Mental Musings

I mentioned last week what a great sport football is, in part because it demands so much physically AND mentally. Sometimes, even the most talented player cannot thrive or even compete if their mental make-up isn’t up to par. We’ve all seen instances where a more talented team will fall to a team that is more technique-driven, more disciplined and better focused.

I remember coaching against Los Angeles Loyola High School back in 1995 when I was with Fountain Valley. We had the misfortune of playing them in the preseason, and then ended up meeting them again in the playoffs. They were ridiculously easy to game plan against; they sat in the most vanilla 3-4 alignment I’ve ever seen and their blitzes were also very basic. They did not have more than one or two players that had NCAA D-I talent, although I’m sure some of them went to the Ivy League or one of the Academies. They had flawless technique, relentless effort and pretty close to zero penalties. We went 0-2 that year against them.

You can also look no further than the team from the recent movie (and even better book), “When the Game Stands Tall” – Concord De La Salle. Although now they have an abundance of talent, back in the days during the movie and before, they had relatively few players making the jump to D-I ball. But when I watched them, I couldn’t help but say, “Wow!” As an OL coach I’m not a big fan of the Wing-T, but man…..the way they fired off the ball and their precision in doing so, and their effort – it just had me wondering why I sucked so badly. They beat Long Beach Poly, probably the most talent-driven high school in the country, twice. At the time, Poly had almost 5000 kids in the school. In their history, they’ve put over 60 (six-zero!) players into the NFL, and 16 in the last 20 years. We played them in 1997, and they beat us handily. The talent gap was just way too much for us to overcome. So why did they ever lose?

You see that in the women’s game as well. There are a couple of teams over the years that you look at their talent and think “wow….how do they lose?” I’m sure that a couple of coaches have thought the same thing about us, so it’s all good. But what I think happens in many cases is that coaches don’t push their talented players to be truly elite. Maybe they’re afraid of losing their star players by being too tough on them. Or maybe their players are “playing slow” because either they don’t put enough effort in to learning the playbook (which goes back to not being demanding enough) or because the system they’re playing in isn’t clear about what is supposed to happen.

Please note that I’m not putting all of this on coaches – certainly there are plenty of players who believe that their talent is enough to get by. And for 80% of the season that may be true. But champions are made in the other 20%, and the coach can do whatever s/he wants to as far as discipline but until the player herself buys into the fact that if she wants to get a ring she has to do more – expect more – from herself and her teammates, it isn’t going to happen.

What can be put on coaches are the following: 1) Demand excellence from your entire team, including your star players. They should be pushed harder than anyone, not only because they are expected to *be* more, but also because the rest of the team needs to see that no one is above correction and coaching. Needless to say, that also applies to team rules.

2) The system/terminology/communication on both sides of the ball has to allow your players to play “fast”. The trend by many teams is to try and eliminate as many words as possible in the play call, especially on offense. But what I’m finding is that the teams who are truly successful with that are also those who practice more than the twice a week that is typical of teams at our level. We as coaches need to be careful of not trying to mimic too much teams and systems that are successful at the high school or collegiate level, simply because of the advantage in practice time that they have over us.

I do believe that you can play fast at our level, and I believe that you can communicate effectively the play and responsibilities to your offense even when going in a no-huddle mode. I just don’t think you can have a full playbook using a single word system. I used to think that, but in looking around and seeing how much the game has evolved, I now believe that to counter what is being done to you, the calls need to be expanded. This means not only more words for words sake, but a system that also includes the formation, motion and snap count. Now, many teams have decided to go only on “one” and that is fine. It certainly keeps the verbiage down! But if your OL is struggling against a physically superior DL, you’re going to wish that you had some counter that you can use.

So, for me, I would have a “split” call…..first series of calls include snap count, formation and motion. Everyone would go and get into position. The next series of calls would be the snap count and the play itself and then the play is run. That keeps the memorization down – they don’t have to remember the formation, as they’re already in it, and then the snap count is being repeated again to them. So all they have to remember is the motion, and then listen for the play.

Sorry this got a little wordy…sort of ironic, given the topic, huh? But this is the sort of thing I think about each off-season, and I hope each coach out there re-examines what they do each year as well. The women’s game is growing in ability by leaps and bounds. Never has the old adage, “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse” been truer. Even though some teams have already started practices, this is the time to make changes. Doing the same things will probably only get you the same results. Do you want to be good for 80% of the season, or the final 20%?