Yes, Special Teams is one-third of the game of football. If ST hasn’t won or lost you a game as a coach yet, it’s coming. There are times that Special Teams practices can feel chaotic, like no one knows what’s going on, and 1 coach (whomever had that ST Coordinator role thrown on them) is coaching 11 players, and the other Coaches are standing around watching the kicker.
On this episode we’re talking to Coach Joel Mathews on ways to prevent the nightmare written above. We talk not only scheduling a special teams practice, but having it scripted ahead of time. Let everyone know where to be, who to coach, and what they’re responsible for.
The first drive, or the first few of them, of any game of football can give you nearly all the information you need to be successful the rest of the night if you use it right. Although we’d all love to run our bread and butter ad nauseam and hope to put some points on the board, you have a low risk situation to ask several questions of the Defense and see if they have answers at all, and what those answers are.
On this episode we dive into the science and art of scripting your first drive with Southside Southerners Head Coach Kenny Simpson. We discuss what questions you should be trying to ask, how to dress up your common plays to confuse the Defense (and next week’s DC), as well as the benefits of having the first drive written down well before the first kickoff.
Now that just about everyone is back to practicing football (with real helmets and everything), it’s time to streamline our schedules and get them into the most efficient formats. You don’t have to make that a daily chore either!
On this episode Joe and Daniel talk with Coach Justin Dottavio about the makings up a practice schedule shell for each day of the week, what key components you need to add, and how to adjust them as the season goes on.
Injuries are very much a part of football. We coach a contact sport, and that contact can create a vast number of different injuries to players of any age. A part of being a coach is mitigating the risks that lead to those injuries by modifying the practice schedule to get the most out of our kids without unnecessary risk.
On this episode Joe and Daniel talk with Antoine Smith about how he keeps 5 teams of youth players healthy in practice to ensure they stay in love with the game, their parents don’t pull them out completely, and how we keep teams ready for a playoff push.
Getting your players in game shape is usually held as one of the highest priorities in Summer Pride and pre-season practices. There is without a doubt a benefit to being in prime shape as the season kicks off, but maybe it shouldn’t be as high of a priority as we make it out to be.
On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Southside ( Batesville, AR) S&C Coach Deerick Smith (www.smithperformancellc.com) as we discuss the mistakes coaches make by forcing the conditioning issue too fast too soon, when your team should really be in the best shape of the season, and ways to measure your players’ fitness level without killing them with some ridiculous fitness test.