Hello and Happy New Year to everyone! Hope you all had a
great holiday season, whichever ones you celebrate.
OK, so quite a bit has been going on since I last wrote….for
me personally, I added on the role of Offensive Coordinator for the National
City Bears, a men’s team that I was previously (2011-2013) either the OL coach,
offensive coordinator or head coach of. It seems like a good time to get back
into the creative side of things on offense. I may have mentioned in previous
posts that I was tweaking my playbook to better streamline my terminology and
system, and taking on this role will allow me to run with it and see what
happens. I’m excited to implement some of the advances in the zone-read game
that I’ve seen over the last couple of seasons, such as second-level defender
reads and interior DL reads, rather than simply reading the backside DE (or
frontside, if running pistol). There are also quite a few wrinkles in blocking
by both fullbacks and H-back type players.
Of course, there is one downside to coaching men, and that
is they use NFL rules, so the screen game (which I also wrote about recently)
is going to need some timing work. But overall, being able to install pretty
much a new playbook from the ground up is exciting!
On the women’s front, the news isn’t so good. Over the
holidays, we’ve learned of two solid teams who aren’t coming back for 2015. The
first, the Las Vegas Showgirlz, is a definite loss to us out west. They were a
division opponent and always a good, physical game to play in. While it is true
they never beat us, it was almost always a challenge. Coach Dion Lee usually
had something up his sleeve for us that we had to be aware of. And even if he
didn’t, he did a good job of making us think he did! Many of the players on
that team are my friends, and there is always the possibility that someone will
be able to resurrect the team, so I hope that happens. I mean, who doesn’t love
a road trip to Vegas?
Not having a competitive team in Vegas means either 1) a
very long and expensive road trip to Utah during the regular season (and a
return one from them) or 2) playing a team that doesn’t really make much sense
from a competitive standpoint. There are a few teams out there that would fit
that bill, and I don’t think they want to play us any more than we want to play
them. It doesn’t benefit either of us. However, we also know that it is still
relatively early, so maybe a team that we don’t know about yet will come over
to the WFA.
The other team was quite a shock, which I just heard about just
Monday: our old nemesis, the Boston Militia. I never, ever thought that they
would close up. It is akin to the Dallas Diamonds folding a couple of years ago
– you just don’t think teams like that will ever go away.
Let me be perfectly
clear – I want teams like the Militia around. Even though we were 0-2 against
them (2011 & 2014 national championships), they brought a standard of
athleticism, coaching and organization unmatched by any other team. They became
the team that everyone else in the country shot for. I never got to know any of
their coaches – they always seemed sort of aloof. They were always cordial, but
definitely business-like and distant. Having said that, I couldn’t help but
respect them. One of their players sent out a Tweet regarding keeping a team
going in Boston. I sincerely hope that is the case.
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