Really Bad Teams

Consistently poor teams have fail in these areas

No clear Direction/purpose, that leads to poor
Organization. Because they aren't organized they don't value
Fundamentals, which causes inefficiency in performance and a lot of
Wasted time

You can generally tell the true state of a program by what it looks like in February

Constant Coaching turnover be it head coach or assistants

Great post Brophy, as usual.

Football is about people, always has been. Outside of a couple of coaches that I know, who could beat you with the cafeteria staff, most of us have to have better people than the other guy.

I recently watched a bad team. Just like 19delta said, a real mish-mash of plays that looked like they got their ideas from watching TV.
Fundamentals ARE important guys.
That, and having a basic idea about how the passing game works.

Yup.

I have a buddy who coaches at one of top programs in the state. He says they NEVER talk about winning there...winning is not the "goal" of successful programs. Rather, winning is the result of doing things the "right" way.

I played for a really bad program and looking back I can think of a lot of factors that lead to our being horrible and it started at the very top.

In the four years I was in school we had three different head coaches and two of them lasted only one season. I feel that the school board and administation hiring the wrong people started all of the problems. Two of the coaches I still have some contact with and they are very good men, but they were not the right fit for the job.

The program was a coop of two small schools, but the schools were never on an even footing. The colors, nickname and facilities belonged only to one school. Which gave players from the other school little ownership in the program. The coaching staff my final two seasons were either out of building staff or all from the other building. In many cases this meant that players were not fairly treated. The two schools even had different elgibility rules meaning that players from one school could be inelgible one schools standard but still playing. I feel this built animosity between players.

My senior year we were looking for a new HC and a member of the coaching staff applied for the job. He ran all of the offseason workouts and we managed to get some work done that summer. Then two weeks before the start of two a days the school board decided to hire another coach from outside of the staff with zero high school coaching experience. The decision did not set well for many players and the coach that was over looked spent most of the season sabotaging the program, at least that is what the HC felt. This further built tension within the program.

Weight room attendence was also a joke and there was very little in organized offseason work. This meant that the team did very little to improve between seasons, but it was a result of the problem not a symptom of the problem.

Offensive systems changed from year to year and in my four years we were a pro I team, a wishbone team, a wing t team and I believe we also ran a little spread my senior year. This inconsistency meant that players weren't really sure what the hell was going on from week to week, let alone season to season. My senior year we might as well been running the can can offense except we turned the ball over far more than we punted. Again I see this as being a result of the problem and not a symptom of the problem.

I guess in summary I feel that bad programs consistently have poor leadership at the top, whether it be from HCs or higher up. This will then manifest itself in many of the ways other coaches have said.

I coach at a program that most would consider to be "struggling", but only by our record. The coaching staff has a plan, off season attendance is very high, and the players seem to believe in the direction we are going. Most of the things listed that describe a bad program does not apply to us. We all work very hard at what we do, and the players still have the belief of turning things around.

There is hope.

Aw, man. You've gotta raise (or lower) your standards for describing a team as bad. To me "bad" isn't winning 4 out of 9 games. "Bad" is winning 4 games in 5 years.

Let`s see what we had this year... (You`ll see, I`ve been waiting to get this one off my chest)
I was a new DL coach this year and I tried to manoeuvre myself for a better position next year.

Kids who didn't "look the part" got ignored until they quit, even though I knew some of them were short, but fast, and had great hands.

Kids who "looked the part" were stuck in positions but not coached.

The hockey coach banned his kids from playing other sports (no conflict, except for egos) and nobody fought him on it

Coaches were mostly well-meaning ex-players, but with no idea of making the youth to HS transition (some of them, oddly, coached quite good youth teams)

Offense is a mish-mosh grab bag of the varsity offense, mostly coached by yelling :'Inside Zone Step!" as though the kids were born knowing what it meant. Also, all the teaching was done against our own look, and the scout D was not allowed to show a look other than our own defense, which no one else played.

Defense had a fundamental schematic flaw, if the other team went trips, our weakside contain player would move over to man cover, and that left just a C gap DE on that side. Apparently, the varsity playbook has an adjustment for this, but it was never taught.

Defense also looked like it was just an American 4-3 front glued to a Canadian secondary, so there were a lot of little flaws if the offense didn't line up just how you expected them to.

After coaching up my four defensive linemen to a tolerable level (though I still think they just gave me the kids who weren't good enough to play elsewhere), they give me a new player an hour before game time. This repeated itself each of the first three games.

My one "special" player I was forced to continue playing every week, and I couldn't pull him without "approval," even though he wouldstand up out of his stance, turn around, and back into the guard.

Effort was not demanded at practice, but expected at games.

We did very little tackling, and of what we did, we had a fit-and-freeze (great teaching tool, but not the beginning and end of it) a drill conducted in about 3 yard square, and a 3-on-1 arrow drill. Nothing in space, nothing at angles, nothing 1-on-1. You can imagine what this led to.

Overall failure to teach basics, such as our QB, who would give up 25 yards before rounding the corner on a bootleg

A passing game that consists of randomly assigning receivers to run outs (which the QB doesn't have the arm for) and gos (same)

In an attempt to have the very chic "high-tempo practice" coaches run around changing things a lot, but since the kids don't have a grasp of it, we just dabble in tons of drills, often doing new drills just once or twice all season.

No matter how poorly we play, the other coaches are absurdly optimistic about how good we are (I have actually wondered if I'm looking at the wrong thing)

The team actually runs on one outstanding player, but noone else seems to recognize it, so we don't do anything to either ride him as far as he takes us, or diversify a little more.

Special teams are a disaster. I've mentioned elsewhere we once punted for -1 yards, with no return. Which is not much worse than our average, when the line holds them (spread punt super-splits formation, but we didn't teach kids how to handle teams shooting the gaps)

Our KO's only go ~20 yards, but we don't kick onside ever.

Other teams KO's only go ~45 yds, but we line up our returners 65 yards away.
we never worked punt return, but since we never forced a punt...

I'm sure I missed a few, but I feel much better now

Bad athletes. We were 0 and 8 last year and are 7 and 1 this year (so far). The only thing that has changed is the players.

Good programs are "good men" using football as a vehicle to be "good examples" for young people. Winning is the by- product created by this.

Bad programs are men who are still trying to be the "cool kid" in high school, trying to use kids to build their own dreams.

And just cause you win games doesn't mean you are a good program, just as losing doesn't mean its bad. Obviously you need to win some so you can have a platform to be a positive example. You can win alot of games and in the process of having the "experience" never really get the "meaning".
People get so fixated on winning and trying to find the perfect scheme, the great programs I have been around are fixated on the players having the greatest experience in their life, and teach fundamentals with very simple schemes.

Not true. Football is a game. You don't have to be a good person in most senses of the word to be good at a game, and being a good person doesn't make you good at games. About the closest that is to true is that you need to be cooperative to be good at team sports. But you can be cooperative and quite evil, as in organized crime.

Tris for the guys; curls for the girls.

Great Post Delta!

To add on to what I just wrote, in addition to lousy coverage/defensive fundamentals, the big elephant in the room:

MONEY!

A couple of weeks ago I looked up salary schedules for teachers and coaches from the state website. If you look at the really lousy programs in our part of the state, the HCs make less than the assistants at the good ones. Sometimes it's $5k+ a year less to do more work. Sure, you can find an ambitious guy to accept less money to be a HC, but good luck keeping decent assistants around with economics like that!

There are tons of other things you'll see at the crap programs, many of which have already been listed, but this is a big one and it shouldn't be overlooked. It's no coincidence that many of the nation's best programs are at elite private schools or in well-off suburban districts.

But not all good programs are in wealthy schools or districts.