual portion of the camp.  You can go to these big college camps, or NFL camps, and get good at running the zone read, or defending the Air Raid offense, but those camps ability to help build your young men pales when compared to the FCA.  Like I said, I'm "soapboxing" it here, so I apologize, but there's something to be said for a camp that you can work the game of football, and also receive a great spiritual message at the same time.  Ok, I'm going to climb down off this soap box, and talk about some very good team building exercises I've done in the past.

I want to show how I rolled all the above into my preseason team camp.  This camp was the highlight of many kids years, and marked the beginning of the fall, and football season.  This camp was very important to our team for many reasons.  Please read further and I will explain more about our preseason camp.

Team Camp
At first look at the heading, most would think..."Duece, you've already mentioned this?!", however I'm not talking about a team camp you go to, I'm talking about team camps you host for your team only.  I mentioned in a previous post (found here) about a team camp lock-in I did for several years when I was a head coach.  I can truly say it was one of the best experiences I've been able to be a part of as a football coach.  The basic layout of the camp was that the team would report in the middle of the week, usually on a Wednesday night.  The team would come to the high school and check in to our gymnasium.  Now, you have to remember, these guys were going to live here for the next 3 days, so they had to have bedding, clothes, towels etc.  We made them live together with their position group, they could not group up based on who their friends were.  We did this based on defensive positions usually and spread the guys out through the gym.  I usually tried to get 2 coaches per position group (yes, the staff was expected to be there as well) so that there would be plenty of supervision.  I had an orientation to let the players know of the rules of the camp, and we handed out our summer awards that evening after everyone had been officially checked in.  Then we got ready to practice!  At the stroke of midnight, we were on the game field with the lights on and practicing!  We called it "Midnight Madness"!  The basic layout of the day was 3 practices per day with 2 being 2 hours in length and one being an hour-and-a-half.  In between this time was meals, free time, or speakers.  I tried to get anyone I could to come talk to these young men, with most being local business men, or pastors of local churches etc.  The best 1 I got was a young man who was born a paraplegic, yet managed to be the assistant manager at our local McDonald's.  He talked to our guys about adversity, and how to handle adversity in the face of crisis.  In the evening, after our last practice we would gather the team, and our resident FCA member (my JV offensive line coach) would work on team building.  He had a message, and delivered, very carefully, through use of scripture.  Obviously in today's world of separation of Church and State, you have to be careful, but we walked that line closely and quite well over the past 3 seasons.  On the last night of the camp, we had Senior Night, where each senior would get up and talk about their time as a football player in the program, what they wanted to accomplish, and what they remembered most about their time in the program.  This was a very important bonding experience between the older players, and the young incoming freshmen players.

The overall goal of the team camp was team building.  In order to get the camaraderie that you are looking for, you need to take the players out of their comfort zone somewhat.  I did this by having them room with guys they were not used to hanging out with.  We also had them eat by position, instead of class, so they were not all mixed in with guys their same age.  I had several portions of the camp that involved players getting up and speaking, which involved communication, and getting the player out of his comfort zone.  I also did exercises that were mentioned above in both a teambuilding setting, and a football setting.  Don't get me wrong, we did football, but for the coaches, it was a chance for us to take the temperature of our team, see how they got along, and where potential pitfalls could be. 

I know the team camp seems like a lot to organize and you would be right to assume that.  However, it is like anything else that requires hard work, it's worth it!  You will find that players will look forward to this portion of the season with earnest, and participation is easy to come by.  In our area, the rules said we had to have this open to the public, which was no problem, since we were rural we didn't share the camp with other teams.  If you're in an urban setting you might have to get creative, but then hey, that's why we make the big bucks right?!  Our rules also said participants had to pay admission, our camp was usually one dollar!  We then turned around and used that money on a pizza or movie night during the camp.  The basics here is that it's worth it to help develop your team.  If you have any more questions on the team camp, email me, I can probably dig up an old brochure or schedule somewhere I can share with you.  At the very least we can chew the fat about how to set one of these things up.

Well, news on the job front, I may be working after all!  I have a friend who may be getting a local junior high head coaching gig, and wants me to head up the defense.  I feel it's definitely a step backwards, however it's coaching, it's local, and it's not as pressure packed as the higher levels, which is what I need right now.  We'll see, nothing is set in stone, but I have to get my head wrapped back around being a DC and what defense I want to use.  The league is spread oriented, but spread to run, not spread to pass.  I'm thinking either the 46 Nickel for it's simplicity or the 4-2-5, with 1 high principles utilizing Rip/Liz/Mable principles.  Anyhow, that's what I'll be working on in the next few weeks.  I do have a good post on offense (I know, been a while) that I want to share.  Should be ready some time next week so check back in and see what you think of it.

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July!!!




I pledge allegiance to...


Duece