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Post by FlexboneOne on Dec 26, 2009 19:32:08 GMT -6
I'm going into my third year at a program that has a great tradition, but has been pretty poor the last decade. We are slowly turning and doing all the right things as far as physical preparation, and it does show.
BUT...this group of kids have the dumbest football intelligence I have ever seen. I'm not talking about more intensive knowledge, I am talking about common sense. Sometimes I have to just shake my head and hold in curse upon curse.
Anyway, what I would like to know is how you all might fix a similar problem at your school. Here is some input so you can understand my situation:
Small school
Sports share athletes (so off-season meetings are tough to get)
A number of hispanic players (crossovers from soccer)
A number of year two or three players (as in 2-3 years experience, total)
I teach 5 classes (English)
What say you?
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Post by kylem56 on Dec 26, 2009 20:04:10 GMT -6
We have a similar problem. It is 100x better than it was when we took over this program but it helped having all the coaches on the same page terminlogy wise. I've come to recognize there is just no way every single kid is going to "get it" because they aren't as obsessed with it as we are. The important thing is, the dummies at least know what they need to know. Talk football constantly and coach up your coaches on what exactly you want to get across. Try as many ways to get through to them as possible (lecture, board, video, powerpoint, hand outs, walk throughs). It sounds like your in a tough spot with players with limited experience.
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Post by indian1 on Dec 26, 2009 21:00:15 GMT -6
Cut the amount of stuff that you are trying to teach. If they are not getting it, cut back. Hell cut back to 1 defensive coverage and 2 offensive plays if that is what it takes. You gotta start somewhere and if the guys aren't learning cut back to something they CAN do or learn and build from there.
Remember its not what you know, or what the kids "should" know but what the kids do know, and what they can do.
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Post by poorbob on Dec 27, 2009 6:08:13 GMT -6
Are you talking about just general knowledge stuff? What is football IQ? I know that I know so much more now than I did when I played simply because it was never explained to me on a board. I can learn from listening, but trying to translate what your coverage responsibility is on a coverage is much easier when you show someone. So I guess I would do a few things in your situation:
1. Assume everyone is playing their first year of football this year. Give a football primer if you need to. If you don't, you may just be leaving that star player behind. Also, it allows you to make sure everyone is one the exact same page and not carrying over bad habits previously learned.
2. Use a variety of teaching methods, e.g., visual, verbal, etc. so that all bases are covered and no one is left out.
3. Try to correct every mistake for good. Don't just point out someone is doing something wrong. Make sure they know what to do next time for good. This might be time consuming at first, but it's better than wasting more time correcting the next time. This is kinda a rep thing. Also, you could be disciplinarian and encourage them to learn on their own (study their primer) by using negative reinforcement for mental lapses.
Like my favorite coach Leach says, "Get good at something."
Sorry if that sounds preachy, but I'm just trying to offer a different perspective.
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Post by jrarick on Dec 27, 2009 14:25:12 GMT -6
My partner and I are always looking for ways to help our players develop their "football smarts". A couple of years ago we put "See the Game" together, used it with our players and began actually selling a few online. Follow the link below for more information. We have had A LOT of fun with it. We'll use it to teach new things and to find out what needs to be taught! www.coachsvideoassistant.com/see-the-game.htmlJack Rarick Holt Football www.coachsvideoassistant.com |
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Post by touchdowng on Dec 27, 2009 15:36:03 GMT -6
We expect our players to teach players. We started this culture because of our lack of FB smarts by our players. We thought they'd at least have some smarts due to Madden video games but we were wrong. Most are playing the adventure and violence games. Not too many FB situations in those games.
So, we constantly talk FB with our kids and we put them in position to help our younger players learn their techniques and assignments. It's worked out really well and after 2-3 years of doing this FB jargon became a second language with the kids in our program(it won't happen overnight). We were then able to have intelligent conversations about our sport with our players.
Gotta develop your terminology as a common language and then put the kids in a position where they have to utilize your jargon to express their knowledge (teaching others) and show what they know.
Our whiteboard and video sessions became more 2 way in regards to input. Where we once said,"this is what we see and this is how you need to correct it - We later said, "what were you thinking here?" or "What would be a better way of defeating that technique?"
We've been very intentional with this and even though I no longer coach (stepped down last season) I'm still in the same school as an admin and see that our hard work has paid off. I'll still talk to players about my fantasy football decisions and they'll give me their two cents worth (and do so intelligently) - This would not have been possible when we first started.
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Post by poorbob on Dec 27, 2009 23:03:54 GMT -6
Speaking to explaining the why as well as the how, I think that's something everyone should do. It allows the kids to understand what the hell they're doing out there and could lead to better execution. For instance, telling a corner to not give the inside in man coverage or telling him he has help over the top is beneficial to that corner's play because he'll know why he's doing that particular technique.
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Post by touchdownmaker on Dec 28, 2009 6:45:42 GMT -6
My smartest kid (IQ) told me that it was 3/4 of a season before he got the difference between "three point stance, four point stance, two point stance"- he thought it meant HOW MANY FINGERS HE HAD TO PLACE DOWN IN THE GRASS. I kid you not, this is a kid whos played ms, jr high and now hs football.
You cant assume anything when talking to the kids. Same young man told me that he was completely lost as a spur in the 353.
I think chalk talk and film sessions and of course Indy and team walk throughs are about all you can really do.
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Post by touchdowng on Dec 28, 2009 12:55:35 GMT -6
I disagree that chalk, indy and team are all you can do. We also give our kids a sheet with all of our common terminologies that we've used in our program. They learn this fast. This covers techniques, schemes and plays. We expect our kids to be one day ahead of us on our installation during the spring and pre-season in August. We quiz them on the field and if they don't know, there will be some extra curriculars to take care of after practice. Never thought about putting two, three, or four point stance in our term packet, though. I'd better check those fingers  But you're right, never assume! |
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Post by coachorr on Dec 28, 2009 14:20:55 GMT -6
NCAA 2010 tournament. Set up several Xbox's or play stations and have a tournament.
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Post by jrarick on Dec 28, 2009 15:41:34 GMT -6
Another approach for us in increasing our player's Football IQ's is to have them go teach our base play to a lower level program. We have been fortunate to have a very well run 4th - 8th grade program in our community. We have had some of the best conversations with our players about how they are struggling teaching the initial zone step to a sixth grade team or the best way to teach a zone turn to 7th grade DB. In our summer camp program we have seen A LOT of learning going on BOTH WAYS when an older "camper" is explaining a new base play to their 4th and 5th grade team. All good. Great thread! Thanks FLexboneOne! And has everyone else noticed that the best ideas are the ones that require INTERACTION between the player and the information? Whiteboard talks, with me holding the marker, and no interaction from them ... just doesn't work. I don't know if it ever did, but it sure doesn't now! Jack Rarick Holt Football www.coachsvideoassistant.com |
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Post by touchdownmaker on Dec 28, 2009 15:51:09 GMT -6
Any of you guys ever ask your freshmen if they played man or zone in ms and get "I dont know" as an answer? lol. Never assume, never.
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Post by coachks on Dec 28, 2009 15:54:55 GMT -6
Gentleman, this is a football....
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Post by jpdaley25 on Dec 29, 2009 9:27:27 GMT -6
5 periods of English. I feel your pain. I've got six and no planning period. I am constantly hammering in the rules of the game and making them think and practice situationally. I mean I am a complete horses rear end about it and have been ever since we lost a game because a kid didn't know he couldn't hit the punter after the ball was gone. If you don't have 9th grade or J.V. ball (we don't) then sometimes it's going to cost the team to get that experience - it's unavoidable. We do a lot of scrimmage in practice to try to mitigate those errors and we try to make sure that evryone learns from someone's elses mistake - this can be accomplished by punishing everyone for one guy's screw up.
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coachriley
Junior Member
"Tough times don't last; Tough people do."
Posts: 406
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Post by coachriley on Dec 29, 2009 19:25:41 GMT -6
Not that this will help you but it might...what I've found with low football IQ kids is not only do you have to explain "HOW" but you also have to explain "WHY". |
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Post by los on Dec 29, 2009 20:47:09 GMT -6
I agree with all the above posts about taking time in teaching things, to make sure they all know how and why, they are doing something.....but heck, developing an instinctive football IQ is tough.....there's a lot more to learn in football, than most other sports(to me)....the best way to develop an instinct for the game, in my opinion, is to play it often.....the more experience you get, the smarter you'll get.....so getting the lower level players in a program, as much playing time as possible.....would be my long term answer to this question.... I think as coach's who constantly study the game and devote much of our time to learning the finer points of the sport, we sometimes forget how "football ignorant" we were, as high school players....at least I was, lol.....and playing sports outside was all we had to do back then!
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Post by tiger46 on Jan 1, 2010 9:07:32 GMT -6
Los brings up a very good point about 'football ignorance'. When we started playing football in 7th grade, the DB's were taught man press coverage. Only, the DB coach didn't have a fancy name for it like 'man press coverage'. He just called it 'this how you cover WR's.' That's pretty-much all we used in 7th & 8th grade.
When we got to 9th grade, the 9th grade DB coach(varsity basketball HC) thought he was teaching us zone coverages just by saying, "Okay, this is Cover X. You do this. And, you do that. Blah, blah, blah". The truth was that we didn't understand 'Cover 3' from 'Cover Girl'. But, we were too scared to let the coach know that.
So, our defensive huddles sounded about like this:
CB1: What do we do in Cover X?
CB2: Hell if I know.
FS: Play zone. Just back off of 'em some.
CB1: How far?
FS: Sh!t. I don't know. I ain't a CB.
It really didn't matter what the coaches called. We were either in 'zone'(back off of 'em some. How far we backed off depended on how fast we thought the WR was. Could be anywhere from 5yrds > 10yrds.) Or, we we pressed the hell out of them. For awhile, I didn't even know that pressing was called Cover 0.
So, at best, we either played 'loose man' or press. It didn't matter what the coaches thought they were calling; that's what we were really doing.
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Post by touchdownmaker on Jan 1, 2010 9:17:16 GMT -6
our defensive huddles were the same way in hs and we were pretty good. "cloud" "sky" "robber"...whatever. just try to pick off the football. we were all faking it.
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Post by touchdownmaker on Jan 1, 2010 9:19:11 GMT -6
this made me laugh btw as we were trying to teach cover 3 zone last year. the kids that were 9th graders didnt know if they played man or zone in middle school and as we introduced landmark drops (we had gold pinnies on the spots to show them targetted drops) after chalking the coverages, the kids were literally not looking at receivers, qb or keys , just wanted to know where the heck that pinny was. lol
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Post by los on Jan 1, 2010 18:47:40 GMT -6
Thats funny stuff there Tiger, I nearly spit coffee all over the keyboard.......Hey, the same kinda stuff happens to linemen....you'd think life would be pretty simple playing d-line, most particularly a head up nose position,right?......bang heads a little every play, find ball, tackle someone, try not to get killed for the most part.....but not always, lol.....during my senior year, they put in a zone blitz of a fashion(in our 52 monster) can't remember the name of the call right off, but it had a name.....at certain down/distances/tendency's that were a mystery to us players....they'd send the 2 ILB's thru the A gaps and I was supposed to drop back into a MLB position(like a 61).....the only trouble was = nobody told me what I was supposed to be doing back there.....didn't have a designated pass drop....didn't know what gaps to cover if they ran the ball, who to read, what to look for, nothing.....like you guys, I was kinda scared to ask, for fear of getting my a$$ chewed off and being called a moron, lol.....so I pretty much just stood back there, watched the goings on, cheered the rest of the guys on and enjoyed a little break...I guess if someone would have run the ball close enough to me, I'd have tackled them, but other than that?
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Post by jrarick on Jan 3, 2010 10:50:27 GMT -6
Make sure your leaders know! Probably twenty years ago I was coaching a JV team on the night of their first game. Everyone was excited, we got our pre-game done a little early and being the genius coach that I am I decided we should go into our half time room for a quick chat. So ... we sent them in. Unfortunately the door to the women's restroom is right BESIDE the door to he home half-time room. Oh yeah. The first guy goes right into the women's restroom - followed by thirty six of his teammates. No one could come back out, until the last guy made it in. I was standing about fifty yards away - shaking hands with the opposing coach (long time friend) and watching the whole thing like a train wreck. Moral of the story - at least make sure your LEADERS know what you want, what you're saying and what most of it means - or your whole team may just end up in the toilet! Jack Rarick Holt Football www.coachsvideoassistant.com |
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Post by coachwoodall on Jan 5, 2010 11:30:44 GMT -6
story time:
JV ball game, Hoover is a huge kid, actually a pretty decent athlete. Could have been a great OT, but thought he was the next Shaq.
Middle of the game, couple of kids get hurt and we need a sub.
Coach, "Hoover go in for Jimmy"
Hoover, "Who's dat?"
Coach, "The NOSE GUARD!"
Hoover, "Who's dat?"
Coach, "THE GUY THAT LINES UP IN FRONT OF THE CENTER!!!"
Hoover, "WHO'S DAT?"
Coach, "The guy holding the...... TIME OUT!!!!!"
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Post by senatorblutarsky on Jan 6, 2010 0:10:26 GMT -6
I teach 5 classes (English)I feel your pain... I was there for many years (nearly 20). Now I'm 1/2 time PE (Athletic Weights only) and AD... life is good... Anyway... a few things we do to raise FB IQ: 1. We go over rules, quiz rules... make sure they know the game (we may have cost ourselves a state title last year because ONE LITTLE USED sophomore... failed to down a punt properly). Never assume... I've been at this 20+ years and STILL need to be reminded of that 2. We have our HS kids coach our JH and Elem. camps. At the elem camp- they are the head coaches for the "big bowl game" (last day of camp)... gives them a perspective that I have... that I WISH I had as a player. 3. During the summer, we go over basic formations, discuss them... and (if needed) quiz them. Ex: What plays can you run our of a 2 TE I... what about Split Backs? Double Wing, 1 back... empty... This is more a defensive exercise, but I think it is important for our kids to know (it takes longer when I ask what plays will someone run our of "Empty" and I hear someone say "Iso"...  ) 4. We do the same (scaled down) for our offense. If a DE lines up in what we call a 7 (inside shade) vs. a 9 (outside)... what will be his responsibilities? Knowing that helps IMMENSELY with our blocking calls... 5. When our guys get knowledgeable (ours are now)... I ask for input and bounce ideas off of them... that makes for a team that is really on the same page... it's been very helpful to us this past year (and in previous years when we were "football smart")
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ozcoach
Sophomore Member
Posts: 132
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Post by ozcoach on Jan 11, 2010 7:49:01 GMT -6
We have more than half of our HS aged players every season that are brand new to the game. Usually their only exposure is through Madden or ESPN. So we really do have to start from scratch. The key thing is to realise that they all learn and get the point in different ways. Some you can explain it verbally and they understand, others need demonstrations, some need to know why, and some just have to experience it. I have just uploaded an article about different learning styles (in the articles section) that might give some insight.
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Post by 4verts on Jan 11, 2010 11:31:49 GMT -6
At the last high school I was at we gave our players a test. "Circle all the eligible players to go out for a pass."
"How many yards do you get for a holding penalty?"
The results were shocking!!!!!
We ended up making our 4th period wt room class into a two day a week football class to supplement lifting.
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