What's Your Difference-Maker?

Self-confidence/self-belief from HC down...

When I took over this program last year they had been like 10-80 in the previous 9 years... We have gone 13-8 the last 2 years...

My staff and I came in with confidence and basically brainwashed the kids into believing in our system which actually lead to them believing in themselves for the first time...

Hey GDF. In your pursuit drill what do you do if the guy at the cone drops the pass?

Defensive section thread perhaps?

For us, I genuinely believe it's the weight room. Our HC's style of weight lifting organization is like none I've encountered, but our kids are in great shape, constantly getting stronger (even in-season), and don't get the typical injuries (ankles, knees, etc) that nag and bother players and teams.

Can't speak for GDF, but I ran a similar pass pursuit drill. Never actually threw the ball, but just motioned a throw to one of the cones to avoid that exact situation. The "rabbits" were standing at the cones with ball in hand.

To answer the ORIGINAL question, at the last school I worked with the thing that set us apart was probably the off season conditioning. We were the first team to join up and train at a facility led by excellent professional S&C guys. A few years after...half of the district was doing the same.

At the time, I didn't have a starting DB who couldn't power clean over 260
lbs.

After I left, there were additional coaching changes including the HC. New HC decided to do bigger stronger faster...dropped from 1st place to middle of the pack.

Mariner,

would you mind sharing what is so unique about your team's approach to lifting?

Speed Training.


We use Speed City.......stuff has held up for about a decade now (and no, I don't sell that stuff).


Once spring hits, we are about 50-50 lift and speed training. In the summer, we are about 65-35 speed training.


Our Jimmies are just faster.......especially in the trenches.


We have the same average looking white kids as everyone else we play, we just commit to making them quick......straight line and especially directional.


The other thing that has been huge in Indiana is our ability to start implementation in the summer.


Our kids probably run a couple hundred Jets and catch a couple thousand balls from May-July.


Before the start of two-a-days, our entire offense is implemented.

I would agree that Off-Season speed and weight training have been keys to our success. You can see the difference in your own program between the kids who are weight room warriors and kids who aren't. One thing that has helped us get our attendance and numbers up is making our kids numbers as public as possible. We hand out T-Shirts for different milestone... highest improvement, best attendance, and highest totals in the off-season are the first three to eat first at team meals and first to pick seats on the bus... we also started posting our kids lifting numbers on a big board outside the boys/girls locker room and the kids know every guy/girl will walk by and see them, they LOVE being able to show off their numbers to friends.
Other things that have helped us:
Individualized offensive playbooks. Our offensive line gets a playbook that is less than 8 pages with an explanation of inside/outside zone blocking, how we block counter trey and our pass protections and screens. Their diagrams are off the o-lineman only. Our WRs get a playbook with just pass plays and a breakdown of how we want them to block on runs. TBs get one similar to the lineman's with the exception of the pass plays that they go out for a route. Our QBs playbook breaks down each pass play against each basic coverage (0,1, Hard 2, Soft 2, 3, and 4), breaks down the run game and also gives him his audible situations. The QBs playbook is pretty big but we get it to them early (no later than late January) and start going over it right away taking it step by step. It has really helped us keep kids focused on their role.
Positional film. We break our film session into Offense/Defense sessions. During offense, our Lineman go and watch endzone film from last week and our game last year against the upcoming weeks opponent. Then they skim through scout film from this year to get an idea of any alignment, blitzes or philosophy. Our skills guys watch press box film from last week, last year and then scout film for the current year. Defensively we do the same thing with Lineman and Linebackers/DBacks. Really helps keep the kids focused on what we want and not on watching the game. We started doing this this year and our kids have started asking good questions and are learning much more in film than in years past.
Lastly, an offensive system that builds from the youth program up. At the high school level we are a 2x2 and 3x1 spread team and we sometimes use the straight T in the redzone/bad weather. Our youth teams run the straight T at all levels and has for a very long time, our middle school teams run T and the very basics of our Spread offense (IZ, OZ, Jet,Counter,Speed option, 3 passes and 1 screen). Our Freshman team runs about half of our playbook and the JV teams runs about 85% of it (both still run some T in every game). By the time kids are expected to play varsity they have gotten pretty good at running the key plays in our offense so they aren't put in new situations on a Friday night. Our kids have been very sound with blocking rules and route assignments in large part because of this.

It is hard to put down 1 thing, with out just saying the 'program'.

But if I had to point to specific thing it would be SAQ:

1st quarter scores for 2010 - 152 Opponents 35
2nd quarter scores for 2010- 155 Opponents 39
1st half scores - 307 Opponents 74

If you look at the attachment you can see what a few weeks of our summer lifting look like, although there are some typos. Our weight room is six double-sided workout racks, for a total of 12 'stations'. So, we divide our guys equally into groups of about 3-4 and they move through each station as kind of a wave. It goes station 1 main, station 1 auxiliary, station 2 main, station 2 auxiliary, and so on, doing one SET at each station, 3 trips through the whole workout.

The lifts themselves are focused on ground-based movements, a lot of unilateral stuff, work on the bosu platform or balance disks, and speed. Mondays are legs, Tuesdays chest, Wednesdays core, Thursdays explosion/oly lifts. I know standard workout/lifting philosophy says 3 day total body or 4 day split workouts, but this is our HCs way and it seems to work for him and to get results. I've wanted to sit down with him and talk about the WHY of it, but haven't really had the time to do it recently.

I would like to second confidence. We were bad when I got here, still not very good but getting better. On top of that, a lot of the kids in our school have nothing. Split homes, no money, etc. So they needed to be told that they could do something for once in their lives.

The best thing we did was convincing the kids "do what you have been taught to do, as hard as you can, and everything will be fine". Once they started doing it you could see the light come on. Then we could tell them, "the only team that can beat you is you. If you do what we've worked on, every play, you win". Seeing them start to believe that, and actually think they're good, was a huge difference for us. Not only in what they did on the field, but how they carried themselves in the school.

I would say our difference maker is simply this, our team GPA is 3.75 so we have smart players who can learn quickly and can made adjustments on each series. our defensive players are never out of place and know tendencies.