MAKE YOUR SYSTEM FIT YOUR PERSONNEL – FOCUS ON THE PLAYER AND NOT THE PLAY

Coaches love to talk about personnel. In fact once someone identifies you as a defensive coach, you can almost guarantee the next question is going to be “What do you run?” The person who is asking the question is looking to see if you are a 4-3 guy or a 3-4 guy.  Now there are other defenses but the majority of coaches fit one of these two molds. While I think that having a system in place and being consistent is very important, I think that you are making a big mistake if you overlook your players when putting together your scheme. 

It does not matter if you coach high school or college, you will have years where you have certain players that need to be on the field because of their ability, regardless of where you put them (even if they are out of position). There will inevitably be times when those players do not line up (position wise) with the scheme that you are running. If you do not adjust your scheme to get your best athletes on the field, then you are making a big mistake. 

In fact, one of the best defensive players of all time - Lawrence Taylor - does not fit the bill as a traditional defensive end in a 4-3 or a prototypical outside linebacker in a 3-4. He is more of a hybrid. He is actually THE hybrid, maybe even the reason we use the word hybrid today, and he had to be on the field. We all have players that do not fit the standard bill at one position or another, but we know they also need to be out on the field playing for us to be successful. Instead of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, find out if that square peg, or rather the player who represents the square peg, is one that has to be on the field. If he is, then find a way to get him on the field as much as possible, regardless of where he is playing. Out of necessity, we have started to use this philosophy here at Mayville State University.

Has this philosophy gotten us results? Before our current staff got together here, the previous 10 years of football produced and overall record of 13 – 87. It did not take long to see that like most small college programs (and all high school programs), we did not have the means to go out and get the players that fit our scheme exactly. We had the take the talent that was here and find a way to fit it into the system that we wanted to use. We started to look at how we could get our best players on the field, regardless of where they were playing. In the 3 ½ years that the current staff has been together (and using this philosophy) Mayville State University has an overall record of 17 – 16 including a 7 – 4 record this past season (the first winning season at the college in over 23 years).  The results speak for themselves.

A big part of that turnaround is looking at what we had and being realistic with what we could do. We still had our scheme and everyone has their philosophy of what they wanted to do, but Mike Tyson probably said it best when he pointed out “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Well as you can see by the record we were getting punched in the mouth plenty. There was a plan, but there was also a need to adjust that plan and realize that we were not going to get every player that we wanted (or needed) when we were out recruiting. 

Due to the fact that we could not get the exact player we wanted to fit each spot, we needed to have a system that we wanted to run, but be we also had to be flexible enough to adjust that system if we were short a player or two when it came time to running it. Or more accurately, be flexible enough to adapt if we had some players on the sideline that could help us on the field, even if they might be playing out of position. We had to be willing to adjust what we ran on the field to line up with what we had for talent in the program.

If you have five linebackers that are good and need to be on the field, then you should find a way to run a defense with five linebackers. Do not put your talent on the shelf and then wonder why you are struggling. We started to focus on who can play, and then we focused on how to fit them into the scheme we were running. Or, as Nick Saban said at the AFCA National Convention this year, focus on the player and not the play. It really is a simple concept, one that he learned in high school, but when applied correctly can make all the difference. It has for us here at Mayville State University.