Sunday, May 29, 2011

KISS OL Install


NO! Not that kiss

A blog post by this week by Coach Hoover got me thinking about KISS, the link can be found here.

Install is something that is often brought up and I have seen install done horribly.  The school I used to coach at was about plays... not execution.  My final year there, the OC ran every play you can think but we weren't very good at any of them.

I truly love our offense now... not because Spread is sexy and new but because it is very simple to install with my guys upfront.  I do not care how good your team is it all starts up front.  I differ from many TFS clients in the fact that I believe in running the ball first, I love the reduced numbers in the box that 2x2 and 3x1 give us, it makes my job as an OL coach easier.

We just wrapped up spring ball and I have 95% of the offense in with the OL.
We have 4 different run plays that can be run out of any formation with either F or Q as the ball carrier.  Within those 4 plays I only had to teach 3 schemes because our power G scheme is used for both Power G and our inverted veer play (what TOG calls Dash).  I discussed the flexibility of this blocking scheme here.

So in the 6 days we have had to practice offense I installed 3 run schemes, 90 pass pro, 60 pass pro, sprintout pass pro, and 3 of our screens.  That is a good majority of our total offense for my OL and we did nothing but review the final 2 offensive days to make sure we had these things down.

They key to what I feel has been the most successful installation spring ball of my 6 year coaching career has been
  1. the simple rules for plays
  2. the carryover between plays
Our run game is gap based and the players are given rules that will work against any front... we have been mixing going against odd and even fronts all spring ball without any problems.  Our screens are incredibly simple for the OL because they have a universal set of rules they use for their release on all screens.  Our screens are based so that no set player has any set defender, which gives us the flexibility to pick up any Defense on any screen without any changes.  Only thing that I have to install once they understand our fast screen is what their first steps are before they release.

60 and 90 pass pro is easy because in terms of scheme they are identical.  I teach 90 first because the steps are slightly more difficult, once I have taught 90, 60 is just 1/2 the steps and 60 is installed.

Sprint out is simple enough and that is my install for OL.

The carryover between run plays is what has made this extremely easy for me.  We devised our run game with simple block down rules playside, we are leaving the PSDE and PSLB unblocked every play by the frontside... after 2 weeks of beating those rules into their heads the frontside has it down now.

We mess with the defense by altering who picks up the DE and LB, sometimes a kickout by either a FB or G, sometimes we read the DE, sometimes we Log him.  for the LB sometimes we have G take him, sometimes WR cracks on him, sometimes RB blocks him.  Essentially for my OL we are only changing the backside pullers responsibility... playside stays the same and the backside tackle always executes a hinge block ...which I am teaching the same as our backside on sprint out pass pro, so there is even more carry over!

Everything I have installed builds upon what they already know and is so simple, that even my kids who have never played and was really worried about (mentally) have picked it all up.

For example our next play to be installed when we start our summer practice is "Counter"... this will take all of about 30 seconds to install because it is the exact same as our current "Power" (the first play we put in day1) but we add the tackle pulling instead of hinging.  Exact same frontside rules!  By having these few schemes, that can be run with different variations we get a complex, no huddle offense that is still simple for my guys up front. 

I fully expect the decreased thinking to result in increased aggression.

Coaches remember, keep your schemes simple and try to increase inter-schematic carryover as much as possible! It leads to enhanced learning and performance.

This is by far the most confident I have felt about my OL as a unit in 6 years of coaching.  By August I will have 2 full offensive lines that can flat out play

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Drill Videos are Here!!!

Sorry for the delay, it rained on offensive day 1 but the sun came out a bit today so I was able to film some of our drills.  Here is a short video I just made showing off some of our daily drills.

Ladder Drill, Stance, Mirror, Vertical Setting, Cage, 60/90 sets





Best $20 you can spend on your program

What if a simple $20 purchase can make your practices more efficient and time effective than ever before?

Well that is all it takes to have a practice segment timer.  These are incredibly beneficial and will keep your practices moving fast and you will get more done in less time than ever before.  We have gone to 5 minute segments at all practices and with out a $1,000 + dollar segment timer at our disposal we thought we could just have a student with a stopwatch and a whistle keep us on track, but something always got messed up.  If a student manager didn't show up, or messed up one time all of practice was messed up.  Plus there was no way of knowing when you were close to ending a segment.

Enter Coach Hoover
He makes CD's with mp3 of a segment timer on them.  He has ones ready with 5 minute segment and a horn buzz with the segment number.  All you need is some sort of audio device or better yet, play it over the PA system at your stadium.  Best thing is it has a beep beep with 2 minutes remaining as a way of knowing when you are getting closer to the end of a segment. 

This is a great value because we just hit play once and our entire practice is taken care of, we segment everything out to 5 minute drills.  Need more time at a drill? double up and do 2 or 3 segment in a row, but you are still going off the 5 minute segment timer.  It has improved our pace, efficiency and getting our backups in.  Now with a 20 minute team session divided into 4 - 5 minute segments we can give our backups the exact amount of time we want in because the horn tells us when to switch.

Enough of my rambling about how awesome and simple this is.  Here is the link to buy it from coach Hoover.

You are crazy to not buy this if you want better faster practices and for just $20... how can you pass this offer up?

Friday, May 13, 2011

DIY OL Ladders

Hi guys, I have to pay respect to Brophy and his blog, he gave me the insight for this.  His post on it can be found here . His blueprint was for a 15 space ladder, I decided to make two, 7 space ladders.  I felt 15 was pretty long and I wanted 2 ladders (1Var, 1JV).

Really simple process as he lays it out for ya.  I went to Lowe's last night and purchased then - 10' PVC pipes, 3/4 inch, and 32 T's to fit them together.  I already had a pair of PVC cutters laying around the house.

My bill came to $28.63 for all the PVC.

When I got home from Lowe's last night I measured all the cuts and started cutting, took about 25 minutes or so for all the measuring and cutting (i had a crappy pair of cutters which slowed me down a bit)

For this project (2 ladders, 7 spaces each)
I needed
  • 16 - 36" poles
  • 32 - 14" poles
  • 32 - T fittings
Last night after the cutting


I brought the pieces with me to the school to assemble ( I have a car so I wouldn't be able to transport the ladders pre-assembled).

I subbed today and the classes were watching a movie all day, so I was able to put the pieces together in the back of class while they watched the movie, took less than 10 minutes. 

Here is the finished product


Also,
Great news, I received my KODAK HD pocket video cam (mentioned here)in the mail today, I got it sooner than I expected... which means that I will be filming everything on Monday (our first day of spring ball).

I will be sure to have some slips of ladder drill up early next week!!!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Drill Videos to come soon!!!

Since I started this blog I have received a TON of reader requests for film, especially of drills.  I have had some issues figuring out getting HUDL stuff off and on to the blog and I have just been lazy but this will soon change.

With Spring ball officially starting here on Monday I decided to purchase one of these
Kodak ZxD

Compares quality to the FLIP but I purchased it because it was cheaper and you can add an SD card up to 32 gig, instead of being stuck with a 4gb flip.

This will be in my pocket pretty much 24/7 but most importantly out there on the field so I can film drills, for teaching as well as blogging.

Now my next project becomes finding at least 1 student assistant to help out at practice and film for me. 

I am hoping to receive the camera sometime within the next week and I will be posting video with it as soon as I get my hands on it.