football sense

I liked an interview with Bobby Knight the other day when he was talking about the importance of "basketball intellignence" to a player.

I always tried to develop football "sense" by putting players in game-like situations in practice, explaining the situation and why we were doing the things that we were doing, etc.

With that being said..

I also didn't beat my head against the wall with a dumb player.

If he was a play maker, I didn't worry about it.

Point him in the right direction and turn him loose.

True story...We had a kid that could barely remember where to line up on defense. He couldn't remember his key, responsibility, etc.

He would huddle like everyone else and after we broke the huddle, my assistant would signal to him which gap to attack based on down/distance/tendency, etc.

He made play after play. He knocked the ball loose, recovered fumbles, created havoc...

If we would have waited to play him until he had "football sense" he would have never seen the field.

Do your best to develop football sense but remember it's a game and some players don't need to be over coached.

You probably would be amazed at how little most of your players actually know about the game of football. I can almost bet a years pay that there is at least one kid on my team who doesnt know what a fair catch is, or that a linemen cant catch a forward pass.

Dont even get me started on basic rules.

My biggest philosophy on coaching is, that the more you can get your kids to think like you, the better off your system is going to be. If you can get your kids to not only understand what they do on a bootleg, but to understand why they do what they do. Dont just run a drag because thats what you do.. but know that you are running it behind and away from the direction that you just made the LB bite. Know that he should be running up and to his left while you are running a route behind him and to his right.

The brain is the most important part of the body to train in your players.

football sense to me is knowledge of the game. common sense, football sense. in other words, it is teaching the kids the game. IMO it is a coach's duty to teach them the game. Not just what to do, but why they are doing it. Not every player is going to understand everything that is going on, just like not every kid is going to take quantum mechanics in school. We should teach them just a little bit more than what they can handle.

On offense, I believe your oline and QB need to have fantastic football sense. fronts, stunts, blitzes, audibles, they have to know how to deal with everything. the more football sense they have, the easier it will be to teach them how to deal with it or deal with it on the fly if there is a wrinkle that the coach hasn't prepared them for. on the other side of the ball, I think inside linebackers and safeties have to have a high football sense. they have to deal with different alignments and motions and make the proper adjustments on the fly. again, the more they know the more easily they can handle the situation.

Good points guys, another theory I have about acquiring "football sense" is to just play lots of football, starting from an early age. Back when a lot of us were young, before so many indoor activities were available we played football, basketball or baseball nearly every day, all year round. We didnt always do things correctly but were running,throwing,blocking and tackling and learning something of the strategy of the game, before we ever got into organized football. Once there, youth coaches should spend the majority of time teaching basic fundamentals, basic rules of the game and beginning to teach the boys some of the reasoning behind "why" they are doing what they're doing, hopefully correct methods? This should be an area where the HS coaches might want to get involved by holding clinics for local youth coaches, you know make sure your future players aren't learning any bad habits. Our HS head football coach was very involved in the youth program when i was a kid. From there it was a steady progression of more fundamentals,more playing time, getting used to the speed of the game as you work your way up thru the next levels of organized football. Most of us also never stopped playing our full contact pick up games on weekends and during the off season, so we had a year round steady diet of playing football. This may be frowned on for fear of injury and stuff but I think it helped our teams overall "football sense" level. Its tough to develop real "football sense", when you only play it as a part-time activity during the school year, not enough time! Gotta play,play play!