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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 9:50:23 GMT -6
Post by fantom on Apr 25, 2013 9:50:23 GMT -6
In another thread we were talking about how to upset a better team. I said that, in my experience, the recipe for an upset is almost always the same: the underdog has to keep the game close and get lucky.
For an underdog to beat a heavy favorite the favorite has to cooperate. That's what I mean by "get lucky". Maybe it's turnovers, maybe it's inopportune penalties, maybe it's just sloppy, lackluster execution (and in 45 years as a player and coach I've NEVER seen a team play its best each and every game over the course of a season) but the favorite needs to help you out.
As coaches we'd like to think that we can beat a team that's a lot better by coming up with a brilliant game plan that surprises them and that we can win it on game night by "outcoaching" the other guy with well-timed gambles. In reality that rarely happens )Don't think I haven't tried it, though).
From what I've seen your best chance to beat a better team is when you play your game and don't give up big plays. If it doesn't work at least you won't get crushed and you can keep building from there.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 10:00:29 GMT -6
Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 25, 2013 10:00:29 GMT -6
It also depends if the heavy favorite is in that position because they are "out-athleting" teams as opposed having decent/good/great athletes with quality coaching.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 10:02:14 GMT -6
Post by fantom on Apr 25, 2013 10:02:14 GMT -6
It also depends if the heavy favorite is in that position because they are "out-athleting" teams as opposed having decent/good/great athletes with quality coaching. A team with good athletes and bad coaching doesn't meet my definition of a "better team".
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 10:12:23 GMT -6
Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 25, 2013 10:12:23 GMT -6
I hear you but I've seen teams with exceptional talent mowing through their schedule with some very base/predictable schemes coupled with lack of fundamentals (like the tailback swinging the ball low and loose on sweeps).
These are the teams/staffs that are really good when they have the horses and barely mediocre when they have "average" talent.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 10:43:49 GMT -6
Post by fantom on Apr 25, 2013 10:43:49 GMT -6
I hear you but I've seen teams with exceptional talent mowing through their schedule with some very base/predictable schemes coupled with lack of fundamentals (like the tailback swinging the ball low and loose on sweeps). These are the teams/staffs that are really good when they have the horses and barely mediocre when they have "average" talent. Two years ago we had a huge "upset" around here. A team that had chronically been 1-9/0-10 beat the defending state champs. The local sportswriters (normally level-headed guys who'd been around) went nuts and put up a poll asking if this was the greatest upset in local sports history. Funny thing- it turned out that it wasn't an upset at all. The "underdog" finished the regular season 8-2 and made the playoffs, The "heavy favorites" were a well-coached team but they're a small school whose talent tends to come in waves and they'd graduated a bunch of seniors. They finished 5-5. The "underdogs" just coached their team and played their game.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 11:01:42 GMT -6
Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 25, 2013 11:01:42 GMT -6
Back to your original question, undoubtedly getting your underdog kids to believe they can win is huge.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 11:13:16 GMT -6
Post by fantom on Apr 25, 2013 11:13:16 GMT -6
Back to your original question, undoubtedly getting your underdog kids to believe they can win is huge. Certainly. Next question: Can you do that if you're planning to do a lot of things that you wouldn't normally do?
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 11:29:10 GMT -6
Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 25, 2013 11:29:10 GMT -6
Probably not.
Do what you do, do it as well as you can, keep it simple and play inspired.
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Post by spreadattack on Apr 25, 2013 15:56:34 GMT -6
I agree with everything fantom is saying. I do think part of getting the kids to believe in what they are doing is if you convince them you've got a few "wrinkles" to catch them off guard. Kids can get excited about that. If they sense you are junking everything you've worked on all year to do some brand new plan, then they just think you didn't know what you were doing all along (maybe true).
It's the old dilemma about the calculated risk.
But I think your larger point is this: There's a lot of fancy gameplanning or stat stuff you can try and do to give yourself that elusive "edge", but if you really want to beat a better team the thing that will work most in your favor is if your kids play your best game. And they will only do that by being well prepared, well coached, fundamentally sound, and ready to play, and that's best achieved by doing what you do and doing it well. And, from there, they have to get lucky. You can at least try and control the first part. Feel free to correct me if I have your point wrong.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 16:15:02 GMT -6
Post by fantom on Apr 25, 2013 16:15:02 GMT -6
I agree with everything fantom is saying. I do think part of getting the kids to believe in what they are doing is if you convince them you've got a few "wrinkles" to catch them off guard. Kids can get excited about that. If they sense you are junking everything you've worked on all year to do some brand new plan, then they just think you didn't know what you were doing all along (maybe true). It's the old dilemma about the calculated risk. But I think your larger point is this: There's a lot of fancy gameplanning or stat stuff you can try and do to give yourself that elusive "edge", but if you really want to beat a better team the thing that will work most in your favor is if your kids play your best game. And they will only do that by being well prepared, well coached, fundamentally sound, and ready to play, and that's best achieved by doing what you do and doing it well. And, from there, they have to get lucky. You can at least try and control the first part. Feel free to correct me if I have your point wrong. I'm fantom and I approve this message.
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 18:51:10 GMT -6
Post by jgordon1 on Apr 25, 2013 18:51:10 GMT -6
I agree with everything fantom is saying. I do think part of getting the kids to believe in what they are doing is if you convince them you've got a few "wrinkles" to catch them off guard. Kids can get excited about that. If they sense you are junking everything you've worked on all year to do some brand new plan, then they just think you didn't know what you were doing all along (maybe true). It's the old dilemma about the calculated risk. But I think your larger point is this: There's a lot of fancy gameplanning or stat stuff you can try and do to give yourself that elusive "edge", but if you really want to beat a better team the thing that will work most in your favor is if your kids play your best game. And they will only do that by being well prepared, well coached, fundamentally sound, and ready to play, and that's best achieved by doing what you do and doing it well. And, from there, they have to get lucky. You can at least try and control the first part. Feel free to correct me if I have your point wrong. So, do you plan your offense to defeat the best team or try to maximize your win total
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 19:10:45 GMT -6
Post by CoachDaniel on Apr 25, 2013 19:10:45 GMT -6
So, do you plan your offense to defeat the best team or try to maximize your win total
As always it depends on the situation. I want to prepare to beat the best team in the league. But if you're trying to rebuild a perennial doormat, you work on getting to be competitive first. Of course, if you do a good enough job to beat the best team, you'll probably be pretty competitive. Upsets are rare in the moment. Maybe its the ego of a coach, but we look at every game as a winnable game. If we beat an apparently superior team, we can usually look at how well we executed the game plan, and/or how poorly the other team played. It never feels like an upset, even if outsiders view it that way. Like fantom said, a lot of early season upsets turn out to not be upsets at all, too. I don't know about you guys, but the people who make predictions in the paper and on the message boards don't attend practices much.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Upsets
Apr 25, 2013 19:37:06 GMT -6
Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2013 19:37:06 GMT -6
ne I hear you but I've seen teams with exceptional talent mowing through their schedule with some very base/predictable schemes coupled with lack of fundamentals (like the tailback swinging the ball low and loose on sweeps). These are the teams/staffs that are really good when they have the horses and barely mediocre when they have "average" talent. Two years ago we had a huge "upset" around here. A team that had chronically been 1-9/0-10 beat the defending state champs. The local sportswriters (normally level-headed guys who'd been around) went nuts and put up a poll asking if this was the greatest upset in local sports history. Funny thing- it turned out that it wasn't an upset at all. The "underdog" finished the regular season 8-2 and made the playoffs, The "heavy favorites" were a well-coached team but they're a small school whose talent tends to come in waves and they'd graduated a bunch of seniors. They finished 5-5. The "underdogs" just coached their team and played their game. This sounds like our big upset this year. The other team came in 5-0 and ranked in the top 7 in the state, but their opponents only had about 3 wins between them. We were 3-2 and were a 20 point underdog. Nevermind the fact that we'd beaten that same team 3 years in a row, expected them to be one of the easier teams on our schedule in the preseason, and our 2 losses were to teams who were clearly playoff bound and we were within a TD until the last 2 minutes in both. They were a spread option team with a non-existent passing attack, so instead of sitting in a 2 high look or slapping together some makeshift "nickel" package like all their other opponents, we just stacked the box with a base 50 Cover 0 and got after them. We won 19-6 and held that team to 60-something yards of total offense, which all came on one busted play when our blitzing LB missed a tackle that would have been a safety. They were in negative yardage through 3 quarters until that run. The local paper and radio announcer said we were geniuses who'd pulled off the upset of the century. They said we "knew exactly what they were going to do on every play." It was funny to read their paper's take on it, which was all about how they just shot themselves in the foot over and over on "promising drives." They wound up finishing 7-3 while we finished 6-4. This was hot on the heels of an "upset" we had the previous week of a team who was 0-4 at the time, but usually pretty good, when we were 2-2. That's one of the things about most "upsets." It's usually just about the perception of a team being superior, when the reality is the "underdog" was often better all along.
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Upsets
Apr 26, 2013 8:56:58 GMT -6
Post by coachcastleman on Apr 26, 2013 8:56:58 GMT -6
We pulled off a big upset a few years ago. We played a team in the second round of the playoffs that were ranked number 2 in the state all year at the class higher than us, then dropped down to be the biggest school in our class for the playoffs. Every kid they had and every position was bigger than everyone of our kids. The picture from the coin flip was funny. All of our captains looking up at their's, I think I was even looking up at their coach. They could basically run at will against us, but for some reason thought they should be throwing the ball. With three minutes left in the 3rd quarter, they were up 20 to 6. They had just scored and on the extra point our starting linebacker and their kicker push each other after the kick and both are ejected. We then score on the next series on a big play. You would think that they would want to run some clock, but they kept throwing the ball. We were very good against the pass. Anyway, we picked them off 8 times during the game and we end up winning 30 to 20. Sometimes an upset happens when a coach is too stubborn.
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coachmitts
Sophomore Member
Always compete
Posts: 186
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Upsets
Apr 27, 2013 23:29:28 GMT -6
Post by coachmitts on Apr 27, 2013 23:29:28 GMT -6
Do you tell your kids that we "upset" a better team or that we expected to beat them? I would guess that I would see it as we should beat every team and thats the message I would relay to my kids. Because when I was playing, my coach always said "we" were the underdogs and "we" had to overcome. Didnt really help the morale that our own coach thought we couldnt win from the get go. Maybe I am wrong, but I would want to look at it that way so my kids bought into the fact that we could line up and play against any team and beat them.
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Upsets
Apr 28, 2013 17:42:38 GMT -6
Post by CoachDaniel on Apr 28, 2013 17:42:38 GMT -6
Do you tell your kids that we "upset" a better team or that we expected to beat them? I would guess that I would see it as we should beat every team and thats the message I would relay to my kids. Because when I was playing, my coach always said "we" were the underdogs and "we" had to overcome. Didnt really help the morale that our own coach thought we couldnt win from the get go. Maybe I am wrong, but I would want to look at it that way so my kids bought into the fact that we could line up and play against any team and beat them. Don't lie to them. You may have been able to set the stage however you wanted it 20 years ago, but today your kids are on message boards, facebook and twitter. They know who's good and who's picked to win. During the week we acknowledge how good the team we'll be playing is, and present the best game plan we could develop to beat them. If we manage to pull off the upset, tell them - the "No one believed in us, but us" speech is required at that point. It may be in some coaching contracts...
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