Philosophies (pffensive and Defensive)

Every time I hear people talk about “coaching philosophy,” I have to smile. I was involved in football, as a player and a coach, for forty years and never had a philosophy other than “whip the other guy.”

People sometimes make the game more complicated than it is. They make the business of coaching seem complex, too, when in fact I think it is pretty simple. You get good athletes who want to win, give them a system that maximizes their strengths, and then work at it.

It isn’t profound, but that is how I coached for nice years as an assistant coach with Dallas and for eleven season as head coach in Chicago.

In 1982 when George Halas interviewed me for the job in Chicago, he asked about my offensive and defensive philosophies. I still remember it. We were sitting at his kitchen table, and he was staring at me very intently, the same way he did when I played for him as a crew-cut tight en.

I said, “Coach, you didn’t bring me here to talk about philosophy. I have on philosophy and it’s the same as yours – to kick the other guy’s ######. That’s why you brought me here and you know it.
“If you want to hire me, we should talk about that and cut out this other crap because we’re only wasting time.”

Mr. Halas smiled, and that was it. I had the job, the only job I ever really wanted – head coach of the Chicago Bears.

I had a very definite idea of how I wanted people to perceive the Bears. I wanted them to think we were the roughest, toughest SOBs who ever lived. We had that identity in the 1960s when I played in Chicago, but the team lost its bite in the 1970s.

Playing against the Bears and coaching against them while I was in Dallas, I could see the team lacked discipline. The players made fundamental mistakes. They dropped their heads when they fell behind. They looked like losers. In most cases, they played like losers.

The attitude was the first thing I had to address when I took over as head coach. If I was going to rebuild the Bears, I had to start at the beginning. I had to spell out what it meant to be a Bear and determine which players had the stuff and which ones did not.

---Mike Ditka

here's my philosophy....



OOOHH CRIPES!

Not So Fast, my friend.....

The first thing that trumps all other philosophies that you can name is teamwork. It is obvious but it is the foundation for any program in my opinion and it is the first thing the coach needs to establish. No matter what your other philosophies are the philosophy of teamwork applies. I don’t care what scheme you put in, or what strength and conditioning program you put in, the team philosophy comes first and everything else builds off of that. This applies to coaches, players, everybody.

Now the team first philosophy does not spring from the ground, you have to instill it in every part of your program from the way you teach your scheme to your strength and conditioning program. From teamwork you should be able to build the players discipline, confidence, and effort. If you put a disciplined, confident, hard working team onto the field than you have a good chance of winning.

My conditioning and teaching philosophy is to use the competitive nature of the players.

My offensive and defensive philosophy is aggressive smash mouth football mixed with scheming/game-planning to hide weakness and exploit strengths.