It’s been a big year for me as a football coach. Firstly, my team won a division title, and were a field goal in overtime away from the championship game. Secondly, I got to coach in America for the first time, spending training camp with the University of LaVerne in California and working with a tremendous staff and team, who won their division and went to the Division 3 playoffs for the first time in over 20 years. I’ve been asked to write a book, which is a work in progress, but should hopefully be out soon, and this blog, which started the whole thing, has nearly tripled in size in a year, with almost 9000 views this year,
These experiences have fed both my enthusiasm and my imagination for football, offense and the OL. My trips to California and the extensive research required for the book specifically have developed me more than I could have ever dreamed of. So I wanted to pass on some of what I’ve learned.
BSP Blocking Manual – The Book
The purpose of the book is to aim to reduce head impacts in blocking; we do this through better fundamentals and a better awareness of how our body naturally works. What the actual title of the book will be yet is a total mystery, as is the release date. It has grown into a much project than I first thought, but I want it to be right before it gets released.
One of the first research projects I had was to understand concussions better, how they occur, why they are bad and what the long term affects are. An injury to a player can have serious consequences on their playing career, work career and possibly even lifestyle choices afterwards; a serious head injury can affect someone’s entire life and their family’s.
Firstly, the term concussion is just one small part of the problem. It is the term the media has latched onto and has broadcasted across the entire nation week after week, there is even a film coming out next week called ‘Concussion’. Just as an aside, I can’t wait for this film; I think it is going to send shockwaves through football, the media and the NFL. I hope it is accurate to events as they happened, and not dramatised too much.
Concussions as most people know them come from big hits, such as the ones below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtCgquOsXeo
However, this is just a small part of the problem. Brain Injuries, can be caused through those one time big impacts, which the game is trying to put a stop too, however, more worryingly, it can also be caused by repetitive sub-concussive hits. So whilst the big hits look great, and do cause injuries, it’s the hits that no-one pays attention too that are likely doing the damage.
CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) is a progressive, degenerative disease found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma. This brain trauma can include symptomatic concussions, as well as continual sub-concussive hits to the head that do not cause symptoms.
SIS (Second Impact Syndrome) is an incident which causes a second concussion before the symptoms of the first concussion have subsided, which can cause rapid and severe brain swelling, often with catastrophic results.
Get used to these terms, they may be some of the most important you learn about whilst coaching. They also suggest that concussions aren’t actually the issue, but are an outcome.
The book goes into this subject in much more detail, using statistics from the NFL, but I have put this first in the post because it is the most important thing I have learned in the last year.
Stance
For years when I was playing, a 3 point stance seemed completely alien to me. I didn’t like it, it felt uncomfortable, and I felt less explosive in one. That being said, I doubt I have ever been called an ‘athlete’ at any stage of my playing career, so I’m probably as much to blame for this, but nevertheless, I’ve always looked for ways it can be improved to make it more natural.
It’s a core fundamental for offensive linemen, and I’ll bet at every practice session throughout the country people will still be doing ‘stance & start’ drills to practice them, without even considering what is being taught is wrong.
I’m sure like most of you, I follow and read LeCharles Bentley’s Instagram as it’s a mine of great technical information about OL fundamentals at the highest level. A few months ago, he put up a post discussing the mechanics of the lower body in the stance, and why that was important. It intrigued me and I started looking into it more. Here are a few links to clips he has posted of athletes he works with; there are two consistent elements that I’ve been seeing more and more in college and NFL players:
https://www.instagram.com/p/9ZoZsLgAt8/?taken-by=olineperformance
https://www.instagram.com/p/9YwNZSgAqi/?taken-by=olineperformance
Firstly, knees inside toes. Sounds simple, yet is very rarely focused on, however it is vital for power generation. A lot of people (myself included) talked about feet, knees and shoulders in alignment to ensure movement, which it does; but movement without balance and stability is a sure fire to get put on your ass.
https://www.instagram.com/p/1y0xrsAAvE/?taken-by=olineperformance
Secondly is the feet, both feet should be pointing forward in your stance, right?
Wrong
If we put the off foot at 45⁰, and keep our knee inside our foot, it does two things, firstly it opens the hip, which allows us to move in any direction much more efficiently, and secondly, it keeps our weight on our insteps and all our cleats in the ground, exactly what we want.
Give it a go yourself, and tell me it doesn’t feel more comfortable.
So what you end up with is a very strange looking stance, that all the old-timers will look at and shake their head, but allows your lineman to dominate from the start.
https://www.instagram.com/p/11WH-2AAvu/?taken-by=olineperformance
Old-School
This is something that has bugged me for a while, when it did become OK to say “I’m old-school”. I can’t remember something good ever following that statement. In football terms it’s normally followed by either 40 mins of Oklahoma drills, or ridiculous amounts of fitness work, stuff that benefits no-one.
One of our rookies wrote a particularly good piece about it that opened my eyes somewhat. You can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/KhrysSpeedSandC/photos/pb.645751742104637.-2207520000.1447974055./1140856409260832/?type=3&theater
Being old-school is not OK. Whether intentional or not, it screams ‘I don’t want to learn’ or ‘I’ve learned enough’. You have never learned enough, get out there and get better. You want your players to get better, how can you ask them to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself?
I prize effort more than execution. If we can perfect effort at practices we will soon perfect execution as well. Something I say every practice “How we practice is just as important as What we practice”. Same goes for coaches, perfect effort, and expect the same from your players.
LaVerne
The knowledge I picked up in LaVerne cannot be boiled down into one post. It is wide and expansive and I’ll be forever grateful to Coach Worsell and the staff at LaVerne for the opportunity to go and assist them. Here are some of the key things I did note:
Practice
Whether it’s daily or weekly, have a plan for practice, and a goal you want to achieve during that practice, and keep it small.
We want to perfect the playbook in this practice is not an achievable target. I want to really focus on outside zone in this practice is achievable. This goal affects exactly what you will practice that day/week, and how you set practice up, the flow of practice. We script every practice rep, certainly on offense, defense will some of the time. This does two things, we ensure that we are only working those plays we want to, to achieve our goal, and it makes inputting data into HUDL afterwards a simple import a spreadsheet.
When I talk about plan, I mean a minute by minute guide as to what everyone should be doing at all times. And make sure everyone of your coaches has a hard copy. I’m all for technology at practice and in games, but nothing is more demoralising to players than watching a coach fumble through a phone trying to find the downloads folder where he saved the plan.
Whether you break it down into 3 minute segments, 5 minutes or more, keep it the same. And stick to it. If you allocate 5 mins for one on pass rush, then stick to that. Don’t get caught up in the ‘If I allocate more time to something, does that make it more important’ debate, the fact it is in your practice plan makes it important. Whether it 5 minutes or 30, it is all important. It all contributes to your goal.
Culture Outweighs Scheme
I think in general in the UK this isn’t thought about, but it does happen. I know for definite that the years I spent at EKP, we developed a culture, not just about how you practice and play, but about what is expected of players in regards to paying subs. One of the biggest challenges we faced when creating OVE was developing a similar culture, as the two previous clubs had one of dissent, disobedience and a general lackadaisical approach to things. We haven’t cracked it yet, but we are a damn sight closer than we were before, and have taken some great strides towards it.
You don’t develop a culture to win games; you win games by developing a culture. It is not just about work on the field, but how you act as people off it. As coaches, one of our jobs is to develop our players, not just as athletes, but as people. Expect every player to give the same amount of effort as the most committed player. Expect every player to act as humble as your quietest player. When you know it and your players know it, you develop a joint accountability for each other’s work ethic, and push each other on. There is no one person in charge of it, everyone is.
Remember, how you practice is just as important as what you practice. That’s a culture instilled within the team, not a scheme.
check out #culturebeforescheme and #cultureoutweighsscheme on Facebook and Twitter for some cool ideas from a load of coaches.
Have a System
This isn’t new information to anyone; the most successful coaches all talk about how players and schemes fit into their system and have done for some time now.
Scheme: Our plays that we want to run
System: How it all fits together and makes it easy for the players to learn
Players: Must be able to execute the Scheme.
The System therefore, is how we teach our scheme to our players. It’s a method of communication that makes the players feel like it is intuitive.
I struggled for years to try and develop a system, without realising I never really understood what one was. This year, I was fortunate to spend time learning a system, and my eyes were opened. I saw an entire portion of the playbook installed and explained in 15 minutes, then executed well just hours later. That’s a system. If you spend any time at all in the off-season working on the playbook, spend it looking at how to develop a system, as that will benefit you more than a new play concept that you saw on X and O Labs.
Playbook
Break your offense down into installs, not by play type, and assign a day/camp/month to that install. For instance, our first install contains all our singleback formations, inside zone (and tags from it), 4 quick passes, and 1 deeper passing concept. By the end of that install period, we should have perfected those plays. We then move onto the next install period.
Doing it this way focuses what you need to install (see practice plan above) and your practices. It also focuses what the players need to learn, and when they need to learn it by. We have told all our players now, what installs we will be running in what practices, so that they can study before they get to practice, reducing install time considerably.
I would add here that there are differences between the UK and the US just now. In America, there is a big ideology kicking about that players don’t need playbooks, certainly Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech has been outspoken on this fact, and I’m sure I remember Art Briles at Baylor talking about it also. This works in an environment when staff and players see each other every day. Players are encapsulated in the system, with unlimited access to coaches, film and each other to ask questions.
At the moment, the UK is no-where near that, with even the best teams practicing every other day at best. At the moment I think it is unreasonable to go without a playbook, players need this to review in their own time. However, there are ways we can increase the learning opportunities.
We use HUDL, as I’m sure most teams in the UK do by now, if you don’t, get it! I’ve uploaded’ teaching tapes’ to HUDL showing the plays we want to run, being run, either by our team, or by others. We show good clips, of where the plays have worked well. We don’t go through every possible outcome, we simply describe and demonstrate it working, we don’t prescribe how to do it.
If we see something good/bad at practice, we will add it to the teaching tapes, and share them with the appropriate groups/people.
In addition, I’ll also be holding video chat sessions with positional groups after every install session, maybe 20-30 mins each, to recap the install and answer any questions they may have and simply reinforcing the install teaching, continuing to engulf the players in the system.
Coaching Hubris
I’m as guilty of this as a lot of people, getting bogged down by trying to learn too much. Understand a few things:
- Football is not a simple sport
- The idea of the game may be, but how you execute it isn’t
- What you know and what your players need to know are very different things
- Include the thirst for knowledge in this
Football is a simple sport is a huge pet peeve of mine. If football is so simple, why do coaches get paid so much money to do it? The verbiage involved in it is ridiculous for anyone to learn, let alone rookies who have 4/5 weeks to learn the sport from scratch.
One of the simplest passing plays in football is the Stick concept. Most teams the world over will utilise it n some form or fashion. Last season, a typical ‘Stick’ play call for my team would have Blue Left Chester. You could also call it Left Slot 323 Y Stick. Unless you have a good understanding of what to do, and what each term means, you’re unlikely to be able to do anything.
So firstly you need to break down what the stick concept is, and remember you have a load of different formations, where who does what changes. So now we’ve covered formations and routes, we still need to explain to the OL what they are doing. So we explain the protection scheme. Now we need to go outside and teach these guys how to physically run that route, throw the ball, and pass protect, then we bring it all together again.
Remember here, that’s the simple call!
So football is not a simple sport, but by employing a system, we can make it more learnable for the players.
Coaches can spout endlessly about plays and intricacies and ‘techniques’ we have discovered, but if the players don’t understand it, what use is it all?
Take the inside zone play as an n example. I’ve wrote 4 blog posts on it, we’ll over 15,000 words, on one play! Do my players need to know everything I wrote down, absolutely not. Here is what I teach my players now:
- Inside Zone is a physical attacking play
- We must double team the two inside DL (40 front), or the two playside DL (30 front).
- Help always comes from the frontside on Inside Zone.
That’s it. It tells them what type of play it is: Run Play, physical, downhill
It tells them the critical information about block identification, and it tells them how to sort the double teams out.
All we need to do now is teach them how to run block, how to double team, and what the double team calls are. Outside of that we don’t show them a lot. I believe in those articles I’ve written, I think it’s critical information for any coach wanting learn or install the inside zone, but my players don’t understand it that way, as the information is too much to take on board and play fast.
Finally…
Enthusiasm, Having Fun
This is the first thing I noticed when I coaching at LaVerne, the energy and enthusiasm the coaching staff brought to the field was intoxicating, and the players knew when the coaches were excited, they should be too, cause something good was coming. My first session back in the UK afterwards wasn’t with my team, but it was dreary as hell, and I didn’t feel great being a part of it. So I’ve went out my way to try and be as enthusiastic, energetic and outgoing as I can possibly be. I look at it like it’s on me to bring the energy to practice, and I’m trying to get all the other coaches the same.
Inflection and honesty in the voice is key, as it what you say. If we didn’t have a good practice I’ll let the guys know, but I try and remain as upbeat as possible, remember “It’s never as good as it looks, nor as bad as it seems”. Everyone knows that huddle at the end of the session, where the coach talks in a monotonous voice and it generally starts with “good practice guys”. Everyone has already tuned out. This is the last thing your players will remember until possibly the next practice week, make it worth listening to.
I now ask at the end of the session if everyone had fun, if you didn’t you don’t respond. So far I’ve had a raucous response every week.
BigSkillPosition 