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.

1. 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.
2. Stay on plan- with focus on get-off and pursuit.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Simplify your playbook and eliminate everything that cannot be made to work reliably in 3 practices.
7. 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.
8. 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.