How to Be Smart in a World of Dumb Football Coaches

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Football coaches spend countless hours every off-season working on our schemes. We buy books, DVDs, clinic passes, and anything else we think might help us win.

Then there are the staff meetings where coaches hammer out every detail. One guy plays Devil’s Advocate for a half hour on some minute detail that probably will never come up. But when the meetings are over, the weather starts to turn warmer, and Spring finally arrives – many of us have a playbook to be proud of.And then the season gets here. And we get stupid.How to Save Yourself 100′s of Hours in the Off-Season

You want to save some time in the off-season? Stop planning. Stop preparing. Stop writing a playbook and planning a scheme.

So many coaches follow this blueprint:

  1. Spend days, weeks, months planning your scheme
  2. Install your scheme over several weeks or even months, in Spring, Summer and 2-a-Days.
  3. Run your scheme the first scrimmage or game
  4. Throw it out the next week because either a) it did not work perfectly or b) you found something you really want to try against the XXX Offense your 2nd opponent is running.

    5. [Read more...]

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How to Create a Strength Program

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This is a guest post from Jim Kielbaso MS, CSCS. Jim has been a collegiate strength coach, featured speaker at clinics, author of four book and produced four training DVDs. You can find more of his work at http://ultimatestrengthandconditioning.com.

Strength training program design can get very complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. The bottom line is that you need to develop a well-rounded, comprehensive program that encourages hard work and progressive overload of the musculature. If those components are in place, you are well on your way to helping your athletes reap the benefits of a strength training program.ComprehensiveA strength training program should address every major muscle group in the body: chest, upper back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, neck (for collision sports), abdominals, lower back, hips & glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. Certain sports will focus more on a particular body part or require specialized work on smaller muscle groups (i.e. baseball pitchers will train the rotator cuff extensively), but all major muscle groups should be addressed. In general, an equal amount of work should be done on each side of a joint.Deficiencies can be overcome through strength training, but it generally takes specialized assessment to determine which muscles are deficient. [Read more...]

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The Top 10 Reasons to Run the 3-5 Defense

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The 3-5 Defense has been consistently growing each year. We do polls pretty often on this site and through our subscriber newsletter asking what people are running, and the 3-5 Defense seems to grow in popularity every year.

Why would you want to change your team over to the 3-5 Defense? There are a lot of good reasons you for you to consider it. I put together a pretty extensive list of reasons for the change, as we once again evaluate our defensive philosophy this off-season. I doubt we will consider going away from the 4-3 Defenseas a base, but there is always room for window shopping!The most important reason to change is if the defense is the right fit for your kids, your coaches, and your schedule. If that is the case, then you need to run it.

Here are the top 10 Reasons to Run the 3-5 Defense:

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The Secret to Choosing the Right Defense for your Football Team

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If you have a particular defense that you are set on, this video will not be much good for you. This is for the rest of us. This is for the guys who love defensive football, understand that everything out there works as long as it is sound, but are not 100% committed to one particular defensive scheme.

Back me into a corner and I will tell you, I am a 4-3 Guy. But that does not mean it is the only defense I would run. Take a look at this video on the secrets to choosing the perfect defense for your team. For even more quality assurance, read about our system for choosing a new defense. Is now the time for a change?

Transcript of Choosing the Right Defense

This is Joe Daniel with FootballDefense.com. We’re going to take a look at choosing the right defense for your team to help them exist. When we’re looking at choosing a defense there are few things that you want to take a look at very closely. Really simple every defense works. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I know that I made early on as a coach and still make sometimes is sticking that there is one defense out there. One skim is going to be the fix will be care of whether it is a right way to play defense of football and there’s only one right way. The truth is there are tons of defenses are out there and they all work. People want championship in 3-4, 4-2-5, 4-4, 4-3 and 3-5-3…in everything else out there. It doesn’t matter what it is people of won with it. And as long as the defense fits certain few key characteristics it is a defense that you can win with. There we should look at to real simple question; we need the question that we talk about in our eBook, free eBook that you can get at FootballDefense.com. You can download our defense of Insulation manual which goes through entire process of choosing a new defense.

To the keys that we look that there is number 1. Is it sound? So which is the defensive scheme we wanted to know if it sound the number two can we teach it. So those who two to be the biggest thing that we need to know, we got to chose the defense. The first question of “Is it sound?” has two components to it. The first one is a sound defense, when we talk about sound defense we need one that can really truly fit against no matter what your opponent’s runs out there that will work against it. Number one is “Do we have all the gaps covered?” We got the A gaps and the B gaps. The A gaps will concern the guards. We got the A gaps between the guards and tackles. We got C gap between the tackles and the tight Ends and then we got the outside or outside contain. Can we fit all those gaps? Can we secure all those gaps? If we can then we got a sound defense. An anatomy is in the first question, the first step to having a sound defense is “Do we have all the gaps covered?” In an 8 – man front like a 4-4, 4-2-5 or 3-5-3 covering all the gaps is fairly easy because you got 8 – man and you normally got A gaps. It gets a little bit tougher when you go to a 7 – man defense like a 3-4 or 4-3 because you got 7 guys in a defensive front to cover A gaps. So, that’s we start to have to get some 2 gaps going on and getting your safeties involve in the run range. With that all goes whatever defense you choose as long as it as a system for covering all the gaps. It could become a sound defense. The second question is “Does coverage match the front?” and I think that sometimes coaches don’t consider if there’s a certain coverage that they really want to run does it fit what they want to do upfront because these are two pieces that are not separate. Somebody in your coverage usually linebackers, somebody in your coverage going to be involve heavily in stopping the run that also be a key component in your coverage. For example you’re running a cover 3 in an 8 – man front a 4-2-5 or 3-5-3 defense. Your two overhang safety or outside linebackers are going to call them on your crucial part of your coverage and then they’re in charge to the flats but there are also a crucial part in your run game that they are probably the Contain player against the run. So if our coverage in a front didn’t match then we would have a problem for example if we run a cover two with our 3-5-3 and we roll that safety, one of those two overhang players back to give us two deep safeties. We better do something with our front, does it make that you can’t do it but you better do something with your front to account for the guy is normally your outside Contain player being lined up 14 yards off the ball. So the question along with “Do we have all the gaps covered?” is our re-matching our coverage with our front. And if our coverage and our front match there’s some natural fits, cover 4 or cover 2 or natural fit with the 4-3 or 3-4, cover 3 or cover 1 or natural fits with your 3-5-3 and with your 4-2-5 another 8 – man fronts your natural fits. Wherever you’re going to run even if it’s not the natural fit coverage it has to work with your front. Those two key components have to be combined together. The next part is “Can we teach it?” maybe that is the most crucial part of your defense because again if you pick a defense, if you choose any defense from you know whether you read books or you’re going to cleanse or you’re looking at FootballDefense.com, your going anywhere, you visit any colleges, wherever you will be going in order to learn your defense or in order to install your defense all the skims in the world: the blitzes and coverage’s, the techniques not only matters if you’re out to communicate that to the guys what actually he wants to do because your ability as a coach to skim things during the summer or spring or the winter really doesn’t matter if your guys were able to execute what you want to have done during the fall. So, I think that along with “Do we have all the gaps covered?” and “Do we have a great match between our coverage and our front”. Existing the great defense cannot stop everything could be adjusted to everything so all great if you could teach it. So the next part of what you have to do if you want to choose that defense is to get together with your stuff from the side. How are you going to teach each technique and how are you going to teach players to execute these techniques. How are you going to design drills that you want to teach the fundamentals of this defense? Cover all those basis you can have the best defense. Again you can read more in our free eBook on defense of Insulation manual as you are updating your defense whether you are making a massive of changes or just making some tiny tweets in the off season.

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Sideline Tackling Drill and Sideline Fumble Drill

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Our recent survey on Defending the Spread Offense revealed an overwhelming concern about tackling and improving tackle. Here are a couple of drills, especially for defensive backs – but for anyone working near the sideline. (note: that survey has since led to The Complete Guide to Defending the Spread Offense)

These situations may only come up once or twice a game and once or twice a season, but not making the play in those situations can be fatal. So with no further delay, the Sideline Tackling Drill and Sideline Fumble Drill.


Transcription of Sideline Tackle and Sideline Fumble Drill

Here, we’re taking a look at two drills one of the sideline tackle, one of the sideline fumble drill but very similar in way that they are set up and in way that they’re design in it. You can give both of them done in the same drill period very quickly.

First is sideline tackle you’re working here at the defensive back but any player could work this. We will get the ball carrier coming down the sideline and the back nose that his got the sideline needs his help. Maybe it’s his real close to the sideline on a quick screen quick pass out to the number one receiver. We don’t have much help coming from the inside to where returning back to the inside, returning to a lot open grass but if we can squeeze him to the sideline without letting him make a great tackle just had to make the tackle force him out. We’ll give him 10 yards box to do that end within this open field. So we just want to get him down one way or the other.

The other drill is the sideline fumble drill. In this one we can work and come up to many angle. We can just turn our guys around. And now we’re going to work side by side 5 to 10 yards apart. Chasing him down and trying to reach the ball carrier coming down the sideline within about 10 yards space if he got a sideline it would be a big help. If you like us by the time that it is October the sideline on your practice field are pretty much gone. So we would use some cons here to set it up.

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