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Post by lochness on Dec 24, 2015 12:33:09 GMT -6
The thing I'd be interested to hear from people who spend a bunch of time on metrics is "what do you do with them?" What changes in practice or techniques or personnel does it actually drive? And, since your performance on any given particular play depends entirely on the 11 players you had on the field vs. that particular opponent's 11 players, what conclusions can you gain in the off-season, when your roster and your opponents are all going to be very different the following year?
This is where the practice of chasing numbers completely falls apart for me. Your efficiency on "Power" has very little to do with whether you run it from 2-back gun on 2nd and medium or from The I on 3rd and short. It has everything to do with your players vs. your opponent's defensive players in that particular game or in that particular play.
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Post by lochness on Dec 24, 2015 12:20:49 GMT -6
It's a feel-good exercise. See how hard I'm working in the off-season? I can't possibly be a bad coach because I analyzed a metric that said every time my TB has a ham samdwich 76 minutes before kickoff, he averages 0.037 yards more per carry. And any time my TB averages 0.03 yards more per carry than his career average, we generally have 1.0097 more explosives. And any time we have more than 3.1415 explosives per game in my career as a HC, we generally win 50.00756% of those games! So I'm trying to generate more explosives (which my metrics dictate is any offensive play that gains 13.375 yards or more).
Metrics in football are generally useless. There are way too many variables with 22 guys on the field at once...and almost infinite combinations of this 22 due to injuries, personnel packages, etc, for you to say "yes! When we line up strong left and run weak right in B gap....that is where we are most productive!" Oh really? What if it's just because for 2 weeks In a row, your opponent had a bag of poop playing DL over there? What if it's because for that one game against a badly coached defense, the opponent was selling out to something else schematically.
Like so many other things (8 hour weekend meetings, endless 7-on-7 participation, practices that are too long, etc) it's more about making us feel like we are hard-working, highly-informed coaches using the latest methodology to give our players an advantage.
If we spent half as much time on developing leaders, building chemistry, and working on getting stronger, faster, and more technically sound as we do on hollow pursuits...we just might have something.
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Post by lochness on Dec 18, 2015 15:02:24 GMT -6
A manager with a phone is all we use. She sticks near me and I give the 60-90 second warning with my big mouth, then blow the whistle when time expires. Works great and at no cost.
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Post by lochness on Dec 12, 2015 13:25:19 GMT -6
That's horrific.
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Post by lochness on Nov 24, 2015 17:46:53 GMT -6
I'd be really interested to know what HC's reasons are for having 4-hour practice on Thanksgiving. Right- what's the rationale?
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Post by lochness on Nov 23, 2015 12:19:05 GMT -6
Simple answer: "when they are ready"
Kids all develop mentally and physically at different rates. There's no magic answer to this one. You know and love your son. You know what's best.
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Post by lochness on Nov 23, 2015 12:16:52 GMT -6
At this point in the season, 4 hours of practice in one day is absolutely unnecessary. At this time of year (really from late October onward) we only have two practices per week that are even a full 2-hours (we go 3:30-5:30 Tue and Wed).
Less is more. You're a good team already, that's what got you here. Not only do you risk pissing everyone off (coaches, coach's families, players, parents), but you also risk completely cooking the kids mentally and physically.
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Post by lochness on Nov 22, 2015 11:01:29 GMT -6
Sports, perhaps more than anything else, bring out the best and the worst in humanity.
There are some sick people out there.
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Post by lochness on Sept 16, 2015 21:20:13 GMT -6
Anything to do with fundraising or interfacing with parent volunteers.
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Post by lochness on Aug 15, 2015 21:00:39 GMT -6
So disappointed.
Here I was thinking that FINALLY, for the first time in the history of interweb football coaching message boards, somebody was actually going to claim that they have a GREAT OL as opposed to a slow, weak, passive and undersized one.
What a bummer dude.
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Post by lochness on Aug 6, 2015 8:50:01 GMT -6
I was part of a program that met on Saturdays for nine years. We have not done it in quite a while. I see absolutely no difference in our preparation or performance. In fact, I believe our kids and our coaches are much fresher having a full day on Saturday off
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Post by lochness on Jul 28, 2015 20:07:25 GMT -6
We have good turn-out for games. Football and Basketball get the best support from fans and parents.
By far, though, lacrosse is a more popular sport with the athletes in our community. Kids play lacrosse year round, almost constantly. Football is what some of those guys do to take a short break from lacrosse. We have very few "football first" guys. Our program has won 4 titles in the last decade. So it's not lack of recent success, and we have respectable numbers. But the lax people in town have just done a better job drawing kids in and convincing them they need to play year-round.
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Post by lochness on Jul 27, 2015 13:22:17 GMT -6
i seem to have offended with a few with my block somebody comment thought it was something everyone disliked guess it is just a personal pet peeve Hey, at least now you know who the guys are who yell "block somebody!"
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Post by lochness on Jul 27, 2015 13:20:48 GMT -6
Far worse than "block somebody" is "make a tackle" or "be an athlete." Yeah, thanks for the tip coach.
My most hated one is "YA GUTTA WANT IT!!!!!!" or anything to that effect.
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Post by lochness on Jul 25, 2015 7:23:40 GMT -6
On offense, if you don't line up in the shotgun with at least 3 wide you're a drooling idiot who has no concept of how the modern game is played. Even if you DO, but you chose to huddle, you're probably still a moron who can't spell his own last name.
Nobody cares what scheme you run on defense.
Which is sad because defensive prep is FAR more difficult than offense.
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Post by lochness on Jul 24, 2015 21:16:26 GMT -6
We've taken 2 weeks off this summer. One toward the beginning, one now at the end (next week). No 7v7, no weights, no skills sessions. Enjoy the summer, be kids, rejuvenate and come back ready to kick ass. We gave them the week leading up to July 4th off, and will take next week off before we kick off on August 3rd. That is precisely what we did. I think it works wonders. Besides football, a ton of our guys are going to lacrosse tournaments and playing baseball all summer. It's just too much.
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Post by lochness on Jul 24, 2015 21:08:54 GMT -6
We've taken 2 weeks off this summer. One toward the beginning, one now at the end (next week).
No 7v7, no weights, no skills sessions. Enjoy the summer, be kids, rejuvenate and come back ready to kick ass.
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Post by lochness on Jul 12, 2015 16:33:16 GMT -6
The best are the one yard crossing route catches that would be thrown into a back of the lineman in an actual game. We see that one at least three times per session from everyone.
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Post by lochness on Jul 11, 2015 21:23:38 GMT -6
7on7 nationals seems like an invite to AAU idiocracy basketball land. Why would any football coach anywhere ever consider that mess? Probably because they give out free visors and sunglasses for participation.
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Post by lochness on Jul 11, 2015 8:42:05 GMT -6
I'm so happy that we finished our last one of the summer this week. It lets the kids compete sure, but we played a handful of teams over the course of the month that ran offense designed specifically to win 7on7 and it drove me nuts. Why don't you use it to practice your stuff? It is literally impossible to run 2x2 smash and have your back run up the middle of the field off your centers ass in a real ball game. Also we are the team that gets in 21 personnel pro I sets and wins 7on7s running boot flood. And it's very enjoyable to watch other teams get frustrated while doing it. It's the same with us. We run mostly 21 and some 11 personnel. We see tons of 2-man or 4-2-5 with the hybrids spaced really wide in the underneath passing lanes. Good for you, "7v7 Bellichick." Meanwhile, I'm the coach telling our FS to stop creeping back to 15 yards and get back to 10, and we will occasionally "blitz" a backer (take 3 steps and kneel) to get our under coverage used to compensating for the vacated zone. Offensively, we were the only team in a 5-team field not running spread shotgun. Most teams go 4 and 5 wide regardless of what their actual offense is. Lots of dumps to backs after a 4-second count. Stuff like that. I actually really hate seven on seven now. We go for two reasons: 1. Help my QB get better and shake the rust off, but even this is in doubt when the coverages are unrealistic 2. See who will compete otherwise, they are a complete waste of time.
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Post by lochness on Jul 7, 2015 9:35:47 GMT -6
Why do the Freshman programs practice in the morning, separate from the other levels? Is it due to having huge numbers? I've never heard that...but that seems like a significant contributor to the required hours.
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Post by lochness on Jun 15, 2015 21:06:45 GMT -6
Agree. Technique and execution are what matters. You may want to change things like audible systems or blocking calls, though.
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Post by lochness on Jun 14, 2015 6:48:10 GMT -6
Yea Full dye sub Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using proboards both of our jerseys last year were sublamated.. ROAD HOME these are imho durable and stretchy.. however for some reason are deemed cheap and not really a football jersey, they look and feel more like a rugby league jersey... How do you get away with not wearing white on the road? I love the yellow look.
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Post by lochness on May 29, 2015 7:08:25 GMT -6
Speaking to the OL guys here, if you don't teach scheme in Indy do you have other times just to teach that? I guess it can depend on what you run but the way we are set up after Indy we are into inside run or 7-7 or team and I know once we hit those periods the OL better know what's goin on. After Indy, we do a period called "Run Group." Backs and QBs are on the spacing strips working meshes, footwork and timing. WRs are working stalk, downfield and cracks as well as quick screen game. OL works scheme at this point. It's a great period. We also have "Pass Group" where we do 7v7 or other pass drill with WR, RB, and QBs and the OL works protections. Allows us us to work strictly fundamentals during Indy.
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Post by lochness on May 28, 2015 7:34:11 GMT -6
Skills work only. We run approximately 3 drills per period that cover the specific skills your position athletes need to execute within the scheme.
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Post by lochness on May 27, 2015 7:49:52 GMT -6
I always invite my staff to speak. They are all men of few words, so it works very well. I speak last. I like giving them the ability to express their feelings about how things went. They work hard and have a lot invested. I finish with a summary message and some administrative detail (don't forget bus leaves at blah blah, white jerseys, get your fundraiser money in, etc).
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Post by lochness on May 22, 2015 13:18:53 GMT -6
Recruiting the halls sucks! Seriously, though...I've stopped doing this. I know this will draw criticism from some, but I firmly believe that if a kid needs to be begged to play, they aren't going to help you anyway...not by a long shot. I train my leaders how to recruit other RKG's. We HAVE been successful there. But me just looking at bodies and saying, "son, what's your name and why aren't you playing football?" Nah.
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Post by lochness on May 17, 2015 18:06:46 GMT -6
I think any policy that alienates kids or sets barriers to their participation in August is a bad one. Weight training, spring ball, 7v7, camps etc are all opportunities for the individual to get better. The consequence of not participating is that those guys who don't miss out on that development. If they can show up in August, still be great teammates, and contribute to your team, I don't see why we would care.
I sure as hell don't. I'd rather have everyone there, but I'm not going to punish people who don't show up. Everyone has to prove themselves in August. That's all that matters to me. That's when our sport starts and that's when I start evaluating them.
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Post by lochness on May 7, 2015 18:34:01 GMT -6
Offense in a can! 19.95 plus $3 shipping and handling. Act now, and you will also receive a set of ginsu knives absolutely free. dont delay, supplies are running out! 1-800-BUY-WINS
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Post by lochness on May 6, 2015 12:28:35 GMT -6
I've been on a culture change journey with a new school. And, that's it...it's a JOURNEY. You can't change culture for real over night with heavy-handedness, etc. You need to do it by setting clear expectations, communicating those expectations over and over again, and holding people accountable in a fair and consistent manner when they don't meet those expectations.
The variables are whether your whole staff is bought in and behind you and whether or not the administration supports you.
But, being an a-hole about it, at least in my experience, is usually a self-defeating policy. I am as polite and caring a person with my players as you will find. But, I don't take any chit and I'm clear and consistent.
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