Author Archives: Troy
Chutes & Ankles
Ingredients needed:
- 20 feet of 1 1/2″ pvc pipe
- 4 x 3-way pvc joiners
- 2 half rounds
- 2 shields
- A few OLs who want to get better
Journal: Week 1
2024/08/06 Journal, Entry 5
Tuesday, 8/6
About to kick off our 8th grade season. Practice plan as follows…
Got some good chute work in with OL and worked on wedge fit and pulling. Did not get to defense tonight as lightning came at the end of practice. 6 absences. 😦
Wednesday, 8/7
We worked through the entire schedule. Tucked some LB chute work in (shuffle steps, drop under the chute then explode face first extending up into the bag-holder). Added 10 minutes of quality wedge reps at the end. Decent practice overall, but I’m a little dismayed by the 6 absences again. Difficult to run anything resembling team with mostly dads holding bags on D. I addressed it by publishing everyone’s attendance with no commentary.
Another team and their parents cut through the middle of our team defensive session. I yelled at them as they strolled through and they threw me their smug look of contempt. People seem to have become so utterly un-self aware of how they affect others… or perhaps I am just grumpy-old-man now. Lol. The utility of publicly chewing their ass was not to get to them so much as it plants the seed within the minds of MY team that me getting nasty on people under certain circumstances is a real possibility. Ha!
Had a long chat with LG about attendance and philosophy last night. I need to work very hard to practice what I preach because I think it is the right path.
My personal priorities are:
1) Do not allow critics to affect me
2) Immediately move on emotionally from any undesired game results
3) Do no overreact to the myriad of inevitable challenges, letdowns, and affronts
4) Listen to my instincts and control my impulses
Thursday, 8/8
Rained out! Called it at about 5:10. Not surprisingly, the weather calmed down by about 6:15. Tough to ask folks to drive in that, but it’s tempting to be disappointed when the skies part and you think you could be practicing. The decision was made with best intent and the best available information at the time. No regret allowed!
Friday, 8/9
Random thoughts before practice:
Been contemplating the creative side of things and the desire to present ideas and offer my experience to others. That’s a big part of what writing the SSSW playbook was about. I would have never made it for public consumption without SP’s prodding, but I’m glad I did. On the other hand, the older I get, the more pointless and even silly it seems to want to share anything unsolicited. There is very little, if any demand. Every coach already knows everything. And those who don’t are bombarded with a tsunami of offerings, many of which are redundant and/or largely ineffective. And so, sharing my football knowledge is really little more than just an exercise of personal vanity. Preparing things for public consumption that will never be consumed does have some utility, however. When preparing items, the exercise forces me to organize my thinking and to blow off all the meaningless mental chaff.
The practice energy was good. Tackling was executed with intensity. The gauntlet drill was performed with great enthusiasm. Practice wound down with a wedge rep session. We started with JL at blocking back. This appeared not to sit well with WK who made some very intense tackles on JL. JL returned the favor and the intensity was as high as I have ever seen it. Coach Bit pulled them both to the side to attempt to contain the hostility to the drill. They are both excellent players and we want them to understand that we need them both on the field at the same time, and that we are not picking one over the other. We don’t want WK to misinterpret it as being unappreciated. He is and has been our best player. Again, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. I reached out to WK’s mom about it. Upon reflection, perhaps I should have left it alone… let it breathe and not try to interpret for them or guide their response. I injected myself into a situation where it wasn’t beneficial or necessary. This gets me back to my “less talk, more action” pledge. The fates have set a course for this team. I need to resist them less and focus on my job and what I can control.
Anyway, it was a great week even though we missed a day. We cannot control the weather so I am not going to fret over it. I am a little concerned about the lack of attention I’ve given to team defense. We have spent good reps on pursuit, tackling, and coverage, but we need more team defense work.
Gratitude:
We were sad to lose JE, OK, and RA, but are very grateful for the new players we have added. They have great potential. I am so thankful to be able to be their coach and for being able to coach.
Onward!
Week 1 Overall Attendance = 81%
Journal: On Scoreboards and Stoicism
2024/07/31 Journal, Entry 4
Been reading the philosophy of the Stoics. It’s been mind-altering. It’s a hard mental path, difficult to adopt and master, but I see the truth in it. I wish I had read Marcus Aurelius 30 years ago!
A coach asked for advice on how to handle an 0-2 start. I replied with the following. I intend to follow my own advice if/when it happens again.
- Realize that your biggest enemy is your own doubts. You will be tempted to listen to and believe the growing chorus of critics that will poison your thoughts. Work hard to block them out. Critics add zero value. If they confront you… smile at them, nod in agreement, don’t get defensive, look them in the eye when they talk while you pretend to listen, then walk away and purge every word they said from your mind. If they are insufferable, cut their kid from the team. You owe it to the other 20 or so kids.
- Stay on plan- with focus on get-off and pursuit.
- The biggest killer of offenses, by far, that I have ever seen, is giving up inside penetration. Drill your OL to stop that at all costs. Forget the blocking technique until you can stop penetration. It is number 1! If you can’t stop penetration, everything else is bullocks.
- Bad teams can’t tackle. Tackling is ALWAYS a function of good pursuit. Work on lateral pursuit with cutbacks BEFORE form tackling. It’s vastly more important.
- Every losing team I’ve ever seen gets their DL blown off the ball. Fix that with drills. 2 on 1. 1 on 1. MAKE your DL hold their ground.
- Simplify your playbook and eliminate everything that cannot be made to work reliably in 3 practices.
- Don’t ask your players to do it. Stop talking about how to do it. Don’t beg them to do it, either. MAKE THEM DO IT. STFU and rep. That’s your job. Talking is not coaching. Leave the talking to the politicians and radio hosts.
- One last thing… Any coach who actually had to coach has lost and will lose again. The scoreboard is just a point, a mere snapshot in time. Most of us vastly over-estimate its importance and confuse game results with our ongoing status and worthiness. A win is but one single frame, and we exist in a moving picture. One instant after the game ends, the game becomes an unalterable figment of the past… an artifact. It is best to merely absorb the knowledge gained and delete the rest of the reaction to it. Don’t let it have any impact on you in the present. No criticism or praise is of any meaningful benefit to you in your endeavor. Showing elation or gloominess days later at practice is of no benefit to your players. It’s just pointless virtue-signaling and it steals the experience from your players. Living in the past is useless. You exist in the present to build something for the future. Get to work, and leave the artifacts to the historians.
P.S. I don’t write this journal for anyone. It is a repository of thoughts and experiences for me. If you get something out of it, great.
P.S. This is a note to self: Your players never let you down. YOU let your players let you down.
Journal: VCPs
2024/07/25 Journal, Entry 3
I love this time of year. Good turnout: 13 of 20. Got a lot of reps in.
- Get-offs
- Drive for 5
- Angle Tackling
- Lateral Pursuit
- Sweeps and Counters
- Coverages (7 on 7)
- Route Concepts
Journal: Football Registration
2024/07/23 Journal, Entry 2
Registrations have been filling out our roster. We got several returning players back, pushing our retention to 81%. Historically, area-wide retention (not counting age-outs) hovers around 75% per team. This year, our area was hit really hard with defections. The league retention will come in around 68%. Still, over the three year span, it has nevertheless averaged around 75%.
In our area, we give free registration to new players. This was done to rebuild numbers after the idiotically destructive COVID response. Our highest registration ever was 332 players back in 2009. It dropped to an all time low of 97 in 2020. It has since rebounded into the 160s. We expect to land around 70 new players this year. If we can attract 70 new players each subsequent season, maintain 75% retention, and the kids enter at the historical pattern of grade distribution, we expect to stabilize at about 160 players each year and remain solvent.
Enrollment Projections:
8 Man Variation
Caution: I’ve never applied this in the real world! I don’t know how the defenses will align so this is a pure guess.
Journal: Losing Great Players
2024/07/04 Journal, Entry 1
Jack Evans was one of the best players (if not the best) that I have ever had the privilege of coaching. He was a nose tackle on a first grade team before he joined us and we converted him into a single wing tailback. In six seasons, he rushed for around 3,500 yards. He was our captain who lead his team with his actions, not his words.
On May 19, I got a text from his mom, who was our team manager and by far the best team manager I have ever seen. She asked to meet and talk. I knew immediately what it was about. We met the next day at Starbucks and that’s where Jack told me he had been chosen for a AAA hockey team and was leaving us.
Jack struggled to tell me and it was a very emotional moment for both of us, but I expressed that I was very happy for him getting this opportunity. It was going to take an extraordinary circumstance to pry him away from his football team and this was certainly it. I hope he sets the hockey world on fire. I remain his biggest fan.
But it was a figurative gut punch, to say the least.
I greatly appreciated his communication. Communication seems to be a lost art in this era of “ghosting”. I’ve been ghosted multiple times this offseason in situations where I felt communication was warranted and the expectation of it was more than reasonable.
It is what it is.
Tallying up the offseason has been tough.
We lost our star tailback/qb to hockey
We lost our starting badass middle linebacker (moved away)
We lost our starting left guard (burned out)
And we lost a key role-player (looking for a bigger role on his middle school team).
Our star blocking back/linebacker is yet to register. They assure me he is coming back but the hour is getting late and I am not so confident he will return. I think he is struggling to decide what to do and delaying his decision. He has a chronic foot injury that is also part of the calculus. Losing Weston would be a major blow.
The unknown can be the worst torture.
…but I am learning to come to terms with the fact that I allow the torture of the unknown to cause myself pointless anxiety. Players move on. New players materialize. It’s part of the deal of coaching.
Our team has been near great for 6 seasons. A team has to have a lot of great players to be great. That requires recruiting. There is just no way around that. The top team in the league added three more all stars from a rival league. I am sure the second place team added players as well. It’s not about how bad you want to win. Everybody wants to win. It’s really about what are you willing to do to win. The top tier teams in our league are in a constant arms race. That is the reality they exist in and no one can fairly judge them for it. I can choose to be resentful of our geographical recruiting disadvantage or I can choose to accept and deal with it. That choice, and my resultant attitude, is mine and mine alone. It is a thing completely within my control.
This offseason we added 4 promising players. They represent a well-spring of size and speed for us. I remain concerned that their addition is yet offset by our losses, but there is nothing more I can do about that. Valid concern is one thing. It is a motivator. Worry is another. It is a useless and distracting and destructive emotion. Yes, we have lost our leadership and are desperately thin. We can cry about that or we can set about finding new leaders and playmakers.
This experience is nothing new for any Mountain Area team. We are remote and sparsely populous with an aging demographic. This is the brutalist “WHY” behind the ugly system we choose to run. Our system is not QB or unicorn-speed dependent. It is plug-and-play. No, it will not turn MPPs into league champions, but it will get the most out of what we have. If we were to panic and switch to the Air Raid now, as some might suggest, I am certain it would be an utter catastrophe. I have seen Air Raid teams without unicorn talent. We trust our current system. It has worked for us many times before. We are going to do the experiment anyway, so we’re fixing to find out. We are not changing systems.
PERIOD.
We’ve been top division contenders for six years. We’ve taken the best teams in the state down to the wire. Are we still contenders? Probably not at this moment. We have a lot of work to do. But when it gets tough, when the ball bounces the wrong way, when we come up short on a play, when parents chide and snipe, I need to remind myself not to get discouraged and down. There are many things beyond my control and I will need to let all of those things go as fretting over them is of no use or benefit to anyone. My wife gave me a great pep talk when I was considering options. She said that I need to see this final season through because there are 16-18 other kids on the team who still believe and I would regret abandoning them. I need to maintain a beacon spirit and remain unrelenting, trusting, and ever-hopeful.
Never forget: Buddha provides.
…and any wanker can coach an all star team.
Passing: The Trips Game
There is a pile of passing game tutorials and explanations available online for anyone who wishes to forage through it, but I’ve found the plays discussed in clinics and tutorials tend to be disconnected elements of the playbook offerings available. Making these concepts harmonize with a direct snap, run-oriented system can be challenging. We want our passing plays to be integrated, where one sets up the other, and each play is complimentary. Similar to our running plays, we want all the plays to start out looking the same, from the same set, then have them be able to attack the defense in different ways. For us, this renders the concept of a “route tree” as just noise adding useless complexity. We don’t need nor do we even want 729 (9^3) possible route combinations. Getting enough reps to run, let alone learn, a tiny fraction of that number is not realistic with only about 300 total passing practice reps available before the first game.
We have three well-established, proven, core passing plays out of our single wing Red and Blue set. But to evolve our passing game, we added a trips look that we think gives us more options to stress the defenses we face. But again, we don’t want to add a big bag of dozens of plays to that set. We want a tidy package of inter-related ones, a list reduced and simplified as much as possible. The greater the simplification, the easier the learning and the execution.
The defense dictates what the appropriate route combination and passing concept should be used, so we started our analysis there. We painstakingly logged every defense aligned for every play we ran out of our trips set for the entirety of our 7th grade season. We came up with 12 different defensive alignments (16+ if you count all the nuances in depth and width).
To simplify this, we created a box within the diagrams in front of each receiver. These boxes extend inside of each receiver to half the distance to the next receiver and then down field for ten yards. If a defender aligned in the box, the box was assumed “capped” or “covered” and was colored red. If no defender was aligned, we made the box green. We resolved to 5 box combinations:
What we’re left with is a simplified key, or matrix, for play calling. If a coach or the QB can identify the occupied and empty boxes, he can make a play call that maximizes our chance for success by putting one defender into extreme conflict, creating spacing for a receiver, running an obstruction/rub/pick route combo, audibling to a running play, or throwing to the short side. Using the routes we already practice, we came up with the following options:
The 5 scenarios are all simple reads and call one of 4 route combinations (STICK is used twice). We’ve noticed that the SNAG leaves the bubble significantly open most of the time (62.5% on 25 of 40 times run). That’s a direct function of pulling the cover 3 CB off with the W or the CB playing too soft. So you’re probably never wrong running SNAG unless they have manned up all three receivers. If they do that, we would run all three off with DRIVE and slip the F into the flat on an arrow route. The Power audible is a tasty option if their LB is wide and if they bring 2 CBs over, then that should be an automatic Y CORNER to the short side. We’re just going to take what they give us. These are all fast-developing routes, breaking at 5-7 yards. We don’t have a lot of time… maybe three seconds.
Now, we have not installed this, yet. This is just a concept. If we are not comfortable with the Q calling pass audibles every play, we will assume their alignment from the previous play and send the play in. Or, we can read it from the sideline and hand signal the Q. Either way, we are going to give it a try. If it works, I’m going to add it to the SSSW playbook. We’ll see.
Sidesaddle Single Wing Football 