Getting over the HUMP

Look @ the team that you have coming up: perceived strengths and weaknesses. Play up your strengths, while constantly working on your weaknesses. Don't pay attention to what is written on paper (every play that you draw up on paper scores a touchdown or stops an offense-so that shows the value of what is on paper and its relationship to football).

Stress to your team that this season is an opportunity to get better. If you go 3-7 this year, your team has not moved from the place that it was one year ago (as far as your record is concerned). That is what the public judges you on. Although you may have improved tremendously as far as team chemistry, work ethic, effort, etc.

Your goal should be to improve on the field daily, especially the little things (example: cut down on penalties, reduce your turnover rate while improving your takeaway rate, productive special teams-blocking punts, big kick returns, etc). Those are the things that either win games or lose games. As your team does those things, they will get better. That will improve their mindset-in turn, there is no doubt the wins will come.

If you look at successful programs (consistent winning, consistent good football experience for those involved), those are the things that they do. A mindset comes with success: they expect good things to happen to them. That is what you try to foster. It starts at the top!
"Attitude reflects leadership."-line from Julius in Remember the Titans[/b

Who picked you to go to the playoffs? Hades, if I was good at picking the winner, I would be living in Vegas.

How big is your roster? What was your region record? What was your record the year before?

We were is the same boat last year, but at 3-7(3-3 region record) took the last playoff spot in our region and upset the #1 team from the other region. So we had confidence heading into the offseason, worked out hard, perfected our base O and added some wrinkles. But the biggest difference for us was our strength and discipline on D. We ended up 12-1 with a championship trophy in the case.

The thing I have noticed about teams that I have worked with in regards to 'getting over the hump', or rather being on one side of the hump of the other is this: The approach that they take day in day out, week by week.

Team Not Over the Hump:
-Playing a team they can't beat - Lackadaisical approach to the daily routine. Kids and coaches not focused, not hustling, or maybe just grab arsing more than usual because they have figured that they aren't going to win this week, so let's take a vacation. Coaches may even be going over board on the 'rah rah' of getting the team ready, often times forced. In other words things change.

-Playing a team they think they can beat - More excitement and enthusiasm going through even the mundane drills. Kids and coaches are focused, maybe even a bit on edge. There is a feeling of energy on the field. Often times the coaches do something 'special' like bring in someone to speak to the team, put up posters/motivation quotes, or change the practice routine; things they don't normally do. Again, there is a change.

Team Over the Hump:
Is doesn't matter if they are playing the Sisters of the Poor or the 2 time defending state champ, practice is practice. A Monday is a Monday, a Tuesday is a Tuesday, etc... The routine is the the routine because we are going to do what we do, no matter what the outcome was last Friday night, or who we have coming up this Friday night. Changes in routine that do take place are part of the normal of the ebb and flow of the season (IE if we cut back on practice after game 5, we are doing it because we always do after game 5, not because of the week 6 opponent). The main reason is not because of these teams want to keep everything the same, but because the 'plan' is built into the program and is established within the frame work of not just the season, but the whole year.

Part of coaching is establishing 'what we do'. Not only is it a philosophy, but the heart of a program. The expectations from without, are not something you can control. The expectations from within are under your control. Sorry if I chapped your rind a little, but from my point of view, the parents, media, administration, and the community can never place higher expectations on my players than I ever will.

What really puts a team over the hump is that coaches and players start to look at the start being year-long coaching development (deepening an understanding for the game and most importantly the techniques needed within their schemes) and year-long player development (weight lifting and speed/agility training). All the great programs and even good programs are basically year long efforts now. They have the majority of the people involved believing in the year-long commitment and discipline.

In addition, coaches should constantly be looking to improve fundamentals, techniques, and scheme installation plans. Analyze why do you do what you do? How can we make our practices and drills more game like? How can I turn a drill into a competition? What makes things "fun," but productive for the players during this year long "grind."

Teams that get over the hump and stay over the hump don't start practice in August. They've been going since January or in many other cases, the day after their state playoffs ended!

Depends on how you mean that. If you mean that you start workouts on the Monday after playing in the finals on Saturday I disagree. People-coaches and players-need a break.

About 10 years ago we had a group of guys that we thought would be the group to takes us from being a slightly above average program to a state championship program (and they did). It was a really gifted group of kids, but as a staff we focused on the idea of improving by 10%.

We had about 60 kids in our program and the majority of them lifted, but we targeted the top 10% of our kids who we wanted to be lifting that weren't and made sure we got those 6 or 7 kids bought in and into the weight room.

The other thing that we did was we took the least used (basically) 10% of our schemes and got rid of it and added that practice time into our base schemes. Our logic was that there were some things that we use to do to compete because we felt there were times that we were out athleted. Once we felt we had above average athletes we didn't think we needed to do some of that anymore and wanted to really master our base stuff. A lot of this was formations, blocking tags, etc that we got rid of.

The last thing, and I can't emphasize this enough, but the kids have to feel like they have taken the next step. We made sure to do conditioning in a way that was unique to us. We wanted to constantly emphasize that we were doing more than our opponents. Even if we weren't, we wanted our kids to think we were. We also choose this as the year to make some visual changes to the program (uniforms, locker room painting, etc.). We were always telling them things like (you now have championship level facilities, or you now look like a champion, etc.).

We'd work well on a staff together Coach... ;D