Hopefully all of us as players or coaches want to think that
we are at the top of our game. The difference between those who think that but
are just standing still and those that are truly moving towards that goal is
that the latter group engages in a honest self-critique often. Now, that
doesn’t mean that you beat yourself up and say “Woe is me – I’m pathetic”, but
it DOES mean undertaking steps to turn your weakness into a strength. And
that’s what I’m doing this offseason, as I do almost every offseason – except
this time I really have an offseason!
Instead of jumping into a men’s team this fall, I was really
looking forward to some true time away from running a team, an offense, or an
OL. This is a change from any time since 2010. Coaching year around for that
long can get to you, if you’re also obsessing with getting better. Continually
coaching teams doesn’t always afford you the ability to undertake large
projects, because the immediate weekly needs of the team take precedence.
The past couple of years I’d really tried to find new ways
to teach run blocking because I wasn’t really satisfied with the results I was
getting from my teams, men or women. So whether it was technique tweaks, new
drills, or scheme adjustments, that is what I was focused on. I’m not done with
that just yet, but I do feel like I made some progress.
This time it’s a bit bigger project, mainly because I don’t
have 24 years experience in doing it like I do with blocking schemes and
techniques. Learning how to better attack pass coverages is the project. What
I’m learning is that, per the popular saying, “There’s levels to this s**t.”
I’d allowed myself to get a bit intellectually lazy while
calling games over the past few years. I relied on other coaches or sometimes
my quarterback to let me know which pass plays would work. And I knew which
route combinations would likely work against the deep defenders, but I didn’t
really understand how the underneath coverage worked or how to attack it. What
is scary is that the last few years of offense have been pretty good!
At this point, I’d like to highly recommend Coach Steve
Axman’s book, “Attacking
Coverages With the Passing Game”. I picked it up earlier this year at a
coaches clinic and now dove headfirst into it. Funny side story, as I was
looking up the link info on Amazon, I saw that there was a review from my
friend and competitor John Konecki of the Chicago Force. This is the second
time that I’m aware of that we’ve been using the same source material for our
teams.
Anyway, the challenge then, as with anytime you are looking
at new or different concepts, is how do you make this fit into your current
terminology and system? Coach Axman shows a ton of ways to attack different
coverages, many of which we don’t currently employ and which might have been
useful against Seattle (who did a great job against our passing game) and certainly
Boston. But then it comes back to “how do we integrate this?”
When coaching men (and now sometimes with the women as well)
you get all the time, “Coach, why don’t we do this, or that?” My answer is
always the same – if you bring me a play, you also have to tell me how we can
fit it in to what we already do, from a terminology standpoint. And there
better be more than just some new play – what are the counters, the
play-actions, the variants off of it? If you don’t consider all that, then you
don’t have a system, you have a collection of plays.
I’ve had players do that too – they’ve sat down with me and
said, “OK, if we add this, then we can do this and this, and this is what we’ll
call it and this is how we’ll teach it” and one of those sessions has resulted
in me keeping the package (my 4 vertical plays) in my playbook for a few years
now.
So, this offseason has already been a productive one and
it’s still early! I can confidently say I’m better now than I was on August 2.
Hopefully everyone reading this will become better as well, whenever your
offseason is. All it takes is admitting to yourself what you don’t already
know.
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Here's the details on the San Diego Football Camp in November. You might want to get your hotel reserved soon!
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