Lessons learned from the season 2022

We’re 0-9 currently but if you pay attention and manage the pain, you can learn a lot from seasons like these.

That I love a spread offensive coordinator throwing to an outnumbered receiver and scream at the kid that he “has to make somebody miss!!” Fukin clown

I hear that sh!t more and more it seems. It’s bad coaching. That’s modern “block somebody” coaching and I love hearing it from the other guys

I hate the "block somebody" guys. We had an assistant who coached running backs that would yell that shitt a few years back. Of course he had part time attendance and a full time visor. His film time was like 7 or 8 minutes a week.

One game he yelled "OLINE YOU GUYS HAVE TO FRICKEN BLOCK SOMEBODY!!!"  I didn't say anything during the game but I made a cutup of all the pressures where the offensive line blocked their responsibilities but the defense brought 6 or 7 and the back didn't pick up his responsibility or the QB didn't throw hot. 

Then I politely asked him to not talk to my group again and do his job and things would be smooth sailing. 

We build this into our practices. We do some random stuff that we think helps. One of the things that is kind of harmless but really bothers the kids is we will just randomly give a kid 2 updowns or 2 pushups or whatever but nothing that requires any major physical demand. We tell them ahead of time. Hey this is a focus period. We are trying to get in your head a little. We are trying to force you out of focus. If you get the two updowns, it's not your fault. It's to simulate something that went wrong for you that you have no control over and need to move on from. Might be a bad play, might be a bad call. Might be any number of things. But still...you have to move on.

I was shocked when we started doing it how many kids let it ruin their day. Literally 2 updowns or pushups and they couldn't refocus. It doesn't take long before they start to just do them and move on. Sometimes we will let them give it back to the coaches and tell them we can't always control what happens to us either and there are times we need to move on. This isn't the only thing we do but it does make a difference and helps players be mindful of their ability or lack of ability to focus after adversity in a game. 

Don't assume a kid knows how to block a punt.............

Last night JV- Free release for a DE and absolutely clobbers the punter. As the punter is doing a backflip his foot makes contact with the ball. We get a roughing the punter call.

Now that I've been retired for a while one thing that I notice is how short the season is.

We lost 7 games this year. 6 of them by one score (8, 7, 4, 4, 3, 1). Five of those were to opponents ranked in the top 10 in their division.

Friday night was our last game. We lost a shootout to the #3 team in the state 52-48. A few weeks ago we lost to the #1 team in the state 27-26. In between we lost to the #4 team in state 14-7. So we spanned the spectrum in terms of offensive and defensive performance but always came up short.

I’m still trying go figure out the lessons in it all but one thing I know is that in 6 of our 7 losses we had one takeaway or less, three of the losses we had one and three of the losses we had zero. My early conclusion is we have to get the ball back, which is obvious. We practice and emphasize pressuring the football daily to get more fumbles and we also try to set up calls to get us in situations to play one or two safeties free on obvious passing downs to gives a better shot at getting interceptions.

We started 15 sophomores so the future looks bright but it’s pretty disappointing to have a shot to win those 7 games and come up short again and again.

Personnel > scheme in HSFB. I knew this for years, but boy was it reinforced this year.

We had a great season. 8-2, third year of football at our school. We didn’t have a single lineman that could bench press 200, only one could squat 225. But we coached our butts off to get to 8-0.

But the last two games were just tough to watch. We had great game plans on both sides. Our kids were literally calling out the plays from the opposing offenses. Come game time, we would have 10 guys giving great effort and all in the right spots. The problem? We couldn’t tackle the darn ball carriers. We had coached tackling hard since July. The opponent skill guys were simply just BFS. Gave up 40+ in both games after giving up <20 per game all year.

That said, I learned you can absolutely coach your way to lessen the personnel deficit. Put your guys in the right position more times than not. Make the BFS opponent’s job as difficult as possible and you have a chance. But personnel deficits will get you beat more times than not.

I think you have to look at why your players are so weak. In HS football S&C is part of the job. 

Those are junior high lifting numbers

Similar situation to our playoff loss. We were a bit undersized upfront, they conversely averages 6'3 280 upfront with a couple of FBS guys. We knew exactly where they were going, but when their dude who can bench 400+ is laying people out....aint much you can do.

No help is better than bad help. As long as kids are giving great effort and attitudes are staying positive,the season is not near as rough when wins are not there.

Tend to agree. 


But it's also pretty evident that distance learning/COVID has dramatically shifted how our kids learn.