April Fools

I guess I need to start this one out by saying that the following opinions are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect those of any other coaches and players of the San Diego Surge, Surge ownership, the WFA, or anyone else at all…..

We’re about 10 days out of our season, and as funny as it is predictable, smack talking from other teams has started. Of course, that sort of thing coming from players is one thing. When it comes from opposing coaches, while I find it personally amusing (especially when based in complete ignorance), sometimes it takes on a more ominous tone. Such is the case here….having an opposing coach tell a player explicitly that her knees are going to be taken out and that she and her teammates “won’t finish the game” is just pathetic. 

I was going to continue this rant for a little while, but I’ve decided against it - I still have a copy saved, but it just wouldn’t accomplish anything. Our play, as always, will speak for itself for better or worse. But for now, please don’t be an April Fool.

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Instead, let me talk about Bruce Lee, and this goes back a little to what I was talking about last week, in terms of best practices…..one of his famous sayings is “Take what is useful and discard the rest.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve applied that, not only to my martial arts training, but also to football and what other coaches teach. Even coaches that aren’t generally very good can teach me things. I remember seeing a drill in pregame from a team that I knew wasn’t very good, and that I knew wasn’t well coached. But this particular drill was a better variant than the one I was using. So OK…lemme steal that! I put it in the very next practice.

The other night, I was watching a pass protection DVD from Dante Scarnecchia, the recently-retired OL coach for the New England Patriots. I’d seen other DVD’s on different subjects from him, and absolutely took what he was teaching and incorporated it into my playbook. To say I was ready to implement whatever I could on this DVD would be an understatement. I mean, the Patriots do a pretty darn good job, right? Well, he started talking about punches in pass pro, and where and how to punch and I just found myself thinking, “No – I don’t want to do that because I no longer agree with it.” I did pick up a couple of drills from him though! A part of me thought, “Wait a minute….here you are a relatively small-time guy, plodding along in the high school/semi-pro/women’s game – who are you to disagree with a NFL guy?” Well, that is what coaching research has come to now.

It used to be, “back in the day”, that you had to physically go and visit coaches at either clinics or their schools. I spent a week with Mike Sherman during the spring of ’96 at Texas A&M that proved invaluable to how I approach coaching even now. I used to go to USC’s practices every spring, and also went up to UCLA and San Diego State. Heck, you never had real access to NFL guys, for the most part. But now, especially for OL guys, you have the C.O.O.L Clinic each year, and access to their complete series of DVDs, back to 1996. The speakers they get are outstanding (that’s where I saw Coach Scarnecchia). I’m sure that for other positions (especially QB) there is a ton of info out there as well. My point is, that there is almost too much!

If you don’t have a fairly firm idea of what you want to get out of your research then you risk being overloaded with ideas and theories. One of the great things about football is that there are hundreds of ways to get things done, but if you are relatively new in the game that can be a curse as well. For me, I can sift through ideas pretty quickly, knowing whether or not they fit into my general philosophy, discarding those that don’t and then seeing if there is anything else that is useful. That is what I did with Coach Scarnecchia’s pass pro presentation. I’d pretty quickly discarded what he was saying (maybe “discarded” is the wrong word, because it did echo what I’d been teaching for quite some time) and listened to the rest only to see if there was something that was useful (there was, a couple of drills). But if you were an inexperienced coach, and listened to Jim McNally talk about pass pro and then listened to Coach Scarnecchia, you’d have two very experienced (30+ years) NFL guys saying two very different things. If you then tried to take what you thought was the best of each, you’d have a horribly muddled mess and I don’t think your pass pro would improve very much.

So yes, you need to do research. Whether you are brand new or a 25-year veteran coach, you owe it to yourself and your players to stay (or get) current. Your main obstacle? You. Your ego. You can’t rely on what you’ve always done because sooner or later either your players will find out that you’ve been lazy or other coaches/teams will pass you by. Find a coach or a system that makes sense to you and start to implement it or what is being taught. Then as you grow, you will naturally start to add and subtract things. Sometimes you’ll review what you’re teaching and realize that you got away from a key tenet that would make you a lot better. That’s happened to me a few times!

I mentioned last week how I do clinics for other teams. In 2010, I went out to the Midwest and installed the zone run game and pass protection scheme and drills for a team, who are still dear friends of mine. I’ve followed them ever since. Anyway, everything got installed, I answered a few followup questions and then didn’t hear anything for a few weeks. Then a player sent me an e-mail saying, “Coach – how can we have had it down cold in just two days, and now everyone is so confused?” The OL coach never quite bought in to what I taught, I don’t think (he’s no longer with the team). He didn’t believe it could be taught as simply as it really is, so started adding layers of rules. Once that started, the players slowed down, because they had to think too much. He got away from the base tenets and performance started to suffer.

Moral of the story? Do your research, get current, find a system or coach you can relate to. Add from there, but review your work from time to time to ensure that your base tenets are still in place.

Guess what? Next week is GAME WEEK!