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Post by breakerdog on Apr 14, 2015 16:20:03 GMT -6
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 7, 2015 11:29:27 GMT -6
I can't speak as an HC, but as an OC what I really liked doing when not working with a specific position group was to grab the stragglers in a position group and work with them. We tended to have a few kids at each position that for whatever reason ( genetics, intelligence, missing practice etc) were not very good and tended to slow down drills and limit high level teach time. The position coach would spend %80 of his time working with the %20 that needed the most help. I like to take those guys off his hands for an Indy period and work on basic fundamentals. The theory being that I was trying to raise the ability of our lowest level of athlete. I let the position coach handle raising the bar for our highest level. The Oline coach could work on hand position with Jimmy while I teach Joe how to get into a 3 point stance.
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Post by breakerdog on Feb 26, 2015 17:10:21 GMT -6
Anybody who has a DVR has film on Auburn. I know Jim personally, and he's a guy of high character. I don't think Auburn had much legal ground because of fair use laws and all that. Jim doesn't have the wealth to combat a university with unlimited funding though. For sure. I completely agree with this. I would do the same. Not worth the hassle or risk for something that is a labor of love and costs money out of your own pocket. Pretty hard to explain that to the wife when you have to pay lawyer bills. Nothing but respect and thanks for Coach Light for his work.
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Post by breakerdog on Feb 26, 2015 16:17:50 GMT -6
There are probably lots of grey area legal issues on both sides of this. I question whether the film is actually university property. There is similar stuff all over YouTube and Vimeo. He was simply gathering it together in a single accessible spot and blogging about it. My common sense standpoint is that this site was hosting film cuts of games that were played in public. The film was either purchased, given or traded to him. He wasn't profiting from this. There was no competitive advantage being taken away or gained by this. All Auburns (or any other team) rivals already has film and more. No team or organization was presented in a bad light. It is a very niche market (football coaches) and not taking away from any $$ gained by the NCAA or the schools. I would think that teams would want to encourage this rather than beat it down. Years ago, before the internet, it was possible to get stuff like game film, cutups, and even playbooks pretty easily. Some college coaches would send you a DVD even if they didn't know you well. The internet sharing culture dried that up. Coaches got tired of seeing stuff that they gave away getting posted online. Maybe it's paranoid but it is their right. It's their stuff. The last few times that I got anything other than drill rapes it was only from somebody who I knew pretty well and only that they mentioned that they didn't expect to see it travelling around. One of my best friends coaches at a D.1 school. He can't give me tape. They have a hard rule that nothing leaves the building anymore. If you visit, they're welcoming. They'll talk to you and let you watch tape but you can't take anything home. That's been the rule at every place that I've visited lately. So, whoever first acquired those game tapes should have known that there was at least an implied promise that it was for their use only. If I gave somebody something then saw it online I'd consider it a breach of trust. Thanks for the response. My question is why? Why does BigPowerSchool care if their All 22 cut ups are on the web somewhere? What can possibly happen that will hurt their program either from a scheme standpoint or a financial one. The benefits are obvious to me, better coaches at the lower levels equals better recruits. Fans generally don't care about 2 year old game film. Opponents already have better information that anything you could post.
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Post by breakerdog on Feb 26, 2015 15:19:29 GMT -6
This is the first that I've ever heard of this site. To the guys who are sad to see it go, you had to know that this day was coming eventually. Auburn is wearing the black hat here but if it wasn't them it would have been somebody else. The fact is that Light was sharing stuff that wasn't his to give away. There are probably lots of grey area legal issues on both sides of this. I question whether the film is actually university property. There is similar stuff all over YouTube and Vimeo. He was simply gathering it together in a single accessible spot and blogging about it. My common sense standpoint is that this site was hosting film cuts of games that were played in public. The film was either purchased, given or traded to him. He wasn't profiting from this. There was no competitive advantage being taken away or gained by this. All Auburns (or any other team) rivals already has film and more. No team or organization was presented in a bad light. It is a very niche market (football coaches) and not taking away from any $$ gained by the NCAA or the schools. I would think that teams would want to encourage this rather than beat it down.
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Post by breakerdog on Feb 26, 2015 13:05:43 GMT -6
I know most of us had Coach Lights website as a great source of film and breakdowns. Auburn U has threatened him with legal action and he has pulled it down.
Check out Coach Lights twitter feed for all the gory details.
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Post by breakerdog on Jan 21, 2015 13:02:35 GMT -6
I was the JV HC at a previous school about 10 years ago. I had a kid come out for our JV team named Herbert. He was a natural #1 tech with a huge body and all kinds of athleticism. He had been kicked out of school a few times and had a bad rep. He had pulled a knife on a teacher once. Long track record of fighting, bullying and anger issues. I had a few teachers come by and warn me about him. He was big, fast, mean and nasty. He scared the other kids on my team.
Turns out the kids Dad had died a few years back and his mom was a train wreck with addiction issues. His need for structure and authority was blindingly obvious to me. We had a few head banging episodes the first few weeks but he got on board. He was yes sir-ing and no sir-ing in no time. He turned into a beast on the field. Got all kinds of positive re-enforcement from football and loved the team/family message we preached. Became a captain on our Varsity team. Got a scholarship and a degree. Haven't seen him in quite a while, but he wrote me a few years back saying he had a job, a wife and a new baby. I felt like my influence had something to with his turn around and that I impacted more than one life. Still gives me warm fuzzies.
I love the Xs and Os, but that stuff really gets me charged up for this strange pass time / profession we call coaching.
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Post by breakerdog on Jan 13, 2015 18:28:58 GMT -6
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Post by breakerdog on Jan 12, 2015 15:40:12 GMT -6
"......... And get off my lawn!"
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Post by breakerdog on Dec 10, 2014 12:38:07 GMT -6
There is a Rhythm, Read, Rush, Release joke in here somewhere, but I am just going to let it go.
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Post by breakerdog on Dec 9, 2014 17:39:53 GMT -6
Been married so long that I forget how to recruit anymore.
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Post by breakerdog on Nov 13, 2014 15:41:31 GMT -6
Another Canadian coach here. Last week we played in a playoff game in -14 celsius, which is 6.8 F according to Google. We don't claim to be comparable to HS football in the US, but we got this cold thing down! Some tips for keeping warm - Number 1 point. Don't warm up. Seriously. Don't have a heater on the sidelines. Don't use blankets or hoardings that keep you warm. The problem with warming up is that you will get cold again when you go on the field. It's best to just acclimatize to the temp and go with it. Think about jumping into a cold lake or pool. It sucks getting in the first time, but after your in and you adjust, it's not that big of a deal. Imaging having to jump into a cold lake for the first time over and over again. Pretty soon that can become mentally draining. Players are more worried about crowding around the heater than being mentally in the game.
- Hands - Use surgical gloves under neath your regular gloves. Same principle as the foot bagging mentioned earlier. Traps heat. I highly recommend Cutter gloves for a winter / icy grip product. www.cuttersgloves.com/products/football
- QBs - I have my QBs practice with gloves on as the season moves on to get used to it. Have a few different pairs ready to go when they get wet.
- Cleats - I find soccer cleats to be the best on ice and snow. Hard rubber with big, long, square or triangle shaped cleats. No rounded off tips or chrome tips. I don't like the running shoe idea, although admittedly I have never tried it.
- Foot warming packs. Some guys like them and some don't. I am an old school guy, but I can see the value as long as you don't let them cool down part way through the game. www.warmers.com/grabber-small-medium-full-insole-foot-warmers-5-hour-30-pair/
Playcalling - The natural tendancy is to get under center and pound the rock. Ball security and all that. I strongly disagree with this. I think that this is where option / misdirection run game really shines. Your guys are running paths that they have run before, the D has to adjust and stop / start. Deadly on slippery ground. Just simple speed option or Jet motion fakes makes LBs have to change direction. Getting athletes on the edge with the ball is extra scary when you can't break down well and get into position to tackle. Slamming into the line without making the D have to change gears is playing into their hands IMO.
- Go deep! Deep breaking routes like Corner or Post are deadly on DBs trying to get hips around and plant their feet.
- Stay away from quick game routes. Don't demand timing and footwork from your QB and WRs. A three step drop and back foot plant can be trouble. Trying to break off a 5 step hitch route is tricky. All your route timings will be off due to the players trying to take short choppy steps and keep their feet under neath them. Things like roll out, boot leg and play action is where its at.
- Be situationally aware of the wind. If the wind is bad, make sure you plan your punting and passing game around that. Plan to take down field shots in the 1st and 3rd quarters. Go for it on 4th down (3rd down for us) more than usual in 2nd and 4th instead of a punt into the wind.
One last bit of advice. Be the coach in the booth! Way nicer up there.
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Post by breakerdog on May 30, 2014 9:30:56 GMT -6
"I've said this before: If you weren't in the room with Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne, you stole it from somebody,"
- Chip Kelly
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Post by breakerdog on May 9, 2014 15:57:36 GMT -6
www.newrepublic.com/article/117246/chinese-football-my-season-chongqing-dockersBest paragraph of the article The following Sunday at 9 a.m.—only in China are football practices scheduled for Sunday mornings—a few team members showed up after a late night of drinking and fiery Chongqing barbecue. “My a**hole is burning,” Fat Baby announced as he waddled onto the field. Rock, a railway employee who was wearing a Michael Vick jersey and a jock strap over his tights, put one teammate in a WWE-style figure-four hold. I asked if he knew that Michael Vick was famous for torturing dogs. “China has a lot of people like that,” he said, grinning. McLaurin had Seven run a simple passing drill. Not a single throw reached its target, and McLaurin grew frustrated. He made everyone run sprints, which he won. As the players headed to their cars, McLaurin walked over to the benches, braced himself against a wall, and spilled the contents of his stomach onto the ground.
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Post by breakerdog on May 9, 2014 6:57:28 GMT -6
We talk about winning, but winning a game is to big of a concept. No one player can win a game. In my opinion, you can't tell a kid or a group of kids to go win a game, because you aren't giving clear directions to follow. It needs to be personalized and brought down to the players level. We talk about winning routes, winning blocks, winning the next six seconds. In practice we talk and teach HOW to win a route or a block. If each player wins his 6 seconds, you will win the play as a group. Win enough plays and you will win the game. Essentially a process driven concept with competition laid over top.
This is probably a more complicated way of saying "Do your job".
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 24, 2014 21:51:29 GMT -6
You need to do a 30 for 30 short on this teams situation. Seriously, this is crazy.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 24, 2014 14:06:17 GMT -6
This thread is putting me on tilt.
This is pretty much how I would deal with it.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 24, 2014 11:14:12 GMT -6
At least I am in the right place.
I am constantly leaving little play drawings all over my desk at work and at home. My wife has a bin she just puts them in. I occasionally go through the bin and get ideas from myself. Sometimes I set my 4 year old daughter with some paper and pens at the kitchen table while I draw up inside zone read vs. different fronts. She has started drawing little circles, triangles and lines on the paper just like daddy. It sort of looks like the Run'n'Shoot to me.
It gets a little bit weird at work when I am taking notes in meeting with my peers and upper management and the other side of the page has Seam/Sluggo vs. Cov3 drawn on it. I once sent a work related excel spread sheet via email to a coworker that had my play calling script on another tab.
I used to play a lot of online poker and study the game. There is a guy named Phil Laak (The Unibomber) who wrote an article that I really found interesting. I am paraphrasing. He said that when you begin your journey in poker it's really easy to learn. Every thing you read, every conversation is a new concept. Your learning curve is exponential. Your mind is opening to new thoughts and ideas but then it soon plateaus. You become hungry for more learning, but you have to search harder to find it. You begin to search out experts in the field and attempt to learn just small intricate details about your craft. You get really excited when you can find those small nuggets of information or when you have an AHA moment because just the act of searching for nuggets becomes difficult. He referred to it almost like panning for gold.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 20, 2014 16:36:00 GMT -6
To those of you who play music during practices - do you play it during games? I know what you are getting at here. I'm pretty sure you have forgotten more about coaching HS football than I know, so I am certainly not going to try to convince you of anything one way or the other. I could sit here and talk about training with ambient noise, chaos and distraction in order to prepare for games, but that's not really the truth. The number one thing that music during practice has done is made our practices more fun and more uptempo. I want our practices to be upbeat, positive and enjoyable. I'm sure you can do this without music, but it seems to help. Making your program fun is important in our region because football isn't the only game in town. I believe that this helps us attract and retain athletes.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 20, 2014 13:14:54 GMT -6
We dont do it, but I hear really great things from people that invest in a 200-300 dollar stereo and blast music during practice. People were talking about it in the "Best Practice Ideas" thread. We did this last year and it generally went really well. Two things 1- Play list has to be vetted. Ended up with a few songs that have language thats not inline with our team values. Usually happens right when the administration or parents booster club is in for a visit. 2- Have a remote control for the HC. It's great loud during warm ups, fast drills and team time. We liked to have it turned down during "teach time" because it can be distracting and hard to focus when you are trying to explain to a group where to place your hands on a down block.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 15, 2014 10:13:05 GMT -6
Sun Tzu’s book The Art of War, earned him an audience with the King of Wu, who said, “I have read your books, may i submit your theory of managing soldiers to a small test?”
Sun Tzu replied “Sir, you may.”
The King of Wu asked “Can the test be applied to women?”
Sun Tzu replied that it could, so arrangements were made to bring 180 beautiful women from the palace. Sun Tzu divided them into two troops with one of the King’s favourite concubines at the head of each. He the made all of them take spears in their hands and spoke to them: “I presume you know the difference between front and back, right and left?”
The women replied, “Yes. Of course”
Sun Tzu continued, “When to the sound of drums I order ‘eyes front,’ look straights ahead. When I order ‘left turn,’ face toward your left. When I order ‘right turn’, face toward your right. When I order turn around, face around to the back.
After the words of command had been explained, the women agreed they understood. He gave them spears so he could begin the drill. To the sound of drums, Sun Tzu ordered ‘right turn.’ In response the women burst out in laughter.
With great patience, Sun Tzu said, “If the instructions and words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame.” He then repeated the explanations several times. This time he ordered the drums to signal ‘left turn,’ and again the women burst into laughter.
Then Sun Tzu said, “If the instructions and words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if the commands are clear and the soldiers disobey, then it is the fault of the officers.” He immediately ordered the women who were at the head of the two troops to be beheaded.
Of course, the King was watching from a raised pavilion, and when he saw that his two favourite concubines were about to be executed, he was alarmed and swiftly sent down a message: “We are now quite satisfied as to the general’s ability to manage troops. Without these concubines, my food and drink will not taste good. It is the King’s wish that they not be beheaded.”
Sun Tzu replied, “Having received the sovereign’s commission to take charge and direct these troops, there are certain orders I cannot accept.” He immediately had the two concubines beheaded as an example and appointed the two next in line as the new leaders.
Now the drums were sounded and the drill began. The women performed all the maneuvers exactly as commanded. They drilled perfectly in precision and did not utter a single sound.
Sun Tzu sent a messenger to the King of Wu saying, “Your Majesty, the soldiers are now correctly drilled and perfectly disciplined. As sovereign, you may choose to require them to go through fire and water and they will not disobey.”
The King responded, “Our commander should cease the drill and return to his camp. We do not wish to come down and inspect the troops.”
With great calm, Sun Tzu said, “This King is only fond of words and cannot carry them into deeds.”
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 2, 2014 11:39:23 GMT -6
The first thing you need to do in order to improve is to measure your current state. You cannot quantify improvement if you don't have anything to measure against.
For many of us, measuring wins and losses is enough. That's great! If your team goes 10-2 one year and 2-10 the next, you can say that you need to recruit better athletes. Pretty simple.
Some of us may want to know more.
Did we run the ball as well as we did last year? What run concepts worked better for us? Did we defend the pass better in zone or man? How was our run defense when we blitzed? What pass concept got us more yards per completion? Which pass concept got us a higher completion %?
You will notice that none of those questions has why in it. I don't think that analytics does a good job with why. Experience and expertise does a good job with why. In other words, answering why is the coaches job. The thing that analytics does is provide lot's of good questions. Questions that you maybe wouldn't have come up with on your own. Sometimes you find that the questions lead you down paths that you don't really want to go. When you can be honest with yourself, you find truths that are uncomfortable or go against your preconceived notions. Or, Maybe the answer why really is just "better athletes".
Most of us are constantly working to improve ourselves as coaches. Clinics, books, consulting with other coaches, watching games and game film or just posting and answering on Huey are ways that we use to find answers. Often times, I will find an answer to a problem that I didn't even know I had.
Analytics is one way of self studying your team, and coming up with good questions.
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Post by breakerdog on Dec 26, 2013 18:29:24 GMT -6
Eclicker
Article from coach grabowski on an app that creates quizzes.
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Post by breakerdog on Oct 31, 2013 12:38:51 GMT -6
Counter-counter-counter point
Between the 2001-02 season and the 2011-12 season the number of football playing student athletes in the NCAA went up from 1036 to 1096. In the same time period the number of participating teams went up from 617 to 651. Attachment Deleted
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Post by breakerdog on Oct 31, 2013 12:15:19 GMT -6
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Post by breakerdog on Oct 22, 2013 10:41:48 GMT -6
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Post by breakerdog on Aug 15, 2013 15:44:19 GMT -6
I want to up the compete level in 1vs1 time. 7 on 7, Inside and Full Team. What I would like to do is keep score somehow and announce it after every play.
If anyone does this, how has it impacted your practice sessions? What scoring system do you use?
eg. 1 offensive point for every play over 5 yards / 1 defensive point for every play under 5
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Post by breakerdog on Aug 15, 2013 8:18:06 GMT -6
Trying to think of any good mottos to put on the back of our t shirts this year. Brand new coaching staff, brand new defense/offense, small low income school district, lost our QB/captain for the season due to an unrelated injury this summer, and they haven't had too much success in recent years. Any thoughts that could be unique to us? "UNDER COACHED. UNDER FUNDED. UNDER MANNED. UNDEFEATED!" On second thought, Maybe that won't look so good on a t-shirt.
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Post by breakerdog on May 13, 2013 13:10:15 GMT -6
In my "other job" I am a project manager for a large construction company. Asset management is maybe the largest part of my scope. Here is a real simple rule of thumb that I use when dealing with folks who don't necessarily perform to the standards I expect.
"What is the alternative? Is it better?"
I won't get rid of anyone unless I have a better plan. If the better plan is nobody, addition by subtraction, then fire away.
One thing that has been successful for me is narrowing someones scope. Break it right down to a small piece that they can handle and then, once they can prove it, give them more. I sometimes get a little flack when I pile stuff on one guy and only have small expectations of another. I always tell them to stop being so competent and trustworthy and I won't ask you to do so much.
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Post by breakerdog on Apr 24, 2013 17:17:51 GMT -6
In my humble opinion, "explosive plays" for lack of a better term, are the biggest factor in HS football.
This is being kicked around in another thread right now, but I think that the stat that most correlates to winning HS football games is the big play differential. If you can break more than your opponent, you are more likely to win.
I don't believe that turnovers are a coach-able skill to any high degree. I think drills, coaching etc can maybe get you another 5 - 10 % on top of the random chance factor. I am just pulling these numbers out of my butt, and I don't think there is anyway to study this effectively.
So, how can you coach to encourage more "explosive plays" on offence and limit them on defence?
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