What do you do that is "unconventional"?

We are a 1300 student school in the second largest classification in our state. As far as "different" goes we organize the squad in a unique way. We have a split practice ie, JV goes defense, varsity on offense, then reverse it. We do special teams in the prepractice and midway break, two segments daily.
Our team splits up into 4 distinct groups for games. Varsity is divided into Red-Grey evenly by a draft. We do this in Spring thru preseason in order to be sure to get the #2's quality playing time. When the game is on the line, we call for the Bandits and the kids know who the Starters are.
JV is the White team who plays on Mondays, and Frosh go Wednesdays.
We don't tackle to the ground in scrimmage except for 5-10 full go plays.
We run a clock with a horn that keeps us on schedule.
Our whole program is committed to two platoon football until injuries make that unworkable. D 1 kids may go both ways however.
This was a revelation for me coming here 4 years ago from a line em up knock em down hit em in the mouth how tough are you junior? program. We don't beat ourselves up and have had one season ending injury during practice in four years. At my old school we lost kids in practice all the time. Go light and go further!!

Do you guys find that your kids get out physicalled early in the yr by these teams that smash each other around early?? We don't have the #'s to lose kids by going all out during practice but we play some teams that have #'s and are real physcial early. We catch up and tend to be healthier later in the yr.... but getting your butt kicked early can have adverse effects.... What you guys think

I've already talked about this, but we started playing music over a loudspeaker this year during every practice. I don't know of any other high school that does it, but I know some colleges do. I thought it really improved our practices this year in terms of tempo and practicing fast.

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We started doing that this about week 5 this year, big time improvement in our practices. There's the school of thought that "if you need music to pump you up, you'll never get there". But after taking over a program that was 1-89 over the last 10 years, we had to find ways to keep them up for the type of practices we needed.

as far as htting,
once season starts only tuesday is a real physical day, wednesday is physical but pro-pad look, nothing to the ground...and this will sound crazy but sometimes if practice was dragging or a kid said he wanted someone, we let'm get it on till the whistle blew, anything goes 'cept no groin punches, and no twisting, just straight up come out of the stance and hit each other and beat the crap out of one another. Made us a lot freaking tougher and brought the team closer together. Every team in the district said we were the most physical team they played or had seen in a long time. And this was after coming off a 2-28 stretch!! to 9-3 this year!

What I mean by "game on the line" is if we're in tough or the game counts and we need to get the win. Our goal is to platoon for as long as we can. We draft Red and Grey with the Red team getting three 1st picks, starting QB, best WR and best lineman.Grey gets the next 8 choices regardless of position and so we end up with one platoon that is more run oriented and one that passes more. We don't lose games over this concept, but we do perform subpar at camp and scrimmages. The trade off is bette depth and real playing time for the #2's. When we holler BANDIT DEFENSE, there is an expectation of a stop.

I'm a little confused. You platoon on offense? Like you have 2 separate offensive teams? Sorry, but to me that makes no sense whatsoever. Maybe I misunderstood your post. If you were to two-platoon (offense & defense) and take your best WR, QB, OL, and then your next best 8 athletes and put them on D then then that makes sense. Why wouldn't you put your best 11 offensive players from your Red&Grey groups and make one offense then supplement that with personnel groupings?

I'm beginning to think we're "unconventional" because we don't run a Spread Offense, 4-2-5/3-3-5 Defense; we do Flexibility at beginning of some practices-work outs; etc.

Only time our Offensive Linemen hit the 7-man Sled is when we do "Team Take-off Drill" for Wednesday Warm-up.

We block people (who have arms-hands and move), not sleds or bags.

I have always thought that taking notes of things that need to be addressed (throughout practice and film) and then covering those issues the following day in Indy would help pace, attention and overall be more effective. FYI we are not a no huddle team.

I have to ask: is this HS varsity? Are there playoffs involved?

In response to the Gundy Article I think the key to them only going two hours is filiming practice and watching practice the next day in meetings. They dont coach on the field. Also their style of offense lends itself to fast reps some run oriented personell offenses may take more time. Unconventional thing we do is no conditioning after practice.

We started doing Yoga this season. We did it twice a week, usually the day after a game and during the middle of the week. Our kids were really skeptical about it, but once they did it a few times, they really began to like it. We saw great improvments in their flexibility and we also had very few pulled muscles.

I have conditioning challenges: example: I pick an OL and DL kid and shoot the balls from our gun. Watching these kids try and catch punts to reduce their conditioning is hysterical. Both sides of the ball are competitive and want to have less gassers than the other. It is a good way to break up the same-old-same old of practice. I do this one about 2 times a year.....kids always get a kick out of it......oh, and the coaches do too!