There’s an old saying among option football coaches. OK, really it’s among all football coaches… mostly old football coaches.
If you can’t block ’em, read ’em.
Pretty simple. When you don’t have anybody that can take that guy 1 on 1, you always have another option.
Just make him wrong, no matter what he does.
That’s the premise behind option football. Make one guy wrong, no matter what he does.
For coaches running a true option football system, this is a way of life. Let nothing get in the way of reading the guy that’s causing problems.
Then there’s the rest of us. We run an offense that is not based solely on reading defenders. Are we left out of the option offense goodness?
Nope.
In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll show you how to expand your offensive playbook using option football principles. Without confusing your players and causing a total disaster in the backfield.
Football drills are a big favorite among coaches. It's our thing. Standing there holding a whistle, watching your guys run around hoops and over bags. That's what coaching football is all about.
Except that most defensive drills are a waste of time for high school football players. They end up never translating the drills to the field. Today you'll find out the football drills that really matter at every defensive position to get your players ready to win on game day.
When they hit the football coaching scene a few years ago, defensive coordinators were scratching their heads defending RPOs. But while it's a great tool for offenses to attack, run pass options are not as mystical as they may seem.
If you've got a good RPO team on your schedule this season, you don't need to panic and change your whole defense. Follow the 5 tips for defending RPO's in this podcast to shut 'em down.
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.
Every coach has been trying to figure out just what's going to happen with the 2020 football season. From state to state there seems to be just as much uncertainty today as there was 3 months ago.
This week's episode of The Football Coaching Podcast takes a look at the questions your coaching staff needs to address to get ready. This is not about what's going to happen. None of us really know what is going to happen with COVID-19. It's actually about preparing your football program for what could happen this season.
There are multiple possibilities. Things could turn out pretty good (at least from a football standpoint). It could turn out very bad. This is not about any scientific or political beliefs you hold personally. It's about being prepared for very real possibilities.
From state to state, we will all be dealing with different situations. We've already seen different plans within the same state, like California and Texas. To keep track of what's happening around the country, there's a state-by-state look here.
Many states are still on track to start on time, or within a week to two weeks of the planned starting time. None of that is official until teams actually start stepping onto the field. But even for those coaches that are getting back to practice as expected, there are a lot of issues to plan for. This episode addresses the issues you need to expect in the 2020 football season even when starting on time.
Then there are states with a longer delay planned. Anywhere from one to two months. Several of those plans include shortened seasons. You're already dealing with a shortened off-season as well. How much do you need to simplify your playbooks?
Other states have looked at flipping some spring sports with the fall season sports, or moving football entirely to the spring this year. Those longer delays can open up a whole new can of worms - like totally flipping the weather dynamic. Is it better to play in 100 degree weather when you're just starting, or fatigued from the season? I don't know that answer.
And then there's the elephant in the room. What about a situation where you don't even have a 2020 football season? Not in 2020. Not in Spring 2021. Not at all. Scary, but a very real situation. One that Spring 2020 sports already had to face.
There's a lot of questions. This episode doesn't even touch on all the possible questions that could be asked. I'll be working with our JDFB Coaching Systems clients to get better insight on the big issues each scenario causes through the next 6 months or more.
One thing is sure. Teams that are prepared for the adversity of the 2020 football season are going to fare better than the teams that are not. There are opportunities for your program to get ahead despite all the uncertainty that has been caused by COVID-19 this year. Check out this episode for some of the steps your program can take to find those opportunities.
You spend your entire off-season working on blitz packages and trick plays. You might call some of them once or twice the entire season. But you miss the big picture.
Chris Fore from The Coaches Locker Podcast joins me on today’s episode to talk about the ‘little things’ that really matter in coaching. We’ll talk about recruiting your building, player academics, and everything else your program needs to win.
When I started coaching way back when, we were lining up in the I-Formation Offense. Running the toss sweep, Iso, and trap. And it was a pretty good offense.
The I-Formation Offense is not dead in the high school football landscape. In today’s episode I’ll break down when you should use the formation, how to make it a part of your offense, and we’ll put together a basic playbook for the I-Formation.
Free 3-Video Series teaches the Power, Counter and Power Pass
There’s good teams on your schedule. They have quality seasons and then some years they drop off. The coaching staff has some turnover, the players have even more.
Then you’ve got the perennial powerhouse. No one is ever going to look past these guys, and only a few are ever going to beat them. But their head coach is the most relaxed cat you’ve ever met…
Here’s 10 Signs Your Football Team Has Made It. How many has your football team achieved, and how many are you going to reach in 2019?
They can be frustrating. Drive you completely insane. Maybe take a couple years off your life.
But you can’t let the officials in your football game know that, Coach. You’ve got to keep your cool.
This episode of The Football Coaching Podcast is a deep dive into how to communicate with the officials during your game. From pre-game to post-game and everything in between.
Want to get those critical calls? You need to check out this episode.
The 3-4 Defense System that I teach in JDFB Insider offers a ton of flexibility, so you’ll want to use it. But you need to know how to use it.
In this podcast, you find out how to use your 3-4 Defense Zone Blitz Package effectively. How and when to call your Single Edge Pressures, Interior Pressures, and Double Edge Pressures.
This is an advanced stage for your 3-4 Defense System, so make sure you review the podcasts on the base fronts and base blitz package below.
You can also run all of these 5 man pressures with a Cover 1 coverage, instead of the 3 under / 3 deep Zone Blitz coverage we discuss in the podcast.
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As an experienced football coach, you need to do everything you can to help develop those new coaches on staff. The young guys who think they’ve got it all figured out. Or the guy just stepping in who’s head is completely swimming.
These 10 tips will give you ideas on how to develop your new football coach to be the best they can be. And that’s going to make your football team the strongest it can be this season.
https://www.footballxos.com/download/oklahoma-sooners-5-2-defense-1985-gary-gibbs/
We’ve been looking at a lot of 3-4 Defense lately. I’m hearing more and more of it. So it makes sense to go back in time and look toward the origins of the 3-4 Defense.
That means we get to break down a playbook! I found the perfect one with an aggressive defensive scheme from the 1985 Oklahoma Sooners. This 5-2 Defense has a great look at multiple fronts from the 3-4 Defense (or 5-2 Defense) and a coverage package that will fit right in for today’s game.
There’s some adjustments to be made. But it’s great to see how the defense fits perfectly with the Umbrella Principle and mirrors so much of what we do in the 3-4 Defense System.
Teaching tackling to your football team and seeing better results on game day will done more for your football team’s winning percentage than anything else you can do. After all, this game is still all about blocking and tackling.
There’s an entire off-season for your team to improve their tackling. And with rule changes being put in place limiting live contact, you may be teaching tackling with no pads on all season long!
In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll share tons of drills you can use to teach tackling to your football players without any contact. And without screaming WRAP UP!
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A few weeks ago I started looking at the Run and Shoot Offense. With the assistance of Jason Hahnstadt’s Demistifying the Run and Shoot Offense video series, I came up with a base understanding of the offense. But I wanted to go deeper.
Do I think the Run and Shoot Offense is the right direction for a High School Football team to go? Only if you have a background and a guaranteed Quarterback pipeline. Do I think there are elements we can take from the offense? Absolutely.
So I dug around through a few Run and Shoot Offense playbooks. Settled on the 1985 Houston Gamblers playbook with… wait what? Kevin Gilbride? No idea. That’s who’s on the front page. John Jenkins was the Offensive Coordinator after Mouse Davis had moved on to the new Denver Gold.
Yes, this is the first time we’ve ever talked about the USFL in the history of The Football Coaching Podcast. Coincidence, with the AAF coming around this year? Yes. Completely.
Anyway, here’s the links to the playbook and some other useful links for Run and Shoot Offense enthusiasts…
Every coach wants to win. And there are times when your job will depend on it. But every loss can’t be a soul crushing defeat that sends you into the doldrums for a week.
In this episode, we’re going to break down losing into 3 categories of losses. Then we’ll look at how you can best deal with each type of loss. You’ll find out how to get the most out of each loss, so that your team moves forward instead of bogging down and falling behind.
The simplest way to disguise your coverage is to give the same look on every snap. One way to accomplish that is to align your safeties and corners across the field in a straight line - then adjust before (or after) the snap.
On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll go in detail on installing a Roll Cover 3 system into your defense. This is based off of our 4-3 Defense System packages, but can be incorporated to any defensive package with a few adjustments.
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Want to get the most out of your passing game? You’ve got to have a plan for your passing drills. There’s a lot more to it than just working the QB’s throwing motion, too.
A lot more, in fact. And a lot more than playing 7 on 7. In this episode, I’ll outline how to plan your passing game drill progression to work your most important route concepts to perfection.
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This episode of The Football Coaching Podcast looks at how to coach quarterbacks when you’re not a Quarterback Guru. It turns out you don’t need a PhD to get the job done.
First, you’ll find out the 3 critical skills your signal caller needs to have when you’re deciding who should play the position. Then we’ll break down 10 Keys to Coaching Quarterbacks. You can download the 10 Keys in PDF format in the download box at the beginning of this page.
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It may be football’s greatest mystery. The most complex offensive play design out there. For myself, it’s the single offensive system I knew absolutely nothing about.
Time to change that! This episode of The Football Coaching Podcast is a look at the Run and Shoot Offense. I’ll look at a few base passing plays and see what we can learn from this offensive system.
The Run and Shoot Offense is fascinating. I don’t know of any other system that has achieved such high levels of success without spreading like wildfire through the High School and College coaching ranks. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out why!
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Today’s episode of The Football Coaching Podcast is getting us caught up on your questions from the football coach mailbag. We’re hitting all kinds of topics you’ve been asking about in this special episode!
In This Episode…
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You hear it on every podcast: Coach Simple, Play Fast, Win. But what does that really mean?
This episode of The Football Coaching Podcast is all about explaining my own personal coaching philosophy. Because a lot of coaches get it wrong. They think I’m a 4-2-5 Defense guy, or a power run game guy.
None of that is true. My entire coaching philosophy is summed up with 5 words. Coach Simple, Play Fast, Win. And you hear it on every podcast. Now, let’s go in depth on what that really means.
The 3-4 Defense has become increasingly popular because of the flexibility to defend everything from downhill rushing attacks to elaborate Spread Option and RPO offenses. In today’s episode we’re going to look and the 3-4 Defense System that is a part of JDFB Insider.
The 3-4 Defense System gives you a simple approach to defense. But with an added complexity and flexibility you can use as needed. We’ll talk about the base front, stunts, and blitz package that are taught inside the system. You can also download alignments to standard formations in PDF format above.
How can you learn to be a better football coach this off-season? There’s more opportunity available than ever, but you’ve got to look in the right places and have a focused goal.
I’ll share 6 resources you can use to learn to coach football, whether you’re just starting out or continuing your lifelong coaching education. And the 3 keys that you must follow to get a coaching education that’s actually going to help your team win games.
You had a great game plan. It should work. Maybe it’s even working for you… to a point. But at halftime, you need to make a few tweaks to get to the finish line.
Halftime adjustments in your 4-2-5 Defense (or any defense, for that matter) can be made for a number of reasons. In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll break down the 5 reasons you should make an adjustment, and share some of those potential adjustments for your 4-2-5 Defense System with you.