Rules for a Football program and why?

1. All ways keep an open line of communications: This includes your athletes, their parents, coaches, faculty members, administrations, the school board, and  community members.  We are now living in an information age where you can facebook, twitter, text, email, most school districts have web pages and the ability to send out mass phone messages.  Use these as tools to help not only promote your program but also ensure there is not an irritate parent because a time, date, or location of a game has changed. What day picture day is on and other special events. 
2. There should be no hierarchy in your program.  From the day the athlete steps into your doors until the day you part ways they should be treated with respect.  No hazing, beating up the sophomore in the varsity locker room.  Once they become a part of your organization they are family.  The San Francisco 49ers of the Bill Walsh era did not haze rookies it was not allowed.  And they went from the worst football team in the NFL to winning the Superbowl in 3 years.  
3. Demand from or hire coaches that will not only work hard for you but will also continually improve themselves with relentless effort. This might involve having to invest in your human capital but it will pay off for them and you.  
4. Even the best of people sometimes will be like water and settle in the lowest places that they can continually demand excellence from them.  
5. Set expectations for every aspect of your program.  I have had the displeasure of going through a 1-9 season when we took over a program.  Several of my fellow coaches did not like riding on the bus after away games because the athletes did not know how to act after a loss.  Well did those coaches tell our kids that you should be somber and self-reflective after a loss? No!  I mean some kids have a Low GSF (See for Definition of GSF) but we did end up changing the culture eventually. 

The Pistol Spread Option

Our base structure looks like the following;

The Cruz Block: first heard this term from the A&M Offensive Line Coach at the Frank Glazier Clinic when BJ Anderson was the offensive line coach at Sam Houston State when they had Rhett Bomar.  The rules check the inside linebacker closest to you if he steps to you or stays stationary then go block him if he runs away from you or inserts him-self into the blocking scheme then climb to safety and cut him.

Orbit Motion: Arch around to behind the mesh point keeping a 4 yard by 2 yard pitch relationship from the quarterback.  

The QB Jab Step Open to the Read DE at 6 o’clock Shuffle, Shuffle, Read DE if he “Squeeze and Chase Pull and Replace” If DE Stays Square, Runs up Field or something weird it’s a Give. If the Corner Jumps the option then throw the Fade.

The Dive Back Zone he has the Midline the Read is Bubble to Defensive End. 

The Dive Back Counter then he diamond steps Example: Counter Right Steps with the left at 9 o'clock then steps right at 12 o'clock    

The Outside Receiver to the read key runs a Fade

The Outside Receiver away runs a Post 

I would like to thank James Vint for helping me put this together for this past season. 

Transitioning from Position Coach to Offensive Coordinator

This past spring I changed jobs for various reasons the most import was family time I was driving an two hours plus a day in my commute.  I also was coaching two additional sports to go along with being the offensive coordinator.  It really cut into my family time a position coaching position opened up closer to my house fifteen minute commute and no second sport and I had the Athletic Director/ Head Football coach in a couple of my Graduate School classes. So I start attending spring ball, summer seven on seven, and summer strength and conditioning.  After the 4th of July holiday the Offensive Coordinator leaves for another job and I get named the Offensive Coordinator.   Here are the steps that was taken to align our offense and make sure everybody was on the same page.

The Head Coach and I met to go over the offense during this meeting several changes were made.

• A playbook was developed I used PPT and playmaker pro so if anything happens to me car wreck, I get a head coaching job, brain injury ect. there is something out there for the next guy to build off of.
• We went to the Tony Franklin wristband system we did convert the positions and one of the colors purple to blue.  We based this off of the number of reasons: the major one being that we had a large number of busts during Spring Practice and Seven on Seven during the summer.
• Changed the pass protection scheme from Big on Big to a Man Fan protection
• Had our Offensive Linemen Vertical Set  
• We installed a screen game which included Jail Break, Slow Screen and and the Fast Screens.  
• I made sure that we did the following drills every day Noose, Pat-n-Go, Routes on Air and we had at lease 2 screen periods a day.
• Changed how we went to Trips using our Slot receivers they were better athletes than our Outside receivers and kept them only having to learn one set of routes than a different set of routes on one side
• I met with James Vint during coaching school and got a great one on one clinic about the Pistol Offense  

Things that we did keep: 

• We worked Mesh Drill every day had very few dropped balls in the option game.
• We utilized the Pistol Formation using 30 personnel 
• We kept the option element to all of our run game there are 4 options on every play (Blog explaining this coming later!) 
• We had two basic run blocking schemes a zone and a gap scheme.
• We Two Platooned everybody

Things that needed to be changed for next year

• I have to do a better job of keeping up with our players lives.
• We are going to utilize the R4 and C4  from Darren Slack
• Going to use some silencer concepts from Anthony Pratley 
• Want to install the Midline 
• Need to use Wristbands at all levels 7th grade through Varsity we only used them for Varsity and JV this year.  
• Going to use Gus Malzahn's Fire Alarm Ten Play Menu 
• Kill our Mesh Route Concept and replace with the Shallow Concept.  
• Going to install Solid and Counter Screens.  

A New season has all ready started

We put up shoulder pads last Thursday and Friday and started QB meetings this past Wednesday.  My intent is to try to develop several quarterbacks so we just don't have to count on that one quarterback who may not be a QB when he gets to high school.  We had three varsity players at the meeting and three seventh grade QB's at the meeting.  We would have had more but our 8th grade was having tryouts on the same day.  My goal is to have 2 QB's for every sub-varsity team and they are to share equal time playing QB.  So with A & B teams 7th grade through Freshmen there should be 12 QB then 2 of them will be moved to other positions when they get to JV.  This is a similar to what Southlake Carroll did under Todd Dodge. Our Quarterback meetings we accomplished the following: 

• Watched the first of the C4 DVD's
• Went over all of the reads for 4 Verticals   (Blog about 4 Verticals soon to come) 
• We went into all of the different coverage's verses 4 Verticals.  
• We went over the Stick Route 

After the meeting the varsity guys got out the football on their own and tried to apply the thumb and hand placement, the cocked wrist, and the breaking the panel with their elbows.    

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