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The Football Coaching Podcast with Joe Daniel

Coach Joe Daniel from JoeDanielFootball.com helps you build a better football team at any level. Youth Football Coaches, Middle School Football Coaches, High School Football Coaches, College Football Coaches and Semi-Professional Football Coaches will get great ideas and discussion from The Football Coaching Podcast.
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Now displaying: August, 2020
Aug 27, 2020

Using a creative evolution in the coverage package leading to a modified 2-Read Coverage in his 4-2-5 Defense, Hollis-Brookline High School Defensive Coordinator Fred Hubert helped lead his team to a New Hampshire State Championship in 2019. Find out the keys to the team's success and how this take the 2-Read Quarters Coverage package can work for your defense.

Aug 20, 2020

Week 1 of your season sets the tone, so you need to have your best offensive game plan ready to go. With the 2020/2021 season that doesn’t mean having incredible strategies, either. It means getting the most from your offensive playbook. 

The game plan that wins this year is the one that’s tailored to your players. What they can handle. It’s about keeping it simple so they can play with confidence from the start. No matter what that defensive coordinator throws at you.

Study Game Film

Unlike most seasons, you probably won’t get any scrimmage film this year. You’re going to get a couple weeks of practice, then jump right into that first game of the season.

You need to know all you can about the defense you’re facing before you can develop your offensive game plan. So study last season’s film. Anything you can get your hands on.

“Can I break this defense with formations? Can I break this defense with plays? Where is it not sound? What is it not ready for?”

Identify who they are. Not what you saw last year, but what that defense would look like if they had just a couple weeks to prepare. Because that’s what they’ve got. 

Looking at what their JV team usually runs is a good start. Figure out the base defense. You aren’t looking for tendencies here.

Now it’s about figuring out if you can break their umbrella. Create seams in the defense. Take advantage.

What’s Working in your Offensive Playbook?

Now you need to look at your own team. What you’ve seen in the past, and what you’ve seen in practice so far (if you’ve had that). 

The best plays are the plays that work in practice. They are the plays that your players have the most confidence in running. So make sure in your offensive game plan you expect to call more of those!

“What do you feel like you can call on a 1st & 10 in almost any situation and guarantee that you’ll get 4 yards? You need to have that play in mind.”

You need a couple of calls in that game plan that you feel incredibly confident about. One is a play you can always get 4+ yards on 1st & 10. The other is a way to give your Quarterback some confidence throwing the ball with a simple pass.

Pull Simple Levers in Your Offensive Game Plan

Even in the best of times, game plans don’t win many football games. Its the sad fact of coaching. You do a lot more damage over-coaching with fancy plays that win on a napkin that you’d do under-coaching and letting your players play.

Formations are cheap. Plays are expensive. Don’t over-do it, but as much as possible use base blocking schemes with special formations, shifts and motions to put the defense in a bind.

“Script the first 10 plays, because you have an idea of things you want to see… but go off script in a heartbeat.”

You do want to script your first 10 plays, but you don’t want to be completely controlled by the script. If the first play call carves them up, keep calling it!

Finally, you need a plan for making adjustments throughout the game. The ASKA principle comes into play here, and pulling levers. Make sure you check out the ASKA podcast. It applies to offensive adjustments as much as it does to defense.

Do You Have the Right Offensive Playbook?

You’ve got the details on putting together that call sheet for Week 1 of the season. If you’ve got the right offensive system in place and your coaches are ready to teach the players, you’re in good shape.

Need help getting that offensive system just right? That’s where JDFB Coaching Systems comes in for your team. Clients get access to The Pistol Power Offense System plus all of my other coaching systems, web clinic archives, private message board and more. 

Right now you can get instant access to the entire JDFB Coaching Systems resource library for 7 days for just $1: Click here to get started

Related Episodes

Aug 13, 2020

There’s a good reason so many defensive coordinators are also coaching linebackers on their staff. The position is critical for High School and Youth Football defenses to stop the run. Many coaches put their best defender at an Inside Linebacker position.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a natural, instinctive linebacker to play the position then your job is easy. Just stay out of his way and don’t slow him down. For the rest of your guys, you need to coach.

Earlier this season on The Football Coaching Podcast, I shared the ASKA Principle that has become one of the core principles for our defensive coaching systems. On this week’s episode of the Football Coaching Podcast, we’re going in-depth on coaching linebackers using the ASKA Principle.

What is ASKA?

ASKA stands for Alignment, Stance, Key Reads and Assignment. It started as a pre-snap checklist (stolen from the TCU coaching staff) for our defensive players. It evolved to a checklist for the coaches, and then to the foundation of how each defensive position gets coached.

Each of those elements of ASKA gives you a lever to pull. By systematically seeking out weaknesses, and then pulling levers for solutions, you have constant improvement on your defense. Check out this podcast on Coaching the Levers Principle to learn more.

ASKA for Coaching Linebackers

When you’re coaching linebackers using ASKA, there’s a lot of levers you can pull. Check out these examples of levers to pull with your inside linebacker group:

  • Alignment: Move your linebackers away from the line of scrimmage so they can flow to the football. Moving them closer makes them one-gap defenders, so you might as well put their hand in the dirt.
  • Stance: Years ago, I made a simple adjustment in the way we coached linebacker stance to stop making false steps. I go in detail on that in this episode.
  • Key Reads: Simplify your key reads if they’re not working. There’s usually too many if-then situations you’re giving your athletes if they’re not reading their keys. You can always start simple and build later. I detail both guard reads and linebacker reads in the episode.
  • Assignment: You’ve got the most flexibility here. Changing the assignment can mean everything from a blitz call or coverage call, changing the front, or tons of other minor adjustments. Your most critical piece here is clearly defining the run fits using the Umbrella Principle.

Listen to this week’s episode of The Football Coaching Podcast using the player below, or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!

Aug 6, 2020

Welcome to Coaching Football 101, class is now in session. Today's episode barely scratches the surface of all that a new football coach needs to know, but we only have an hour.

A football coaching friend likes to say that every man in America thinks he can do two things: grill and coach football (in 2020 you can add doctor to that list). But every experienced football coach knows at least half of that is not remotely true.

What You'll Learn in Coaching Football 101

This podcast isn't the place to get into the details of coaching football. The little things like how to design a good play, decide which play to call, or figure out what drills to run during your practice. That's what a lot of new coaches are looking for. But in Football Coaching 101, we need to start at the beginning.

Instead, today's lesson is going to focus on 10 things every football coach should know. Young or old. Youth, High School, College or NFL. First year coaches and 30 year veterans.

10 Things Every Football Coach Should Know

Here's the list of 10 things every football coach needs to know that we'll kick off Football Coaching 101 with. You coach long enough, you'll learn all of these things through trial and error. Most of these I've learned through a lot of pain and suffering.

I want you, new coach, to skip all that. I want you to start out in the fast lane. It's a better way to live. I'll go into each point in depth in the episode, which you can listen to at the bottom of this post.

  1. It's all about relationships. That'll get beat into your head any time you ask a coach the most important thing to know.
  2. You do not need to learn any plays to get your first job.
  3. Drills are for solving problems. Don't waste time on worthless drills.
  4. There is no RIGHT way. But there is OUR way.
  5. Confidence is critical. Being 'mean' or 'violent' is not.
  6. If you're new to coaching football, accept that you know very little. And that's OK.
  7. Drop all the excuses. You're a coach.
  8. Keep your composure.
  9. Terminology in football coaching is not universal.
  10. Execution of plays, not the play itself, wins football games.

This is a great list to get started. But as I said earlier, it's just scratching the surface. There's a another great post on the most common mistakes youth coaches make here, but it applies to all coaches in my experience.

And then there's all the fun stuff you're really looking to learn. The X's and O's of coaching football. There's a great place to start learning more of that too, with JDFB Coaching Systems.

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