1/4 of team quit in week 10

You need leaders in the huddle who tell kids with that attitude to get with the program or get off the field. Those types of games are tough to prepare kids for regardless. The best thing to do it set some realistic goals and find ways to create victories other than in the W/L column. No running clock, no 100 yd rusher, score 14 points, etc.

GET. OUT. NOW.

Ah, Id play the kids that want to play.

When someone says things like "we will get killed" I don't play those guys any more. they cant be trusted. Find some scrappy kids, even if you have to play a bunch of tiny frosh, celebrate the small success but don't play the wimps/bullies that only seem to be healthy vs weak competition.

I am leaving after this year.

After I tried to stop caring and decided to keep my mouth shut and just follow orders I felt were bad, the HC and his chosen successor warmed up to me. They started coming to me asking for input and our relationship improved, even though we kept doing an offense and defense of the week for the last 5 games. It was weird. Now they're saying the other guy may not get the HC job despite some family connections and some people are encouraging me to apply for it after I spent most of the past 3 years getting thrown under the bus and blamed for our 1-29 record since I came here.

I'm not going to do that, though. All year long, I felt bad because I thought we were letting these kids down. Then the players pull this stuff and it was clear that a lot of them never really cared and the ones who did gave up once senior night was over.

I'm going to move on, but is there anything a staff can do differently in this situation? I don't know what we could have done besides win a few games to keep the players interested. The last 2 games, we may as well have just canceled the rest of the season.

I know what you're saying, but I did my best to support these guys, even when they made it very hard to do so. I've written about it elsewhere, but it was a mess.

Our former HC left in July. Our interim HC missed half our practices with health problems. He even had heart troubles on the sidelines twice and had to sit out coaching. His buddy/chosen successor used his illnesses as chances to install the offense he wanted (a youth playbook he downloaded from the DC website) and renamed stuff we were already doing to what he wanted to call it. Then our interim HC would come back and switch us to something else. One week we were spread, one week it was Pro I belly series, another week it was Pistol jet series, then 3 wide with a TE, etc. Our players stayed confused all year. Most of our practices were just conditioning and walkthroughs on air while all the kids who didn't start loafed on the sidelines.

I coached the OL, which I had to take over on a week's notice after our last OL coach had to retire with heart problems. The chosen one planned my Indy period for me, which was all bag drills , tennis ball drills, sled work, mirror drill, and king of boards. Despite this, the kids had to learn 3 different styles of blocking in 2 weeks at one point and would switch positions depending on what defense we were facing. We had no coherent blocking rules--all our plays were drawn up with the OL left blank and had words in them that could mean the same thing or something completely different depending on the formation we were in and front we saw.

I got blamed for the line's poor performance in these circumstances. I got thrown under the bus to angry parents when they confronted one of those two and asked why their boy wasn't playing, even though those two set the depth charts. I also was routinely the last one to leave practice in spite of all this. It sucked, but I held on and never said anything bad about them or was unprofessional. I did my best to help. Then this happened in our last week.

Tell me, how did I doom our team by not fully supporting our HC in this situation. I was at practice twice as much as he was this season!

Sorry for the rant, but it was a frustrating year. I don't know how I could have been a better assistant. I tried very hard to be loyal and follow orders, even when I and the kids I coached were being put in an awful spot, and the two guys I worked for seemed to appreciate that, but then our team quit on us anyway.

Glad you've decided to move on.
However, your O.P. kid's "problem " was simply an outgrowth of the rest of the stuff you posted. In you O.P. you talked about the kids doing and saying this and that, but kids don't normally do stuff like this, well not in any program I've ever been around. Y'all had a "staff" infection of the worst order and the kids just picked-up on it and magnified it.

They were simply saying with their mouths what the HC and his little toad assistant were saying inside their heads. You can't blame the kids because the inmates are running the asylum.  

Just that one paragraph about "getting thrown under the bus" shows a rudder-less program with serious internal/psychological problems. Nobody should be done this way, the kids pick up on this and magnify it.

It's not the kids, the kids are only going to be what they are directed to be. If you had a HC with at least "one eye and 1/2 sense" you don't have anything like this with the kids. That programs $ucks because someone has allowed it to $uck for too long.

Run away from this steaming POS as fast as possible, until they get somebody in there that knows what they are doing.

Those who quit a sport should not be eligible to play another in that same school year. . . this was the norm at schools I coached at

I don't like this policy. If a kid wants to walk away let him. Why force someone to play if they don't want to? Why hurt another sport because he doesn't like one sport? I've never heard of this policy and wouldn't work at a school that did.

i have heard of it, i would be careful in letting kids come back on the team that quit, we had some quit, i probably won't take them back unless they do extra work and not miss off season and summer workouts, i hate quitters and ones that quit at the end of the season are really chicken feces, if a kid quits in the first week or two, then i understand the sport may not be for them i've coached wrestling and bball, i would never have my kids quit football to start those sports, that's crap too

All I know is if they don't finish in good standing at our school they get no end of the season recognition at all from our athletic dept. That means no letter, certificates, no attendance to banquet, etc. 

Although it sounds like that may not be a deterrent for your guys bc they maybe just don't care, it has been a deterrent for our guys to finish when a season gets tough.