Focus on Critical Information to Place Your Players in Position to be Successful

by: Samuel G. Covault, Ph.D
Athle-Tech Computer Systems
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FOR LAST YEAR’S TECHNOLOGY ISSUE, American Football Monthly asked me to share some insight on the organization of game planning staff and resources.* This year, Travis Davis has asked me to again address the subject of game planning, this time regarding an often asked question: In light of the finite time we coaches have available each week for strategic planning, how can we find and use the best from the massive volume of information which technology produces?

In coaching, as in many other highly visible, high pressure professions, TIME, or more correctly the lack of TIME, is one of our most formidable adversaries. During the week leading up to the game the steady march of time is relentless, only 24 hours in a day, only a few short days to prepare, and no compromises!

To get your team properly prepared in such a tight time frame, it’s important to focus. But focus on what?

In this short article, I’ll try to present a few ideas that may help to spark some discussion among the members of your staff of how to focus on those areas of game planning which offer your team the most benefit.

Due in large part to the tools which technology has brought to coaching, we are able to produce much more information than our players and staffs can truly assimilate in the limited amount of time during game week. Consequently, we have to make choices about which information has the greatest chance to impact the outcome of the upcoming contest. Armed with this valuable insight early in the week, we can then have the time to apply some creative thought to a plan of attack, and most importantly get quality reps of the plan early and often enough with our players, so they are familiar and confident with the skills and responsibilities they will be asked to perform on the game field.

Let’s start looking at ideas along two separate but inter-related tracks. First, strategic game planning, primarily the for use by the coaching staff in calling the game, and second the preparation of players, aimed in large part at achieving quality mental and physical repetition of the skills which they will be called upon to perform during the upcoming game.

What follows are a half dozen or so approaches to keeping your game planning and preparation focused on these most critical areas.

Strategic Game Planning

What tactical situations are most critical in determining the outcome of the game? Before I make a few suggestions, one caveat – key information will vary somewhat from staff to staff, based upon factors such as personnel and scheme. Your program is unique and your staff the best judge of your team’s strengths, weaknesses and resources.

Change of Possession Situations

Let’s start with probably the most basic thing you can say about ending a contest as the victor. TO WIN YOU MUST SCORE MORE THAN YOUR OPPONENT and TO SCORE YOU MUST POSSESS THE FOOTBALL.

While any play can produce a score, extend a possession or turn the ball over, third downs and fourth downs – when the offense goes for the conversion – have the extra element of finality which guarantees one of three outcomes. If you don’t at least make the first, the ball goes over to your opponent. Most programs will feel comfortable running their entire offensive or defensive playbook on first and second downs between the 20 yard lines, so your chances of discovering meaningful tendencies here are much less than on “conversion downs” or in “scoring zones.” One way to save time and focus upon the crucial situations which are most apt to change the outcome of a game is to concentrate your analysis, creative game planning and practice time repetition on these change of possession and scoring situations.

If you accept this premise, then it follows that a good deal of your strategic planning should be concentrated specifically on the offense and defense which you will actually call on these important conversion downs.

Conceptual Analysis

Consider another two questions: How much detail about your opponent can your players assimilate in the limited amount of time they have each week? In the heat of battle, how much of the statistical data you’ve gathered on your opponent actually finds its way into your play calling?

Technology allows us detailed knowledge of an opponent’s every scheme, and as a result, volumes of information. A good analysis requires that we accurately document everything which happens on tape. After all, until you actually get a chance to study and reflect upon what you’ve researched, you don’t know for certain what tendencies and “gold nuggets” may emerge. How then can you reconcile these two conflicting elements of game planning? One answer is to include in your reporting broad categories of similar concept, while maintaining access to detail when it’s required. Including formation, play, front and coverage “families” in the analysis of your opponents can help your staff and players to assimilate the concepts you’ll face on game day.

For example, grouping the 20 or 30 different coverage variations you see on tape into five related categories – which your quarterback can accurately identify and apply in your audible package – greatly enhances his chances for getting your offense into a good play at critical times in the ball game.

Here are some other ways in which this “family” concept might be applied. Formation families might include:

• Two-back concepts with “standard personnel” (2 backs, 2 wide receivers and 1 tight end) such as pro, twins, and slot formations
• Two back three wide receiver sets
• Two back two tight-end sets
• One-back sets such as double-pro, double-twin and pro/twin alignments,
• Three-back sets such as power, T and wishbone formations.

Another “formation family” organizational concept develops a numbering scheme where digits represent the number of backs and tight ends. In such a scheme traditional pro, twin and slot sets are in the “21” family while one-back sets with standard personnel are in the “11” family, etc.

Coverages might be organized under three-deep zone, two-deep zone, man and combo families. While defensive fronts can be divided into families as basic as “odd” versus “even.” Plays can be grouped together under categories such as power, option, sweep, trap, counter, play action, 3-step drop, 5-step drop, etc. The simple act of combining mirror images of plays under a single family reduces the number of individual play designations in half.

A key in this type of organization and presentation of information is to tie it very specifically to the manner in which you expect your players to view what’s happening on the field. For example, if your offensive scheme requires your quarterback and receivers to adjust routes primarily based upon their read of the deep coverage, then organize your analysis of opponent’s coverage in families which match that terminology.

Organizing basic elements in this way can really help players and coaches see the concepts they face, while avoiding the confusing minutia.

Personnel Mismatches

Over the past three decades the use of technology has progressively increased our ability to more thoroughly analyze the schemes which our teams face. In lock step with this trend, the game has increasingly become one of attempting to exploit personnel match-ups.

If you think about it, this trend is completely logical. With the increased ability to accurately predict the schemes employed by their opponents, well-prepared teams are much less apt to be “out-positioned.” Consequently, coaches have turned increasingly to creating physical mismatches in order to gain advantages. You still must prepare from a “scheme” standpoint. Failure to do so means you’re really in trouble against a well prepared opponent. But in today’s environment that’s just the beginning! Creating personnel mismatches is an integral part of a successful game plan. If they exist versus a given opponent, designing particular strategies to exploit mismatches can pay big dividends.

Pressure Situation Tendencies

It’s human nature when faced with pressure to draw upon our previous experience – in similar circumstances – for successful solutions. We as coaches are not immune from this tendency. Paying particular attention to analyzing the strategies which your opponent employed in past pressure situations such as the final minutes of games where the outcome is in doubt, can reveal a great deal regarding what a coaching staff feels are their team’s strengths, both in terms of strategy and personnel.

While thorough staffs study their own team’s performance as much as their opponent’s and strive to break tendencies, it’s tough to fight the desire to “dance with the one that brought you.” Taking a good hard look at the play calling and personnel deployments which your opponent relies upon when the game is on the line can yield valuable information. It’s a great asset to have this built into your game plan as you stand on the sideline, or sit in the box, engineering or defending against that final drive the will win or lose the game.

Opponent-Specific Down & Distance Breaks

In today’s game of substitution offense and defense, run/pass tendency is a key piece of information in offensive analysis. Rather than settling for the same down and distance breaks from opponent to opponent, a much better strategy is to analyze one initial report, then tailor down and distance break criteria more closely to this week’s opponent BEFORE creating reports, finally directing that the tailored criteria run through all of your reporting.

To accomplish this, first create a report of all snaps organized in descending order by combined down and distance, and displaying run/pass totals and percentages at each break of down and distance combination. Analyze the report, looking for break points, where the tendencies to run or pass change most significantly. Once you’ve discovered the “long” (pass), “medium” (either), and “short” (run) break points, apply them to all of your reporting for a particular opponent. With most opponents, this will dramatically improve your ability to predict run and pass.

I’ve seen this technique employed with great success on several occasions. With some teams, run/pass tendencies above 80 percent become apparent over large numbers of games. Those are the kind of numbers that you like to see when you’re trying to place your best players for the situation in a position where they can be successful.

Opponent versus Schemes and Athletes Similar to Your Own

The exchange tape which you receive will show your upcoming opponent facing the schemes of several other programs. These other programs will provide varying degrees of insight into the strategies an opponent will employ against you. Depending upon the schemes you employ, it may be advantageous to place a greater emphasis upon your opponent’s strategies against schemes and personnel similar to your own.

I learned a valuable lesson here, from a great discussion I once had with a well-known head coach, who’s won more than one national championship. We were kicking around the same topic addressed in this article, most particularly regarding an offensive staff’s preparation for upcoming defenses.

I learned the profession from mentors greatly influenced by Woody Hayes, many of whom became legends in their own right. Men like Bill Hess, Bill Mallory, Earle Bruce and Bo Schembechler have had great influence on how I approached the game. One of the most sacrosanct rules that I learned at the feet of these greats of the game can be summed up in one phrase. “An opponent may have more talent, or more resources, but they would NEVER outwork you.” Consequently, I have mostly adhered to the practice that everything about an opponent should be examined; no stone should be left unturned. While I still believe in as thorough a preparation as possible, my discussion with the aforementioned sage provided me with an alternative approach to preparation which for their program very successful.

After spending a few days with his staff, helping them prepare for an upcoming game, I had prepared what I thought was a very thorough analysis of the defense they would face. After a great discussion, some X’s and O’s and viewing of cut-ups, this very successful ex-quarterback and long-time head coach summed-up his views in two short sentences: “Unless an opponent is facing an offense very similar to ours, we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what a defense has done against other people. We dictate to the defense how they must align and then exploit the weaknesses of that alignment.”

And, by golly, his teams did just that. For the most part they didn’t just dictate, they dominated!

To clarify the point a little bit, at the time, this particular style of offense was quite a departure from the norm, and the team in question was blessed with the athletes to execute the style. Today the particular style in question is commonplace and defenses have evolved to counter it, but there is an element to this philosophy the can be applied to every program.

Successful game analysis isn’t a matter of the volume or diversity of the information you gather. It begins with depth of knowledge about the schemes YOU are asking YOUR players to execute and about their abilities. With a confident knowledge of your team’s tools, you can more easily focus on critical situations and the exploitation of your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses

Preparation of Players

The general theme of this discussion is how to focus on those elements of preparation which provide the “most bang (truly useful information) for the buck (time and effort).” Let’s turn from a discussion of strategic planning, which deals more with tools used by the staff, to the kinds of tools that players find most helpful.

Once again TIME, or more correctly the lack of TIME, is one of our most formidable adversaries. Obviously, professional players have the greatest amount of time at their disposal. Recent rule changes have significantly restricted the contact time college staffs are allowed with their players. On the high school level access to your players is the most limited of all.

Before stating the obvious, I decided to take an informal poll of a group of college players whom I’ve come to know on a different kind of personal basis over the past few years. Not as a coach, but as the dad of one their teammates. They happen to play in a program at a university which has been at the heart of the technology revolution. Their football program has a long tradition of excellence and has recently enjoyed some of its most successful seasons and national rankings. The university’s athletic teams as a whole have won the last seven Sears Director’s Cups, awarded to the nation’s most successful athletic program. With access to the very best that technology has to offer, what’s the consensus of these players, when asked what aspect of technology and/or game planning helps them best prepare for games?

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The overwhelming choice of players, as to the element of technology and planning which they find most beneficial is the video cut-up. The ability to get precise game footage directly related to what we ask our players to recognize and execute on game day is, from the player’s prospective, the single most helpful element of game planning. To further emphasize this point, in the spring of 2000 American Football Monthly asked a group of the nation’s top coaches to finish the statement, “The most important technological innovation for coaching football has been . . .” their unanimous response cited a single theme – the ability to provide on demand video cut-ups sorted on any desired criteria.**

In Conclusion

Hopefully, you’ve found an idea or two that may help to spark some discussion among the members of your staff of how to focus on those areas of game planning which offer your team the most benefit and which, in light of the finite time we coaches have available each week for strategic planning, can help you to find those “gold nuggets” which help you to place your best players for the situation in a position where they can be successful.

Recognized over the past twenty years as one of the country’s foremost experts in applying technology to the game, Sam Covault created three innovations which changed the way in which staffs prepare their teams: the first personal computer-based systems widely used by many of the country’s most successful football powers, the country’s first computer-controlled analog editing systems, and football’s first non-linear (digital) analysis systems. After a coaching career that included several championships and appearances in Rose and Fiesta Bowls, Sam has helped more than 50 staffs whose programs have won 11 national or world championships, played in 20 national or world championship games, won 48 conference championships, and played in over 120 post-season and playoff games.


* “Achieving Maximum Benefit from Your Use of Technology in Game Planning”, American Football Monthly, Volume 7, May, 2001, pages 32-35.

* “Coaches Talk”, American Football Coach, Volume 6, Issue 5, 2000, page 36

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