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5 Things Every Youth Coach Must Do Today to Win in the Fall - .COM

by: David Marco
AFM Youth Coaching Expert
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Welcome to my first article in American Football Monthly’s Youth Coaching Expert column. I have been fortunate enough to have had a success at the youth coaching ranks and it will be my goal to impart some of the lessons that I have learned, both good and bad, over the years. I will not be writing these columns for the coaches that get the super fast kids where you can just pitch them the ball and they go and make magic happen. You guys probably don’t need my help! Instead, I am going to write for the other 95% of youth coaches that have average to poor talent. Hopefully I can show you how to get the most out of your players including the out-of-shape, slow ones.

This month I would like to talk to you about what a coach needs to do to improve himself in the off-season. While all of us learn lessons during the regular season it is during the off-season that we truly learn how to be great coaches. Below are the first and most essential tasks that you need to perform during the off-season.

 Identify your Coaching Weaknesses and Prioritize Fixing Them
In the world of football coaching testosterone this is a very difficult task for many coaches. Too often coaches will say “I just didn’t have the talent” or “The other guy had the horses and I didn’t”. There is a book that every Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has on their desk. It’s called “Good to Great”. In this book the author identifies the key factors that differentiate the successful CEO from the underperforming CEO. One of these traits is that the successful CEO “Looks in the Mirror” when assigning blame and he “Looks out of the Window” when giving out credit for his company’s success. “Looking in the Mirror, Looking Out of the Window” is equally applicable for football coaching. Last year I took a team comprised of 80% first year players to the Super Bowl with an 8 – 1 record. We played the only team that beat us in the regular season. We were down 0 – 6 in the 3rd quarter when we lost our best athlete and our 3rd best on back-to-back plays. Shortly after that our 2nd best player went down. As you could imagine we got killed throughout the entire second half and the final score was ugly. It would be easy to blame the loss on injuries. However, after the game I kept asking myself if I prepared my team properly for the big game? The week of the championship game was very cold and I organized our practices such that we avoided a good deal of the bad weather until game day. We also didn’t hit much. Did these decisions increase our chance for injury? You can bet that I have been reevaluating these decisions and asking the youth coaches that I respect about their thoughts about my preparation.

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Be honest with yourself on your coaching strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you’re a great defensive coach with a fine scheme; however, your team doesn’t sustain their blocks. Look at your statistics from each game of the season and rewatch the game film. This will definitely highlight what you need to improve upon. Below is a small sample of the key questions you should ask yourself:

  • Did we average over 5.5 yards per rush attempt? If you didn’t than there is a problem with your scheme or the way you teach it.
  • Did my offensive linemen execute at least 80% of their blocks correctly both in assignment and execution?
  • Is my defense effective at stopping the sweep? When we were beaten on the sweep was it an error in the scheme or caused by a player?
  • Did we average at least 3 tackles behind the line-of-scrimmage in each game?
  • Did we fail to cover receivers on pass routes? If someone is running uncovered in your secondary than you have a problem.
  • Did my teams peak on game day or did my team practice like lions and play like lambs? If they did you may have done too much hitting during the week. Over 90% of youth coaches hit way more than they should.
  • Did I ask any players to do an assignment that they were not able to do?
    For example, if a player is uncomfortable running the ball and doesn’t want to, then he shouldn’t be a RB regardless of how fast he is.
  • Did I properly motivate my players?
  • Did I accurately scout each and every one of my opponents and effectively impart that information to my players?
  • Did we teach the fundamentals of blocking and tackling correctly?
  • Did we waste practice time?
  • Does everything we do in practice relate to actual game activities? If you are doing barrel roles I would be surprised if the answer is yes.
  • Did a team with similar athletic talent to yours defeat us? If so you were out-coached. Identify why you were out-coached and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Once you’ve identified your weaknesses you need to 1) prioritize them; 2) gather information; and 3) make changes.

Prioritize
By prioritize I mean you need to decide which weaknesses are more damaging than others. When I first started coaching motivating my players, organizing practice and defense were my strengths in year one; however, my team just couldn’t score and my special teams cost me at least one game. I identified offensive scheme, drill variety and special teams as my weaknesses. Of this group it was offense that cost me the greatest number of games, hence it became priority number one.

Gather Information
I researched several offensive schemes before I decided to be a Double Wing coach. I then ordered several videos and books on the topic. I also was able to identify mentors that knew the offense far better than I did to help me with my learning and growth. I spent hundreds of hours in study and asking questions. Today I am better known for my offense then by defense even though two-thirds of my games end in a shutout.
Videos, articles, clinics and books are critical for a coach’s learning development. A good youth coach should order and study between 6 – 10 DVDs, 2 – 4 books and attend at least 2 clinics in the off-season.

Make Changes
Last but not least you need to be willing to make changes. When something is not working you must be willing to change. I know a coach that plays a 2 deep zone at the youth level. Every year he gets killed by his shoddy pass defense. He needs to either change his scheme or change the way he is teaching it.

Off-Season Training
Coaching youth football offers many challenges that don’t exist at higher levels. For example, many times a youth coach will not know which team they are coaching until a few months from the start of the season. However, let’s assume you do know the team you are coaching. Are you helping your players in the off-season? To the players and parents that are very serious about being the best football player they can be I give them a list of off-season activities. Last year my top RB (109 carries for 1,001 yards, 9.18 per carry average (“pca”), 12 touchdowns) had tremendous quickness and moves but is very small and not especially fast. In fact, last year he routinely would break off 15 – 25 yard runs but never had a run greater than 35 yards as someone would always catch him from the back. I have worked with his parents to help him be a better eater as he only eats pasta and rice. In addition, I have worked with a local speed camp and got the vast majority of my team signed up for speed training, including this RB. I’ll bet you next year he’ll have multiple 40 yard plus gains.

Offensive
You need to look at each and every play you ran and see when the play worked and when it didn’t. When the play didn’t work you need to clearly understand why. Was it a failure of the player or by the scheme? If it is a player failure you need to think about what drills, evaluations or coaching methods you could implement that would resolve the problem. If it is a failure of scheme then you need to see how you could change your play assignments to fix the issue. For example, in my offense our most powerful play is a quick off-tackle running play (for DWingers like myself we call it Super Power or for those of your that read Jerry Vallotton’s great book “The Toss” you will call it the Toss). This play is ran between the playside TE and the playside WB (wingback). Some of my opposing defensive coordinators were so afraid of this play that they would have their DE lineup in the hole and just dive into it to create a pileup. Good plan until I created a special call in my blocking scheme to have the playside WB down block the DE and have my FB, QB (yes I have the QB block!), RB and pulling offside OG and OT run the play one hole wider.

Also look at the holes in your offensive attack. Every good rushing offensive scheme should attack the middle (over the C and OGs), between the OGs and OTs, off-tackle between the OT and the TE, outside the TE (sweep) and effectively utilize counters. If you are primarily a passing team you need to be able to attack each of the 9 passing zones (see Figure 1).


Figure 1: Passing Zones
For some youth coaches your QB may not have enough arm strength to attack zones 7 – 9 which is somewhat common for QB age 10 and under. By age 11 he should be able to throw effectively to zones 7 – 9. Also you need to have a good screen game to compliment your downfield passing attack. In addition, if you are going to live by the pass you better have receivers and quarterbacks that can read if the coverage of man or zone and then adapt accordingly.

Defensive
Where did teams beat you? Were you susceptible to sweeps as many youth teams are? Once again your film breakdown is critical for this evaluation. Personally I grade every player on each play to see if they did their job. Analyze every play that you were beaten on, whether for a touchdown or just a long gain to understand if the problem was player or scheme related. This past year we had 8 shutouts in 10 games and two games where we did not allow a first down. Even with this success there were things we could have done better. Our defensive line was undersized and didn’t really get as much penetration as they should have. I ordered multiple coaching DVDs on defensive line play to see how I could improve their performance. Our other problem was that our right CB was very short (one of the shortest in the league) and undersized but he is the most fearless player I have ever coached which is why he was the starter. Because of his size he did have coverage problems against the one team that beat us. They had a big TE and could move well and he wore my little CB out.
As you are analyzing your tape you need to ensure that your defense:

  • Defended the 8 gaps (A through D on both sides)
  • Rushed the passer from the inside
  • Rushed the passer from the outside
  • Defended the counter
  • Defended the fake counter
  • Cover all 6 eligible receivers, including the QB
  • Cover all three components of the option

Every defense has a weakness. Tom Flores in his fantastic book “Coaching Football” stated that you need 17 players to have a truly impregnable defense. One defensive lineman for each of the 8 gaps and one defender in each of the 9 passing zones. Unless your league allows you to play with 17 defenders you will have gaps in your scheme. In later articles I will go through defensive fundamentals in much greater detail.

Special Teams
Before I discuss this section I have to admit that I sometimes tell my assistant coaches “I hate special team” with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek. What I hate is losing a game by a kick or punt return. As a result, I look to onside kick over 85% of the time and I’ve punted a total of 4 times in the last 2 years combined (until players get to 12 years of age punting does more harm than good). I know some youth coaches may be rolling their eyes and cursing me. That’s fine. Over the last 2 years my teams have recovered 7 onsides kicks, committed one turnover, returned a kickoff for a touchdown and have not allowed a special team’s touchdown. Add it up and we have won the turnover battle 7 to 1 and the touchdown battle 1 to nothing. To attain this I did give up some yards but that works fine for me. Now that I have given my disclaimer let’s talk about how to improve special teams play.

You need to review your special teams’ performance in each of the games that you’ve played. Identify your areas of concern. Maybe you always want to punt diagonally and your punter was not very good at it. Look at how you evaluated your players. Maybe you evaluated them on who could punt straight the farthest as opposed to diagonally. Did your kickoff team stay in their lanes and break down 10 yards from the returner? Did you spend enough time on the kickoff return unit to make sure that everyone is going to their correct blocking assignment?

I hope you have enjoyed this first youth football coaching article. We at American Football Monthly are committed to the youth football coach so please let me know what topics you would like to see in upcoming columns. Good luck and may the referees be with you.

Coach David Marco – Biography
Coach David Marco is entering his 6th year of youth coaching and his 4th as a Head Coach for the Hinsdale Falcons of the Bill George Youth Football League (www.BGYFL.org). BGYFL is one of the largest and most competitive leagues in northern Illinois. As a head coach, his teams have earned 2 Super Bowl Runner-Up trophies and 1 Super Bowl Championship trophy. In his last 2 years his teams have been the Super Bowl runner-up at the 100 Gold (11 year old) and 80 Gold levels (9 year old). These teams previously had been perennial sub .500 teams that had never won a playoff game. Over the last two years Coach Marco’s teams have recorded 13 shutouts in 21 games. Offensively they have averaged 15.0 and 27.5 points per game in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Coach Marco utilizes the Double Wing on offensive and the 5 – 3 Flex on defense. He may be reached at CoachDMarco@gmail.com

 






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