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Post by s73 on Apr 3, 2020 22:28:49 GMT -6
Yup... Special teams can be a PITA. Especially because it doesn't seem like any amount of time we put towards them is enough.A team in our division runs wall returns well; on KOR and PR. On punt and KO, we started preparing to defend wall returns in August; dedicated about 20 minutes per week to recognizing the wall, disrupting it, getting defenders behind it, etc..etc.. The week we played them, we had four, fifteen minute periods set aside to defend those walls. We still gave up a score on PR. The crazy thing about this. Sometimes NOT coaching them up in these situations works better than not. Coaching is definitely an art and not a science. |
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Post by mattman2 on Apr 4, 2020 4:57:57 GMT -6
when the offense messes up they can punt. Defense don’t have that option.
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Post by larrymoe on Apr 4, 2020 6:14:31 GMT -6
when the offense messes up they can punt. Defense don’t have that option. Sure they do. It's called extra point block. |
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Post by canesfan on Apr 4, 2020 9:43:38 GMT -6
I’ll say this, on the worst teams I’ve coached, we were much better defensively than offensively. Hard to be a good offensive coach without talent. Defensively we played decent with the same talent.
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Post by coachd5085 on Apr 4, 2020 9:57:10 GMT -6
I’ll say this, on the worst teams I’ve coached, we were much better defensively than offensively. Hard to be a good offensive coach without talent. Defensively we played decent with the same talent. Wow.. I disagree 100% with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if most posters on this board also disagree. I feel it is much easier to "manufacture" some offensive success. If you are slow, weak, bad leverage etc on defense there is no place to hide. |
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Post by Defcord on Apr 4, 2020 11:58:26 GMT -6
I have not been an OC. And should never be because I will run wedge till they stop it and the roll with power. My idea of a pass is toss sweep. I am an offensive lineman at heart and I love to run the football.
Now that that’s out of the way. I have been a DC for a decade. I will take being a DC over being a special teams coordinator any day. To do it right you have to manage 66 positions. There’s so many moving parts that I couldn’t sleep at night for fear of something would go wrong. There’s ways to lighten the load but to be really good on special teams you have to learn to juggle.
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Post by stilltryin on Apr 4, 2020 12:07:31 GMT -6
I’ll say this, on the worst teams I’ve coached, we were much better defensively than offensively. Hard to be a good offensive coach without talent. Defensively we played decent with the same talent. Wow.. I disagree 100% with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if most posters on this board also disagree. I feel it is much easier to "manufacture" some offensive success. If you are slow, weak, bad leverage etc on defense there is no place to hide. Is there really any right answer to a question like this? ST can be so frustrating; one quick story involving a friend who was among the best high school coaches I've known. Tight game, with the ball near midfield, with a quarterback who's also a punter, he calls for the quick kick they've been practicing for weeks. They do everything right: get off a great kick, get guys downfield, the ball lands inside the 10 and is bouncing down around the 2 or 3 when the other team's Jimmy (who wound up playing at Penn State) swoops back from his safety position to pick it up, makes a couple of guys miss, and takes it across the field, 97 yards to the house. Turns out to be the difference in the game. Maybe it depends on how you define which job is "harder" ... harder to learn, harder to teach, or harder to handle when you do everything right and still get beat. |
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Post by canesfan on Apr 4, 2020 12:13:27 GMT -6
I’ll say this, on the worst teams I’ve coached, we were much better defensively than offensively. Hard to be a good offensive coach without talent. Defensively we played decent with the same talent. Wow.. I disagree 100% with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if most posters on this board also disagree. I feel it is much easier to "manufacture" some offensive success. If you are slow, weak, bad leverage etc on defense there is no place to hide. Ever been 0-10? How bad are the teams you’ve coached? I’ve coached teams that got stops with not much talent. The worst teams I’ve coached on we were lucky to get scores. Not saying we played lights out defense but we were much more likely to lose 28-3 than 60-24. |
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Post by badtotheflexbone on Apr 4, 2020 12:44:58 GMT -6
I should have specified "harder" but yes, in terms of learning it and then trying to teach it to your players so they can execute it correctly & "play fast"
All great points thus far but just confirmed what I was feeling, that defense is presents a lot more obstacles to learn, teach, and implement
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Post by coachd5085 on Apr 4, 2020 12:53:42 GMT -6
Wow.. I disagree 100% with this, and I wouldn't be surprised if most posters on this board also disagree. I feel it is much easier to "manufacture" some offensive success. If you are slow, weak, bad leverage etc on defense there is no place to hide. Ever been 0-10? How bad are the teams you’ve coached? I’ve coached teams that got stops with not much talent. The worst teams I’ve coached on we were lucky to get scores. Not saying we played lights out defense but we were much more likely to lose 28-3 than 60-24. I have run the gambit .. 1-10 teams, 10-1 teams and in between. I maintain that if your team is not talented, it is significantly easier to be less horrible on offense than defense. On offense, I can control : 1) the tempo 2) the matchups (either where they occur or what they are) 3) the ball carrier 4) the point of attack/ player in conflict and key players involved. Now, granted your scores may be 28-3, but I believe (at least for MY teams) that would be because we would gear the offensive gameplan to low scoring run the clock and hope to keep it close. |
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Post by canesfan on Apr 4, 2020 15:18:02 GMT -6
Ever been 0-10? How bad are the teams you’ve coached? I’ve coached teams that got stops with not much talent. The worst teams I’ve coached on we were lucky to get scores. Not saying we played lights out defense but we were much more likely to lose 28-3 than 60-24. I have run the gambit .. 1-10 teams, 10-1 teams and in between. I maintain that if your team is not talented, it is significantly easier to be less horrible on offense than defense. On offense, I can control : 1) the tempo 2) the matchups (either where they occur or what they are) 3) the ball carrier 4) the point of attack/ player in conflict and key players involved. Now, granted your scores may be 28-3, but I believe (at least for MY teams) that would be because we would gear the offensive gameplan to low scoring run the clock and hope to keep it close. Strange to me. But maybe you’ve coached longer. Previous school as an assistant we just could get the offense going. Small, weak OL, slow skill kids. Grant it our staff was decidedly better defensively than we were offensively so maybe that played a part. For the record, we coached both sides so I’m now throwing off on anyone. At my current school we have had speed. Not always good OL play but always have 3-4 kids that can score. At this school offense is easier but our school is far from the bottom of the barrel in our area/class talent wise. |
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Post by coachscdub on Apr 4, 2020 15:59:40 GMT -6
I think it's offense by far. I've coached Defense for one year at the freshman level, and five years on the offensive side, so maybe my opinion is jaded by the age group i work with but offensively you have so much to teach and perfect no matter what offense you run, defensively you can be so extremely simple and still be effective in a way you cant be on offense.
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Post by 42falcon on Apr 4, 2020 19:59:57 GMT -6
Can someone elaborate why offense is harder on Fridays? Technically, haven't you been preparing Offense all week as well I've done both and I can say 100% game day is the toughest for me calling an offence. I found defense to be harder M-TH because of the volume of stuff to teach. On offence it is the calling of the game in the game that I find the hardest. On defense it was easier because I'd call something but as long as we did the work in the week the players adjust to the formation properly, read their key properly and ultimately as the play caller I'm playing the percentages so I have a good shot at helping my kids be in a spot to make a play. |
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Post by 44dlcoach on Apr 4, 2020 21:58:31 GMT -6
Defense is easy when you play teams that suck, but if you want to win consistently you have to have built in answers to just about every scheme you can see, that isn't impossible by any means but it sure as hell isn't easy to install/drill/rep.
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Post by 44dlcoach on Apr 4, 2020 22:01:28 GMT -6
We see just about every year in our league a bad team that gets press for being good on defense and the film shows them just playing little league pressure every snap defense and getting by against equally crappy offense.
And without fail, the top 2 or 3 teams in the league hang 60 on them. My point just being that it isn't hard to be good on defense against bad offense but the good ones will light that kind of team up.
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Post by rsmith627 on Apr 5, 2020 4:43:33 GMT -6
Can someone elaborate why offense is harder on Fridays? Technically, haven't you been preparing Offense all week as well It seems like we never get the looks we are prepared for. We know this ahead of time and try to anticipate any possible change ups a defense might give us. It was even worse when I coordinated in the flexbone man. We got so much defense of the week. Again, they were just minor tweaks, but you have to understand what a defense is doing and why. Personally though I still think defense is harder on game day. Offense is just put the ball where they're not, right? |
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 6, 2020 12:27:23 GMT -6
In a sort of meta-way, I find that the biggest advantage of coaching defense is that it's much harder to second-guess. Hoi polloi can recognize formations and whether those are commonly seen elsewhere (read: TV), as well as your run-pass ratio, inside/outside runs, and so on. On defense they don't get it. They can maybe spot if you're really blitz-heavy or something, but that's about it. They see the results and make comments based on that, but your process is pretty inviolate, so that's a plus.
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Post by fantom on Apr 6, 2020 12:59:42 GMT -6
In a sort of meta-way, I find that the biggest advantage of coaching defense is that it's much harder to second-guess. Hoi polloi can recognize formations and whether those are commonly seen elsewhere (read: TV), as well as your run-pass ratio, inside/outside runs, and so on. On defense they don't get it. They can maybe spot if you're really blitz-heavy or something, but that's about it. They see the results and make comments based on that, but your process is pretty inviolat so that's a plus. I beg to differ. Coaches understand that even if we're in the perfect defense and the players execute it well sometimes the offense is still going to make a play. If the bad guys score a TD, though, the couch coaches are going to complain about that stupid call. |
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 6, 2020 14:45:24 GMT -6
Yeah but they won’t know when I call the same thing the very next play
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Post by jg78 on Apr 9, 2020 21:41:26 GMT -6
I think there's plenty of debate on which side is harder overall, but the quote above is unquestionably true.
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CoachSP
Sophomore Member
Posts: 212 
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Post by CoachSP on Dec 2, 2020 13:47:18 GMT -6
Absolutely. I can't go wrong calling base defense. In fact I train my guys to do that in case, for some reason, I can't get the call in. That's sorta why I asked the question... How do you signal something in as a DC when you don't even know what the offense is going to line up in? Say you worked a specific blitz or w/e and the offense aligns up in something unexpected, then the ball is already snapped etc. How do you guys work around this? The way I do it is that I generally do not work on or game plan any blitz that cannot be ran vs. all formations. For example, if I really think "Wham Switch" will destroy trips but hurt me vs. double TE, I leave it out of the game plan. The exception to the rule would be a game situation or down and distance where I have a strong formation tendency where I can make a call that isn't perfect for all situations but perfect for that situation. |
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Post by Footballguy on Dec 2, 2020 19:11:46 GMT -6
I voted for defense. I have been a Coordinator on both sides, but every year I have been the HC I have never given up the defense. I don't want to take anything away from the offensive mind guys, but on Offense you dictate and are always in position to call plays. When it comes to the other side of the ball, you have to teach your defense how to adjust and check into different looks based on formation, strengths, motions. On every play a defender has to know where to line up, his assignment, the assignment to the guy next to him.
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Post by pvogel on Dec 2, 2020 20:18:25 GMT -6
I voted defense. With that said, I always felt defense was tougher to prep M - TH but offense is more difficult on Fridays. I've only been an OC. But I agree 100%. DCs have a tougher job during the week. On gameday, OCs have it tougher. A lot of it is probably brought on by ourselves (overthinking stuff, getting too cute). But being an OC has its headaches. It is one of the few jobs in the world that EVERYONE thinks they can do. Everyone. Just listen to your relatives next time you watch an nfl game or something. Passes should have been runs. Runs should have been passes. It's binary. If the qb shat his pants and didn't hit the wide open post for a TD, you suck. If he throws a bubble screen and the defense misses 2 tackles, you're the coach of the year. |
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Post by Yash on Dec 2, 2020 21:31:22 GMT -6
Offense only has to win on a few plays to win the game. Defense can "lose" on one or 2 plays and lose the game. I think defense is harder. Also, on offense, I can choose where I hide my guys. If the defense is hiding guys, I'm trying to find those guys and attack them... and often times if they find the guys you are hiding-- there isn't a lot you can do about it.
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Post by pvogel on Dec 3, 2020 5:21:58 GMT -6
Told my wife about this thread. She grew up a coach's daughter (Godfather and Uncle were Head Coaches, her Uncle was a very long time DC) and is now a great coach's wife. She's seen both sides of the ball in that regard too and is a coach herself. Her take -
1. It is easier to survive/ be successful as an okay OC.
2. It is very difficult to survive/ be successful as an okay DC.
Similar to what other people have said. Defense has no room for error. Any weakness is exploited quickly.
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wow008
Freshmen Member
Posts: 66
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Post by wow008 on Dec 3, 2020 10:02:13 GMT -6
First off, great thread! Love seeing the different opinions on this! I am going to say defense. As a DC at a small school in TX I have found it way more difficult to teach defense than when I was coordinating at a big school. Small schools we do not platoon, so I found out extremely fast that the blitz rules and coverage rules that I was using at the big school level was overwhelming kids who were trying to remember calls both defensively and offensively. I had to make a change to base rules and the "guessing game" became more evident on blitzes based on tendencies. I have noticed at both the big school and small school level offenses take more of a "we are going to do what we do approach." I know I have seen our offense run specific plays to even and odd sets, as well as specific passes to coverage packages (pretty basic of course). Defensively at the small school level it has been a big adjustment going from spread, to wing-t, to flexbone, all in a matter of 3 weeks. I liked the comment made that Defense is tougher Sun-Thurs, but offense is tough on friday nights. I 100% would say their is truth to that.
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