New Tricks for Old Dogs

Man….what a long bus ride! Reno this past weekend was fun but my old butt can do without 11 and 12 hour bus trips. I like the Storm team – they have some athletes with some speed, and they play hard. Their coach has them on the right track. Hopefully those ladies will all stay with it and come back next year.

Next, a camp update: We’re working on nailing down the exact dates now – that’s our next major step. We need to contact the HC at the high school we’re having it at (we’re not using a park for this) and see when exactly his season ends and if they’re going to have any soccer tournaments or anything. I can say this: As of now we have coaches from Central Pennsylvania, the Dallas area (3 of them) and Kansas City who will be part of the instructors. We know all of them, and they are all coaches we’ve coached with or against and coaches that we’ve been dying to work with at some point, so we’re very excited about that. We also have at least one other coach who is coming down with 10 of her players to observe and attend. That’s the update for now, I’ll post more each week.

So, I talked a couple of weeks ago about the 126 DVD’s I bought from the C.O.O.L clinic (www.thecoolclinic.com). I’ve watched three of them so far and just from those three, here is what I picked up:

·         A technique to prevent the quandary of an OL vs a LB – do I haul ass to get to him only to have him “backdoor” me, or do I “waddle” up to him and take the risk of not getting there at all?

·         A hand placement correction to help with OL who are in contact with a defender on a stretch or outside type of play, and your back cuts it up allowing that defender to “fall off” and make the play.

·         A companion play off of a two-back inside zone play, to be used as a “check with me”.

·         An alternate way to block the backside of that inside zone play.

·         An alternate way to think about using the fullback on the backside of the inside zone.

·         A footwork change to allow a tackle trying to reach a playside DE more efficiently.

·         A run drill for use with pulling linemen to ensure they’re running in balance through contact.

·         A pass protection circuit.

·         A footwork coaching point versus outside rushers in pass pro.

·         Plus a couple more points that I need to check my notes for!

Now, I can remember early in my coaching career going to a clinic and taking bunches and bunches of notes. I still take notes when I go, but now I hope for one or two nuggets of info and I’ll consider it a success. But I’ve been doing this for 24 years now, and have gone to clinics for 23 of them, spoken at clinics and given clinics. All that stuff up above was new info for me!

I’m pretty stoked, and so were the veteran players I’ve shared these with so far. One thing that is cool about coaching at this level is that there is no pre-set time limit that you get your players for. I mean, in high school, I’d coach freshmen during their summer camp, see most sophomores only during spring, and then spend hours and hours with guys during their junior and senior years. Here I’ve had my left tackle for 10 seasons, another guard/tackle for 6 and my right tackle for 4. Those players pretty much know my whole repertoire of drills, techniques and terms. I was excited to be able to give them some new information, and they were excited to get it.

The point is, don’t rest on your laurels. Keep learning, keep evolving. It’s funny, when I learned a majority of the stuff I use now, it was in a 2-back West Coast system. My license plate is still “WC OFNSE”. Over the years I’ve evolved into more of a spread guy, the bigger the spread the better! But now after watching some of the NFL two-back stuff, while I may not go back to a true two-back system, I’m definitely thinking about how I can use those same concepts in what we do now….could be a formation tag or a motion, or…who knows?

That’s all for now….Central Cal showdown is in two weeks!