Expectations & Review

While watching one of the women’s games this past weekend, I realized there is an interesting difference at the semi-pro level between the women’s and men’s game, and it lies in the expectations of coaches. When talking about plays/system/scheme I’m starting to believe that coaches in general overestimate what male players can do and underestimate what female players can do.

To be sure, at the elite level of the women’s game, this isn’t the case at all. I know staffs from across the country who are extremely demanding of their players, and if you looked solely at their schemes they are every bit as complex and advanced as their male counterparts. But at the “regular” level of the game, there just seems to be so much of the same ol’, same ol’ and I *know* the players are capable of more! You see teams lined up in an “I” formation probably 90% of the time and running three plays out of it. Or Double Wing teams….which is OK, if you look crisp. I do wish teams would remember that we’re in the entertainment business. Boring can be OK if you’re winning, but if you’re boring AND losing, you won’t have a fan base for very long.

Me personally, I probably tend to overestimate on both sides what my players are capable of. I always think I’m going to install a bunch of stuff, and then have to dial it back a little. The difference is that my female players will never say, “Oh, we can’t do that” whereas my guys will. With the women, I have to look at what our results are and what the reality is out on the field, and then dial it back. With the guys, they’ll flat out tell me something isn’t going to work before they even try it. In that respect, I definitely prefer the women’s approach – “OK, cool – let’s do this” and then trusting me to adjust. I think that with the guys, they’ve grown up thinking about the game certain ways, and those high school or JC thought patterns tend to stay with them. When they’re presented with something new, only those with adaptable personalities are able to go with it.

Anyway, I’m not sure why there is a difference, it just seems to me that there is. One other thing I’ve noticed is that men don’t seem to have the ability to do things at a learning tempo – it’s like they’re afraid to look like they’ve lost at anything. They don’t see the big picture – that we’re trying to learn a new concept or new play, and might have to run it a bunch of times in a row to get it right. 

Sometimes it’s OK if you have someone from the same side of the ball as the opposing player. But if it is an offensive drill and you’ve got defenders over there (or vice versa), you can forget about a learning tempo. It is flat out competition. And I can see the guys’ point (sometimes) – they’re out there to compete and make each other better. I get that. But in order to get better at something, you usually have to start out doing it slowly and make a few mistakes along the way. That’s why these last few weeks with the Nighthawks in no pads were so valuable. At appropriate times, guys were flying around making plays. But at others we were able to get some stuff down before stuff starts happening really fast – like next week in pads!

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Over the last couple of weeks in the women’s game, one score stood out to me above all others: Portland beating Seattle handily (40 to 0). That signals a sea change in the Pacific Northwest, where for the last few years Seattle has reigned supreme. I’m not sure if this is a result of Portland improving *that much* after the merger, or of Seattle dropping off. Quite honestly, right now I’m thinking there is a bit of a drop off in Seattle, because I saw their 13-0 score over the Tacoma Trauma and was surprised by that. However, the Fighting Fillies and the Shockwave combining forces had to have made them better. Either way, Portland is the team to beat up there, and if they truly did improve that much, then the War Angels had better look out.

Speaking of the War Angels, looks like they’ll finally play a team worth playing this week, when they face the Sin City Trojans. Both teams are at 3-0, and the Trojans haven’t been scored on yet. I’m going to pick the War Angels by a comfortable (28+) margin.

There’s been some debate about which team is better, the Chicago Force or the Dallas Elite. I don’t know for sure, although right now I’m leaning towards the Elite. However, in looking at remaining schedules, the Force also play the Divas, they play Boston AND they play Pittsburgh. If Chicago gets through their schedule unscathed, then I think the tide turns towards them. The Elite aren’t likely to be tested again until maybe when they play the War Angels, and even then I think they have way too much speed for Central Cal to handle. There’s some talk about the Elite’s game this week against KC as being a big one. I’m sure they’d love to hype it as that, but I’m not seeing it as close.

Over in the IWFL, there have been a couple of rating systems that have teams other than Utah as #1. Obviously these people have never watched football in their life. Sure, Utah’s strength of schedule may stink, but in the IWFL, saying someone has a strong schedule is like saying Doc was the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs. Utah remains a Top 10 team in the nation – not just in the IWFL, but in the WFA as well. Too bad we won’t find out how good they are.

More Lessons & Wisdom

Recently I came across an article from a blog written by an Assistant Basketball Coach. It offered 37 tips for assistant coaches, and many of them were really valuable. The entire article is here (it also includes a link to the blog itself), and I copied the most relevant tips to our semi-pro level below, then added my comments in italics.

1. Ultimately, your job is to make your head coach look good. Being a head coach is much more about being a CEO than an Xs and Os strategist. Yes, the head coach will get most of the credit, but they will also get all of the blame. Their job is to win, have a detailed vision and to be the leader. Your job is to help them execute their vision. It’s not your show, it’s the head coach’s show.

As an assistant myself, sometimes this is hard to remember. This equally applies if it is a coordinator-to-head coach relationship, or an assistant-to-coordinator relationship.

2. Understand and teach the game inside and out. Know how to attack opponent weaknesses, win with the players you’ve got, teach fundamentals and research and teach the best drills to prepare your position group.

A lot of assistants are pretty good at all but the last one on this list…..at our level, you have to have drills that keep your players engaged. If you do all the same things all the time, they get stale. Now, there are a set of “everyday” drills that I’ve done for years, but they only take up 5-6 minutes of our Indy time – the rest is spent doing other things.

3. Traits head coaches are looking for in assistant coaches: loyal, hard-working, reliable and trust-worthy. 

I touched on this in my blog here, at least the loyalty part. Reliability will get you a long ways at our level. I can’t tell you how many coaches I’ve worked with that just wouldn’t show sometimes, or show up late. Meanwhile, the practice plans you worked on are now out the door and you have to adjust on the fly. Efficiency in practice then suffers, not to mention that the players now think punctuality isn’t something that is important.

4. Not everyone on the staff will get along—there will always be jealousy, personal differences, age differences but in order to win you must be able to put that aside to work with each other!

5. Coaching is a family—build your network. Outside of your head-to-head competitions, consider other coaches as your co-workers, not enemies. Build a strong network. You will rely on them heavily throughout career.

Both of these sort of go together and should be obvious, but they’re not always.

6. Best way to move up from where you are today into a new position? Be the best at your current position! Treat your role and current school as your dream job, and work like it’s where you’ve always dreamed to be.

I talked about this in my blog here. It was one of my best-reviewed posts.

7. Assistant coaches on your staff (or your opponents) can be in the position to hire you one day—you are building a track record with not just your head coach, but assistant coaches and opponents. Keep it professional and courteous.

Great advice. As longtime NFL assistant coach Bill Muir says, “You write your resume every day when you come to work.”

9. Your players will mirror you. You want them to do it right and pay attention to detail—you must take the lead and see that you take the little details serious, too. Do what you say you will do. Follow through!

So true. Comes back to #3 – reliability also.

10. It’s never “I," “me" or “mine," instead use “we," “us," and “our."

I told the offense this year, “If something goes wrong, it’s on me. If something goes right, it’s on you.”

16. Think ahead, anticipate what’s next. What will your head coach need today/this week?

Don’t be one of “those guys” who has to be told to do everything. Take some initiative!

18. When evaluating players it’s critical you rule out players who will be a waste of time in terms of leading you on a wild goose hunt. ……. If you know problems will arise down the road, it’s best to find other players who have less off-field issues. The risk isn’t often worth the reward.

Boy does this ever ring true at the semi-pro level as well! Coach Christensen, when I saw him a few weeks ago, said, “Don’t become a whore to talent.” It is so easy to do, too….someone is a lot better than the person you have in a particular spot, and you want him to play for you. So you let your team standards start to slip in order to keep Mr. All-Star around. In the long run, it won’t be worth it. Coach Mike Sherman said it even more succinctly back in 1996 when he told me, “Don’t recruit a**h***s.”

21. How can you separate yourself—what value can you add to a staff? What can you become indispensable at? Scouting, recruiting, relationships with prep coaches, developing players, leadership?

This is a great self-evaluation question every coach should ask themselves.

24. Be organized—organization brings direction to chaos! A prepared player never flinches, nor do prepared coaches!

This is huge. Have a plan.

27. If you lack experience or talent, you can overcome your weaknesses by being hardest worker who brings relentless energy—in the same way that you teach your players that “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard."

Pretty self-explanatory! When I started out, I quickly realized how much I didn’t know, so threw myself into getting better. Now, I’m accused of being a “grinder”, but really being organized and working hard is just the way I was taught.

35. What would a scouting report on your own team/unit look like? Be brutally honest with yourself on which weaknesses your players need to improve on. Build on what they are really good at, show them how to get better!

That’s what the title of this blog site is all about – “You’re either coaching it, or allowing it to happen.” If your guys are doing something on film incorrectly, then you either taught them to do that, or you’re allowing them to continue doing it.

I hope at least a few of these pointers are helpful. I know that sometimes you may think, “Man – that’s a lot of work for a volunteer job”, but we’re definitely not in it for the money, so you can only be in it because you love coaching. No other reason. So just remember where the Big Time is……

High Expectations

First, a Super Bowl review…..Obviously I was wrong about the outcome of the game. Denver’s defense was way too much for the Panthers to handle. I’d heard that Carolina was going to run (or should run) Newton 15-20 times this game in order to keep Denver’s defense guessing. Well, whether their original plan was to do that or not, I have no idea, but it sure seemed like they needed to do more of it. I think Newton only had maybe 5 designed runs in the game. In the pregame show, they even acted out one of the Panthers’ trademark runs – counter read left with an option to the right. I saw them run it once during the game. They had success early with an option, but never really came back to it. A couple of times it looked like they had the option pretty open, but either Newton didn’t read it or it wasn’t a play that allowed him to read. I don’t know…..not sure what the plan was. I would’ve liked to have seen more of what got them there.

Same thing with screens and rollouts…..something, anything to take some pressure off of not only Newton, but the OL. The tackles were highlighted the most, but I saw breakdowns at LG and C as well. They hit a nice screen early to the TE, but never came back to it. It was almost like OC Mike Shula had them in his First 15 script, but then forgot to look at what worked.

Anyway, congratulations to the Broncos and Peyton Manning on a fine career. I hope he walks away now with his head held high. Also a shout out to former Aggies Gary Kubiak and Von Miller!

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I’ve been contemplating the Nighthawks’ upcoming season and also talked very briefly with a women’s coach about their team. The Nighthawks are in our second year, and the women’s team is in their third year. The Nighthawks’ expectations are through the roof and them women’s team is still on the upswing.

What is the main predictor of success in either the men’s or the women’s game? The answer is simple: practice attendance. The success that the SoCal Scorpions had from 2005-07 and the Surge had from 2011-2014 had a lot to do with commitment from the players to be at practice. In 2015, the Surge had a striking drop in practice attendance percentage. “Other things” just kept coming up for a lot of people. As a result, a team that had a lot more talent than the 2013 team ended up with the same 9-2 record. We always say that family and work come first as priorities, but football has to be *a* priority. It doesn’t have to be the top one, but it has to be on the short list. Players and coaches have to stop finding excuses for not being at practice, and instead find ways to get there. For years, we prided ourselves on a 90+% attendance rate. This year it was probably down to 75%. That’s good enough for a winning record, but when your expectations are to compete for a national championship, it’s not going to work. On the men’s side, the 2012 National City Bears were pretty good in that area, and we won a league championship in large part because of the commitment from players.

Practice Attendance goes hand-in-hand with “buy in” from the team to what the coaches are teaching. Not too long ago on the women’s side, it didn’t take much to get buy in from the players. They were so new that they didn’t know any better, and had no exposure to other staffs and ways of doing things. We were fortunate that with the Surge we had a very solid, experienced staff of teachers. Players that came from other teams generally were pleased with how they were now getting coached when they came over to us. The biggest thing with female players is that they want to know “why” they have to do things. As long as you can articulate that to them, they’re good with it. But if you take the “because I said so” approach, they will tune you out in a heartbeat.

On the guys’ side, buy in is a little trickier. Guys have usually been coached by a lot of different people. They may be very set in their ways and resistant to change. They may think they’re too good to be coached (in fairness, some of the female players are getting that way now as well). I firmly believe that it is the coaches’ job to create that buy in….even if the players are the ones that ultimately have to decide whether the team is more important than their ego.

As an Offensive Coordinator, I have to show each position how the offense will benefit them. In my personal philosophy, that means showing how a balanced offense opens up opportunities for everyone to be successful. There are trade-offs, to be sure: Wide receivers need to block in the run game for the RB’s. But when defenders become focused on stopping the run, it opens up opportunities for the WR in the passing game. RB’s may have to pick up blitzes in the pass game, but that also increases their receiving yardage opportunities via screens. Offensive linemen get the benefit of defenders not knowing what is coming next, so play slower. I sell the mantra of “making the defense play with doubt” a lot.

So when you talk about team expectations, take into consideration more than just what your raw talent will get you. Is it better to have “Athlete A” who is about a 90 on the talent scale, but only shows up when he feels like it for practice and consistently misses assignments during the games, or “Athlete B” who is a still solid 75 on the talent scale, but attends every practice, gets in sync with his teammates and rarely makes a mental mistake? I know who I’m taking.

Our “buy in” starts this Saturday at tryouts….I’ll talk about it next week.

Identity Crisis

One of my very first posts was sort of a background piece on what my favorite offense is. You can read that here. What I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks is that some teams have lost their way, strayed away from what got them good. In particular, my favorite college team, Texas A&M, has really strayed….they’re almost unrecognizable from when Johnny Manziel was lighting up the scoreboards.

Certainly, differences in personnel have something to do with that. The Aggie’s QB’s are inexperienced (although so was Manziel) and both sometimes seem a bit lost. Also, it doesn’t appear that A&M’s list of NFL-ready OL is going to continue this year. Both the run blocking and absolutely the pass pro have taken steps backwards this year. But to go from a team who rivaled Baylor and Oregon in how fast they got plays off to one who almost seems like they want to milk the clock, and who went from a pure version of the Air Raid offense to some sort of “almost Auburn, but sort of something else” offense created nothing more than some mush. Offensive Coordinator Jake Spavital is taking a lot of the heat (and rightly so – it’s his name on the offense), but I’m wondering if the off-season hire of Dave Christensen doesn’t have more to do with it. Coach Christensen was hired as the OL coach and run game coordinator, and it appears that the move away from Air Raid style play calling may be related to his influence. That’s not necessarily a knock on Coach Christensen either – he was hired to bring his experience in.

That extra influence gets to my point about an Identity Crisis…..you can’t have too many cooks in your offense. When I was at Fountain Valley High, there were some things we just weren’t going to do – it wasn’t in our DNA (or that of our OC). Right now, there are some things I would only do in an extreme situation – like line up under center in an I formation. That’s just not what I want to do.

My base offense these days is shotgun spread. We feature a zone and gap-based run game, some fly sweep, various screens and a complete drop back package, mostly out of one back sets. Now, within that base offense, I can tweak the playcalls to fit my personnel.  In 2012 with my men’s team, we had two absolute studs at RB, so I ran more two back sets than normal. But it was still out of the ‘gun, and we still had 3 WR (didn’t have much in the way of a TE). If my QB is a runner, then I add in more options for him to do so. But it doesn’t change the base offense!

If my OL is huge, then the zone game becomes more prevalent, while if they’re more mobile (read: smaller), then I use more of the gap schemes and perimeter game. Again, it doesn’t change who we are. If a player comes to me and says, “Hey Coach – why don’t we run this XYZ play?”, I’ll consider it, if there is a good way to work it into what we do already. I don’t want to stray too much from our identity, at least during the season.

The time to look outside for ideas is now. There’s stuff that I see from time to time that I really like. The first thing I do when I see something is write it down, in play diagram form. Then, I look at it to see if what is being done fits into existing terminology. If it does, then great – it goes into the playbook. If not, then I see if I can either a) tweak a piece of the play to fit into existing terms without losing what I liked about the play in the first place, or b) see if I can add a piece of terminology that can be used in future situations as well. If I can’t do either, then chances are I won’t keep the play. I really don’t want to add terminology if it is just going to be used in one play. (The exception is for trick plays – those can be one-offs.)

The coaching point to all this, is stay true to yourself. If you’re the coordinator, it’s your name out there. In Coach Spavital’s case, he’s probably going to get himself fired after this season. It’s OK to consider outside ideas, but you’ve ultimately got to do what you think is best for the team. Getting too far away from that slows down your thinking during a game, and probably (my guess only, as an entirely unqualified psychiatrist) means you don’t exude as much confidence in your game plan to your players as you normally would. That can start a death spiral that overcomes your offense.

Know yourself and be true to yourself.  

The Big Time

One of the very best words of wisdom I’ve ever received in my coaching career came from the late, great Bob Cope. Coach Cope was a long time DC in the SEC and Big 12, along with being a HC at Portland State. At a coaches’ clinic in, oh, I don’t know….the late 90’s sometime, myself and three other high school coaches sat down to talk to Coach. At the time, I only thought about how these words applied to coaches, but have also come to understand that they apply to players as well. Here they are:

“The Big Time is wherever you’re at right now.”

Let that sink in for a minute……Coach went on to elaborate that no matter if you were on your way up, on your way down or perfectly content where you’re at, the Big Time is there too. He said that too many coaches “save” their efforts for when they are back in the Big Time, noting that sometimes they feel lower levels of play are beneath them, and more importantly, beneath their best efforts.

I don’t know if I ever felt that way before I heard that phrase, but I can guarantee you that I’ve never felt that way since. I’ve tried to approach every team I’ve coaches with the same enthusiasm, energy and attention to detail. I once coached my 9-year old son’s winter ball baseball team – purely a developmental thing. I brought sort of a football staff mindset to it though, in that the coaches I had, I assigned to specific areas of the game, infield, outfield, pitching, hitting, etc., and then asked them to concentrate on those areas during the game. Also, I handed out practice plans before each practice so that we were all on the same page. One of the parents said, “Isn’t this a little much for a 9 year old team?” (Please note that my “football approach” only extended to organization, not to intensity or competitive fire.) My response sort of stunned her, “Do they deserve any less than my best only because they’re 9?” She said, “I’ve never thought about it that way. Thank you!”

Since hearing those words of wisdom from Coach, I’ve coached in maybe the most competitive high school division in California (Southern Section, Division I), won two national championships with women, won a league championship with grown men and given youth clinics to as young as 8 year olds. In each case, my focus was the same: do the job to the absolute best of my abilities, no matter the level of play.

As a coach, I think you owe your best to your players, and more importantly, to yourself. You never know who is going to be impressed by your work. As Coach Bill Muir said, “You add to your résumé every day you go to work.” In addition, I don’t think you’d ever want to look back at a season or career and think, “Man, I could’ve done a better job if only I did my best.”

For players it is much the same way. I’ve heard players say over and over again, “Oh, it’s only semi-pro” when it comes to showing up for practice or studying their playbook. But then the team loses a close game and they say, “Man, we’re too talented to lose like that.” Well, no – you’re not. You may be physically gifted, but that doesn’t mean you’re a talented team. Football is much too complex and team-dependent for that. This isn’t basketball where one player can take over a game, or baseball where the pitcher can be dominant all by himself. In football you’re only as good as your least-talented player. And if your physically gifted players are making mistakes because they haven’t put in the effort to learn their assignments, then you as a team are going to suck. Period.

If you want to be part of a Big Time team, then you have to be all-in for that. If you’re on your way down the ladder of playing levels, then show the guys who are on the way up how it is done. If you’re on the way up, then take in all you can to make yourself better. If you’re content where you’re at, then you still know damn well that winning is a lot more fun than losing, so do your part to make some great memories in the time you have left.

The Big Time is a great place, no matter where you find it.

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The 2^nd Annual RS Football Camp has had a great response in the last week. I’m looking forward to seeing the new faces who’ve said they’re coming out. We’ve got more people from the Central Cal area, from LA, Arizona and from Vegas than we had last year, and I’m excited about that.

Please remember to note on the Facebook Event page your name, team, position and t-shirt size. That’ll put you into our “confirmed” status, but also remember that only those who pre-pay are guaranteed t-shirts. You can do so via PayPal to kmring@cox.net.

Thanks!

Camp Update & Time of Reflection

As we head into the start of the offseason, the luxury of doing work without a weekly deadline (with the exception of this blog!) is nice. I’ve begun looking at everything I did last year and seeing where we were weak and where we may have been strong but could do better. There is no sense of complacency in any area. I’m especially looking at my own communication skills to improve in that area. In that regard, I would highly recommend Proactive Coaching (www.proactivecoaching.info or you can find them on Facebook). I think you’ll find their material interesting and thought-provoking.

I’m excited to announce (95% sure of his attendance) another great guest coach for our camp in November – Head Coach Rick Rasmussen from the Utah Falconz. Rick brings a diversity of knowledge and experience. He has some great ideas on leadership, along with the wealth of knowledge he brings in the area of option offense. If you’ve seen any film at all on the Falconz, you’ll know he had their offense running on all cylinders, which was very impressive for a first-year team.

Coach Rasmussen will join the other previously announced coaches from around the country: Matt Russell, Angel Rivera III and Billy Hughes, Jr. from Dallas; Ed Williams from Kansas City and Lori Locust from Pennsylvania.

We’re hoping to have a host hotel announced soon – that is our next priority. Also, I’ll be creating a Facebook page as another avenue for information. If anyone feels like letting their creative side come out, we’re looking for a simple logo. Just contact me at kmring@gmail.com.

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Now the reflection…..I received a very sad piece of news from the men’s side of the game today. A player that I coached against the last couple of years sustained a severe neck injury during a game a couple of weeks ago. He was paralyzed, but seemed to be fighting through it. I heard Monday that he passed away from cardiac arrest Sunday night.

He was a defensive lineman and apparently tackled the RB on a simple dive play. I have not seen the play on film, all I know is it seemed routine and that the RB is carrying around an awful lot of guilt.

This type of tragedy should serve as a reminder for all coaches, but especially women’s coaches whose players probably don’t have the neck strength of their male counterparts, to emphasize head up tackling and blocking. See your target! The head should NEVER be the initial point of contact in any block or tackle.

I think a lot of times, proper tackling form is taught in preseason, perhaps in shorts only and then forgotten about – there are more pressing items, with games coming each week and all the adjustments that need to be made and all…..but we all have a responsibility to keep our players as safe as possible. Things may still happen – football is a dangerous game – but we have to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to teach, emphasize and remind our players of proper, safe technique. If you as a coach have any questions about how to do that, I would highly encourage you to contact USA Football at http://usafootball.com/headsup for more information.

Also, I heard about the passing of Veronica “Ro” Gazzillo of the Chicago Force. I never met her, but we used to banter back and forth on Dion Lee’s message board. She seemed like a wonderful person, and the news saddened me greatly. I lost a very dear friend the same way a few years ago, so know exactly what those close to her are feeling. So please….if any of you are ever feeling alone or with no way out, please, please reach out. Let’s all do whatever we can to lessen the chances of any more tragedies, on or off the field.

Be good, be safe….see you next week.

(PS - next week's blog will be out on Thursday, as Coach Suggett and I are meeting on the camp Wednesday night)

Championship Week

This is it….what we’ve worked for since February. We’re headed to Chicago tomorrow to play against the Boston Militia on Saturday. Even after 24 years of coaching, in over 275 games, the realization that win or lose, this is it, always strikes me as odd. I guess it is because these types of games come around rather infrequently. Either you’re not even good enough to make the playoffs, or you make it to the championship game. Any other scenario and that last game comes as sort of a shock. You could see it on the faces of the teams we beat during this playoff run, the realization that it is over for them. It’s a tough feeling, especially when the result isn’t obvious until the very end.

The preparation coming into the game is tough as well. The evaluation process is much more complicated. Unless you are absolutely certain that your athletes are markedly better across the board, then you have to find an edge. If you don’t you find yourself in danger of being outcoached. I believe that we fell into that trap in 2011 when we played Boston. However, I also like to think that we learned from that and it carried us through the 2012 win, and that we’ve maintained that lack of assumption.

Unfortunately, I also believe that arrogance (for lack of a better word) may have affected at least one of our playoff opponents – there’s no other way to look at how they aligned against us and didn’t adjust to what we were doing. I can only pray that others who watch the championship game won’t say the same of us this year. I can assure you that we’re giving this game our very best as a coaching staff.

Of course, things may happen during the game that make everyone watching (including us) think, “WTF?” So be it. It comes with the territory of scrutiny in a big game.

So many things come into play when trying to decide how to approach a game like this. You have no common opponents and Boston is one of the few staffs where I don’t know a single coach on it. So trying to evaluate their athletes versus yours is tricky, as is trying to get an idea of what the coaching staff’s personality is. We know they’ve played some quality teams, Chicago and DC in particular. DC has excellent personnel but a completely different offensive style and personality from us. Chicago is more similar, but the minor points between our respective players are more difficult to pinpoint. So will what we want to do in certain situations work? What changes, if any, do we need to make to increase our chances? What do we have to look out for? Is there anything we just have to scrap completely?

I think those items are what makes football the greatest game imaginable for a coach. So many variables – not only the physical, but also the mental – of both players and coaches. Neither team has been in a particularly close game at the end. Although we’ve had close scores at the end of the first half (even trailing against Seattle), we’ve come out and dominated the second half. Although we know the final scores of Boston’s games, and know that they were in at least one track meet against DC, we don’t know their mindsets in all of those games, whether they’ve ever felt any pressure. We hope we’ll find out how they react to it on Saturday.

I hope to meet any of you that happen to be in Chicago this weekend – please come up and say hi. I’ll be taking a short vacation after the game, so there will not be a blog next Wednesday. Depending on how much there is to think about after Saturday, it may come out on Thursday or Friday, but no promises. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon!

Quick Thoughts and Updates

This has been a really busy week, with our preparations for the big game against Kansas City. They have a ton of weapons on offense – fortunately for us they look an awful lot like us, so it’s not like we have to prepare against completely foreign plays. But usually preparing against great athletes is tougher than preparing against different plays. Of course, we have some people of our own, and that’s what will make this game such a great one!

*****

Many of you have been asking for camp updates. Please be assured that everything is still a go for November 15-16, with informal events that Friday night as well. Please understand that right now our focus is solely on advancing to and winning the National Championship. Once our season ends, then our focus will go 100% to finishing up the camp details. We were able to do a lot of the groundwork already, and at the latest, when the season ends August 2 we’ll still be three and a half months out.

*****

I get a chance tomorrow to help out a friend of mine by teaching, and that’s always a good thing. He’s the president of a youth league and coached my son, Travis, when he played. He’s also been a big supporter of the Surge. So when he was appointed as president, I wanted to do what I could to help out. So he’s got five or so OL coaches coming out tomorrow and I’ll go over some thoughts with them and hopefully give them some value. It’s always a little nerve-wracking to present yourself as a kind of an expert – at least it is for me – but I never like to pass up an opportunity to become a better communicator and teacher, so we’ll give it a go.

*****

I did want to give you some sort of “nuggets of knowledge” this week, so I’m borrowing this from the website www.footballscoop.com. If you haven’t been there before, you owe it to yourself to check it out every once in awhile at least. They have great articles and videos, plus have absolutely the latest info on who is coaching where, from the NFL to D-I college, to the collegiate lower levels, all the way down to high school.

So from there, please find 17 Bullet Points of Lane Kiffin’s Coaching Philosophy. Now, I’m not much of a Kiffin fan. However, I’m also smart enough to see that he’s pretty right on with these points, and if it makes you better, you shouldn’t really care who the info came from. Here you go:

The 17 bullet points of Lane Kiffin's coaching philosophy

It doesn't have quite the impact of Martin Luther's 95 theses, but former USC head coach and current Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin laid out 17 bullet points of his coaching philosophy on Wednesday night at the Angelo Football Clinic.

Other than his father, the two coaches that most influenced Kiffin are his former and current boss - Pete Carroll and Nick Saban. They are very different in almost every way, Kiffin said, but they both have an answer for everything. He recalled a time at Saban's house following USC's disappointing 2012 season when he asked Saban 32 questions about how Saban runs his program. Over the next three hours, Saban thoroughly answered every question in typical Saban fashion.

Without further ado..

1. Be a team guy.

2. Be a good listener.

3. Take corrective criticism.

4. Discussion is good. Arguing is a waste of time. Discussion helps the team improve. Arguing exists only to prove who is right. 

5. Be totally organized in the meeting room. "If the players show up and I don't have the film ready, that tells them that I don't respect them and don't respect their time.

6. Don't waste time on the field.

7. Be on the details. Stress the little things.

8. Be accountable to your fellow position coaches.

9. If your head coach gets on a player and you hadn't explained it to him, take up for your player. He'll respect you for it. Kiffin was big on this, and all player-related issues. For example, if a wide receiver does not make the proper sight adjustment and the head coach and coordinator jump on him for it, his wide receiver coach may be tempted to join them in hopes of looking good in front of the head coach. Terrible idea. "You just lost him for the day," Kiffin said. Instead, "say, 'that's my fault, coach, we'll haven't been over that yet but we will after practice'," said Kiffin. 

10. Stay positive. It can be a long season, so stay upbeat. 

11. Don't get in their face. Be demanding, but in the right way. Kiffin said he used to mother(blank) players after mistakes, but doesn't anymore. "He didn't want to drop that pass, he wasn't trying to drop that pass, so why would I (blank) him for it?"

12. Be respectful to the down-the-line players. Carroll taught him this one by always playing catch with a reserve players during breaks in practice. When he and Steve Sarkisian asked why, Carroll told them small acts like that can swing the whole locker room in the coaching staff's favor. The starters buy in by default since they're the ones that suck up all the playing time, but winning the down the line players over pushes the whole team forward.

13. Do not put players on the board to draw up plays. The ones that aren't good at it, Kiffin said, know they aren't good at it and, when they inevitably draw up 10 players instead of 11, get humiliated by the rest of the room.

14. Be honest with the players. Don't BS them. "Don't build a player up into something he's not."

15. Never tell a player he's going to play and then not play him. What happens here is two-fold, Kiffin said. If you tell a safety he'll play in the third series, then fall behind 14-0 and fail to play him, A) that player knows you don't really trust him and B) he's probably told his parents he's going to play, and now you've got an issue on your hands with him. 

16. Take it one year at a time. Sign on and don't look back. Whether you're at a place you like or a place you don't, make the best out of it and learn something from it.

17. Have a passion for coaching. Don't punch a clock. Carroll taught him this one. He created an atmosphere of "want to" versus "have to"; players and coaches were excited to show up for work at six in the morning. You're going to be there anyway, so why not make it fun?

Source: http://www.footballscoop.com/news/13662-the-17-tenants-of-lane-kiffin-s-coaching-philosophy

Week Three & Professional Growth

There’s not a whole lot to say about last week’s game – we traveled and played a team that was overmatched. As with many of our opponents, they have some athletes, but they just haven’t been able to develop an offensive and defensive line. They played with heart and class and I admire them, and wish them luck in the rest of their season.

This week is a rematch from Week 2 against our friends on the West Coast Lightning. We’ll need to continue to try and perfect what we do and take every opportunity to get better.

Now to the professional growth part: I am a little giddy so let me explain. There is an annual offensive line coaches’ clinic held in Cincinnati that I have long wanted to attend, called the C.O.O.L. Clinic (www.thecoolclinic.com). It is a weekend of nothing but offensive line coaches and topics, and it is absolutely on the cutting edge of offensive line thought. I’ve always wanted to go, but unfortunately, the clinic is normally held in May, which is of course, right in the middle of the women’s season. Anyway, I was browsing through another one of my favorite websites, X’s and O’s Labs (www.xandolabs.com) and saw the link to the COOL Clinic. I thought I’d torture myself a little by seeing what I was missing out on this year, so wandered over…..

They have an offer there of every DVD of every clinic they’ve done since 1996…..126 of them total! They have 26 DVD’s of just drills. Every possible OL topic you can imagine, including long snapping. Was it expensive? Yeah, in a pure dollar amount…but not for the amount of information there is. So yes, I bought them. I’m always preaching about bettering yourself as a coach and getting better – how could I not? Besides, my players deserve my very best and I’m always worried about getting stale.

I mentioned X’s and O’s Labs a little earlier. Their membership of $35 a year is one of the very best values out there. I subscribed for one year to another site, which was devoted to the spread offense and spent $100, only to find out that it stopped getting updated after about three months. Fortunately, I got “probably” enough information to justify the expense. But X’s and O’s Labs gets updates every week, and it is quality stuff. Just two weeks ago I picked up an OL drill from that site that has proved to be popular with my OL, and I got a lot of ST stuff from there as well. I cannot recommend them enough.

We always tell our players (“we” meaning coaches in general) something along the lines of, “If you want to be a champion, you have to sacrifice” or something catchy like “If you want what others don’t have, you have to be willing to do what they won’t”, etc….well guess what Coach? That applies to you as well. What are you willing to do that others won’t to get better?

What drives you? For me, there was an epiphany of sorts just last weekend. After our game, a couple of our coaches were talking at dinner about Coach Geno Auriemma’s (UConn women's b-ball) book (I haven’t read it, but plan to now) and how he was driven by self-doubt. I have to say in total candidness, that that can easily describe myself as well. I do always wonder if I’m good enough to stand up against the best coaches across the country. I compare myself constantly to guys like John Konecki, the staff of the Boston Militia and our own DC, Mike Suggett. When I talk to other coaches about different situations I always ask myself “would I have seen what they saw? Would I have had an answer to that?” It may be a curse of sorts, because intellectually I know I’m at least half-way decent – I think the results over the years show that to be the case. But I always want more, to know that I’m the best I can be. That’s probably why I just bought 126 DVD’s.

You can start small – just by coming to practice with a plan and a way to execute it. I still see many of my colleagues (not necessarily on the Surge) come to practice without a practice plan and making things up as they go. Asking the coordinator 5 minutes before practice, “What are we doing today” is not the road to a championship. Then, find out what in the offseason you can do to get better and make your team better. It might take some money and it might take some time. But remember (to use another cliché) “once you’ve won a championship, you’re a champion forever”…so how much is a “forever” memory worth? If you look at the pictures following either of our national championships, I think you’ll see that they are priceless.

Game Week Jitters

This is Game Week, finally! This will be the 27^th Week One for me (over 24 years) and this is just as exciting as any of the others. I’ve coached in 268 games and won 159 of them, including two National Championships, but yet I know for sure that when the Star Spangled Banner is played at about 5:25 Saturday night, I’ll still get goosebumps.

Our opponent Saturday night is a long-time rival, the Las Vegas Showgirlz. We’ve been playing against them and their head coach, Dion Lee, since 2006. It is sort of rare at the adult level to see the same coaches over and over again, but it is nice in a way, because you get to know the person behind the name.

It is always difficult to guess what a Week One opponent is going to do. The only indicator you have is previous film. In a Week One situation, you normally have to go back to past years and see what they did and who they did it with. Then you’re checking rosters to see who is returning, see what coaching changes they’ve made, etc. – anything that might give you a little bit of a clue.

We as a staff feel like we’ve got a pretty good handle on what Coach Lee “wants” to do from a personality standpoint, but we really don’t know “how” he’ll do it, and so in a Week One situation, you’ve really got to be able to adjust on the fly much quicker than you might in later weeks.

As a coordinator, Week Ones always take on an extra level of anxiety. This is when the schemes you’ve introduced take their first real test. Is one of your plays not working well in practice? Is it because your defense has seen it enough times that they react differently than an opposing defense does? Well, if you believe in the scheme enough, there’s only one way to find out!

As an Offensive Coordinator, I’ve always remembered Homer Smith’s words of advice: “The main reason for an OC to script out his First 15 plays is so he can sleep the night before the game.” I have no point of reference as a Defensive Coordinator, but I imagine that they worry if they’ve drilled enough of the opposing looks and if they think they’ve got a handle on what the opposing OC wants to do. As a Special Teams Coordinator, I always worry about whether I’ve given enough emphasis to the right units and “how can I get burned?”

Many people have said that they expect the Surge to return to the National Championship games we appeared in in 2011 and 2012. Those expectations also place a large target on our backs, but they are also “our” expectations. In three days we’ll have a much better idea of how realistic they are.

Thinking Out of the Box

The  discussion a couple of weeks ago here about parity in women’s football garnered quite a bit of attention – I had more than twice as many page views in one day as I had on any other, and that particular blog post has already become the most viewed post on my site. So thanks, I think!

One of the discussions that week was about strategy related to special teams. I see many coaches new to women’s football (and some that aren’t so new) look at special teams solely in the traditional manner, i.e., they punt when they think they’re supposed to punt, they kick off deep when they think they’re supposed to kick off deep and they kick an extra point when they think they’re supposed to.

Now, there are valid reasons for doing all of those actions, but I think that each team should probably reevaluate the rote nature of those playcalls. For example: We played one team twice last year, and were pretty familiar with them. They had a coach new to the women’s game, having come from the collegiate ranks. He did some good things, but his punting decisions weren’t one of them. Why? Because his long snapper had more hang time on her snaps than their punter did! Every one of their punts was either done under extreme pressure or resulted in a snap over the punter’s head. In many of their situations they would have been much better served just trying to go for it on 4^th down. I mean, he had to know his long snapper was erratic at best, right?

Even if a long snapper is good, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should punt. Why? Because in the women’s game you’re very lucky if you can get a gross yardage of 20-25 with any consistency. Subtract out the return and very many times the other team ends up with the ball near where your yard to make was. You could’ve gone for it, and even if you came up short been in the same position you find yourself after the return.

Let me point out that going for it on 4^th down is not limited to the women’s game at all, nor is it a new concept. Coach Don Markham (http://www.coachmarkham.com/)  and Coach Myron Miller (http://www.ocvarsity.com/ocvarsity/miller-66059-tustin-coach.html) both high school coaches of note in the Inland Empire and Orange County for many years, decided to forego punting and kicking extra points. Coincidentally, both of them ran the Double Wing offense.

Coach Markham once described his practice plans this way: “We do offense for 90 minutes, defense for 30 minutes, and special teams during pregame.”

Coach Miller told me about his philosophy while we were both scouting a common opponent: “I go for two every time, and only punt if I’m backed up inside my 30.”

One coach who has gotten a lot of attention recently is Kevin Kelley of the Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. He runs a no-huddle spread offense, rarely kicks deep, never punts and doesn’t field punts. There is an excellent link here that talks about the math and a video about his philosophy: http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2013/11/15/5105958/fourth-down-pulaski-academy-kevin-kelley

For us, we’re in sort of a unique situation – we have relatively talented offenses and defenses, and we have a decent long snapper. For some reason we’ve always been blessed with a good long snapper – for many years I think we had the best in the country in Cilena Mosley. However, we’ve never had a punter quite at that level. We’ve always had decent kickers, but our punting has never been more than the 25 yard gross I mentioned earlier. So choosing not to punt became sort of our thing starting in 2011. For the most part, it worked out well, but the two times it didn’t it was in front of the whole country (relatively speaking): In the 2011 WFA Championship game against Boston, we chose not to punt twice while backed up in our own territory and both times we ended up giving up touchdowns. While those points weren’t the deciding ones, they did contribute to what would have been a very close game appearing to be much more one-sided.

We tend to take the same approach on kickoffs, kicking squibs or onsides in some form much more often than most teams do. When your “deep” kicks generally only reach the 25, and you add in a modest 10 yard return, we feel that you might as well trade one less first down that needs to be made for a chance at getting the ball back.

The going for two part is more of an evolving thought process for us. As I mentioned, we have always had good kickers, and currently have an All American in Melissa Strother. So unlike many teams, we can make extra points fairly consistently. The question then becomes, “do we want to”? There is something to be said for being able to get two points on a consistent basis and really putting pressure on another team. My men’s team lost a game last year 24-21 when our opponent went for and got two points each of their three TD’s. We went up 7-0, but then was down 8-7, then 16-7. We came back to 16-15, then missed our final two point try and lost by three. Their success on going for two was instrumental in that victory.

These strategies spill over to our practice time as well. We prioritize according to what we tend to do the most. So we practice kickoff quite a bit. We work the heck out of punt return. We work on onside kick return quite a bit. As the playoffs come, we traditionally then start focusing on the possibility that we’ll need to punt and return more kicks. In the WFA championship game of 2012, we punted a few times, and returned a kick for a TD, so that extra practice leading up to that game came in handy. The point is that special teams should be just like your offense in deciding practice time allocation. Would you practice an offensive play over and over again if you were only going to run it once or twice a game, on average?

Sometimes, your strategies are dictated by your personnel. You may not have a kicker, so will always go for two by default. Maybe you run a Double Wing offense and are never in 4^th and long situations, so maybe you’ll feel more comfortable in going for it on 4^th down. All I’m saying is to consider these seemingly unorthodox strategies, and have a reason for either doing them or not. 

New Year's Resolutions

For players:

I WILL carry the ball ALL THE WAY over the goal line before I start celebrating!

When I score a touchdown, I will recognize the other 10 people who made it possible.

I will NOT be caught smiling at any point after being called for a stupid personal foul that kills (or extends) a drive.

If I am a teammate of a person who gets called for a stupid personal foul, I will NOT go up to him/her and say anything along the lines of “it’s OK”. No, it’s not. Stop doing stupid things that hurt the team.

If I claim to “love the game” I will show it by having a true passion for the game, instead of only passion “for” games. That means taking seriously practices, workouts, film study and chalk talks.

If I’m getting coached, I will NOT say, “That’s what I did.” No, you didn’t. If you did I’d be patting you on the butt instead of chewing it out.

I will not talk to anyone else when a coach is talking to my group or the team. Basic respect and courtesy.

For coaches:

I will be organized in my practices and drills. Indecision and looks of confusion erode trust of the players.

When I coach to correct, I will give specifics. Telling a player to simply “hit someone” doesn’t help (unless the player really didn’t hit anyone, which does happen).

I will praise publicly and criticize privately whenever possible.

I will not discourage questions, and will gladly answer in detail. However, the players have to know there is a time and place for everything. Generally speaking, 0:20 left in the game, and down by 4 is not the time for lengthy discussions.

I will admit I whenever I was wrong.

I will listen to players’ suggestions. It may not be feasible to act on all (or any) of them, but if they’ve taken the effort to think them through, then you have the responsibility (and give them the courtesy) of listening. There is no faster way to have players tune you out than to have them think you don’t listen to their concerns and ideas.

I will not talk to anyone else when another coach is talking to my group or the team. Basic respect and courtesy. We demand it from the players, we should demonstrate it as coaches.

Happy New Year – may 2014 bring you and your team enormous personal and professional success!

The Process

Recently on 60 Minutes there was an episode about Nick Saban. Now, I don’t particularly like Nick Saban. I know one coach (who is in the NFL now) who worked for him and absolutely hated it. I know he had an offensive coordinator who couldn’t wait to leave – so much so he voluntarily took a position coach job at another school. There are stories about Saban discouraging the administrative people in his office from making eye contact with him, lest it make him feel like he has to make small talk with them. Heaven forbid…..anyway, suffice to say I’m not a fan. I respect his results, of course – he’s doing something right on the field, but at what cost? There’s gotta be a human cost there somewhere.

But it was with interest that I watched the segment. The narrator talked about what Saban calls “The Process” and how he wrote it down 12 years ago. Imagine my surprise when what the narrator started to describe sounded like it came straight from one of Coach John Wooden’s books!

One of the main tenants of Coach Wooden was that it wasn’t so much about what the opposing team was doing, but what your team is or isn’t doing. He felt that as long as you did your job to the best of your ability, as close to perfect as possible, that winning would take care of itself. Coach was famous for his lack of interest in scouting opponents – even when it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now, he steadfastly didn’t do it, preferring instead to concentrate on doing that which would make his own team better at what they did.

This was the heart of the segment on Coach Saban. His fanatical attention to detail, his upbringing in West Virginia and the lessons taught to him by his father, Nick Sr. But I’m not sure you could find two diametrically opposed personalities in coaching – Wooden and Saban. Now, from what I’ve read, Coach Wooden may have been a bit more prickly then is generally assumed, and the 60 Minutes segment made Coach Saban look almost human, so nothing is always exactly as it seems.

I’ve always attempted to style myself after Coach Wooden. I like to praise in public and chastise in private (unless it is just with the OL – then I don’t mind pointing out errors, because maybe then someone else won’t repeat them, but I hardly ever want the rest of the offense to ever have a reason to disparage the OL – it happens enough from the fans and others not in the know). I like to think that I’m demanding, without being a dick about it. If the same mistake is made multiple times, then sure – voices are going to be raised. But my normal style of coaching is to explain, demonstrate and then break down the technique or idea into parts. If mistakes are made then, I try to lace the correction with some humor.

Where I need to improve, I think, is in my standards. Some of my players may be thinking, “You mean he’s going to be pickier???” But yes – in a sense. I need to be more aware of basic fundamentals at all times. Pointing out when knee bend isn’t achieved, or when pad level could be better. There must still be room for praise – players need it, when it is deserved. Empty praise is quickly seen through, and that praise will mean more when they know they’ve earned it. But gentle, firm correction is essential. Degrading, yelling for no reason, and personal criticism is the last resort of a poor coach, in my opinion.

It is a process, that is for sure. No matter what I think of him, Coach Saban is getting results with his, even if he may have stolen it from one of the greatest coaches of all time. But what am I complaining about – so did I!

Weekend Quickie

I saw this after last night's game, and it struck a chord with me. First of all, here's the link:

http://footballscoop.com/news/10857-when-a-top-player-makes-a-mistake

I've always tried to maintain a Tony Dungy-type of demeanor on the sidelines - dealing with issues, trying to look ahead and moving forward. For some reason, I've found it is relatively easy for me to do as long as I'm either "just" the OL coach or "just" the head coach. I can take on a much more managerial demeanor in both those roles.

However, when I'm also the OC, then I have a harder time with it. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's a more emotional involvement with the entire offense. With the Surge, I was able to be up in the booth, and that's actually where I prefer to call plays - it helps with the emotional detachment. The poor coach on the other end of the headset (Hi Carrie!) may not always see it that way, but it really is better. But with the Bears, since I'm also the HC and recently had to take over playcalling, it's tougher because I'm down on the field. I think I still do a good job with the refs, but I'm less tolerant of mistakes from my guys.

So bottom line, I love the way Kingsbury picked his guy up. It's gotta be really tough in that situation to keep your cool, but I think it is a trait worth emulating.