Work Smarter, Not Harder

If you are anything like me, the football season can be a grind.  Lots of long 12+ hour days at the school, plus time at home watching film, writing notes, and planning out both your game plan and practice plan.

I just stumbled upon the best way to save yourself hours of time in your game plan and practice plan preparation each week.

I hate scripting plays, it takes a while to write down the exact formation, motion, and play you want, over and over for all of your team/inside run/7on7 reps for each practice.  Half the time I end up just "shooting from the hip" and call plays off the top of my head. The problem with this is I end up leaving out plays I knew I wanted to get to, or I do not give plays enough reps during the week to feel good about calling them Friday Nights.

I have worked with Coach Grabowski and his company Coaches Edge before and think they do a great job integrating technology and coaching.

Coaches Edge  has put out a new game planning and practice planning software meant to do a lot of the work for you and save you hours of time every weekend.

You can see their new product here...
Coaches Edge Game Planner

What is it exactly?

It is an excel file, with formulas plugged in to automatically
-script your plays for each practice
-create play calling sheets based off of what YOU want in each situation

What does it look like, and how does it work?

You start with the "Game Plan Board".  This is what makes it all work.  Here you have assigned cells to enter in all of the specific plays you want for the week.  Fill this in with your staff and you are ready to go.  It separates the plays out by hash.  You enter your terminology for personnel, formation, motion, and play.  You enter the top plays you and your staff have decided on for that opponent in the given situation.  There are spots for your top inside runs, coming out runs, red zone and goal line, quick passes, screens, and dropbacks.  You can enter different plays, double up on core plays, or run them from different formations or different window dressing if you want.  Once you have filled in all of the cells, that is it, your work is done.

You can even enter different defensive looks (fronts and coverages) you want to see in each practice.

Once you are done the next 3 tabs look like this.

Your inside run, 7on7, GL/Redzone and team time is scripted for the entire week.  Each play you entered into the "Game plan board" will be repped a set number of times throughout the week, insuring that your players got an adequate amount of practice reps to execute it on Friday night.

This is the biggest advantage for me, my scripts for the week are done, and I am focusing on more specific game situations than I ever had when planning in the past.  I just began using this tool over the weekend, in preparation for a scrimmage.  After watching film and consulting with my QB/Pass game coordinator,  it took less than 30 minutes to fill out our game plan board for our scrimmage opponent.  30 minutes, hours of work/planning done.  

The practice planning/scripts are just the beginning.  There are other tabs, with plays pulled directly from your "game plan board".

Other tabs include

1.  Base Play wristband: the base 30 plays you entered into the sheet.  A quick reference of your top plays for this week
2. Base Call sheet: A playcalling sheet, split up from Left hash plays to right hash plays.  Your top inside runs, perimeter runs, quicks/screens, dropbacks.  This is another thing that really makes this worthwhile to me.  I hate taking the time to make up a call sheet.  I now have my call sheet ready, and I love that it is split up by hash mark.  In HS football, we are almost always on a hash, makes it easy to get the correct play in quickly.  Has already helped us with our tempo.
3. 3rd down wristband: a wristband of the playcalls you entered for 3rd down situations.  Quick reference to go to on 3rd down when you need to get the play in fast.
4. 3rd down calls - call sheet version of the wristband, again laid out by hash mark, and distance to go
5. Situational Calls: call sheet, separated by hash, and split up by situation.  Coming out, 4 minute O, different red zone areas, 2 point plays.  Can I just say again how much I hate making call sheets, and how much easier this is!
6. Game Plan worksheet: Just like the "game plan board" but larger blank cells.  Ideal for printing out, and filling in during staff meetings as you decide on what specific plays/formation/tags will be best for you.
7. Openers: template for you to script your opening plays, separated by hash
8. Post game report: Has your exact plays from practice, with the number of reps each play got in practice.  There is then a spot for you to record how many times you actually ran that play in the game.  This is made for you to self evaluate and make sure you are calling the plays in the game that you are spending your time/reps on in practice.  If you rep a certain play 6 times, but you didn't run it once, you are wasting your time in practice.

This game and practice planning software is selling at Coaches Edge for just 49.99

If you enter coupon code "CoachBDud" during checkout, you save $5

so for $44.99 you are getting something that saves you hours of times, and helps you be more efficient with your practice reps.  

For the hours of time it will save you each weekend I think it is well worth it.  Once you have it, you can continue to use it over and over again, every week, every season. 

I highly recommend this.  I have been raving about it to my friends in the coaching community.  Work smarter, give this a shot, and see how much easier it is on you in your preparation for practice and games.