We just completed a very successful spring football season at Cornell with our 12 practices allowed by the Ivy League. As with most things, we can attribute much of our success to diligent planning and consistent execution. What follows below are a few of the emphases we had for spring football with the defensive line that we thought showed up on video toward improving for the summer/fall. There are a few ideas that could help in organizing any segment of the year but most especially as we all prepare for training camp in July/August .
Spring Fundamental Five
-This was a way for the players to stay on task with what we wanted to see show-up on video from all of the various fundamentals (and techniques) that we have to work through to become championship-level. They always say you get what you emphasize; we convey to the DL that in order to be great you need to be great at everything. However, per segment (in this case spring) we like to have a focus. Here are the 5 from this spring and the corresponding fundamental/technique/skills they relate to:
1 – Beat up the man in front of you = GET OFF
2 – Violent sisruption of the QB = BALL DISRUPTION/TAKEAWAYS/GET OFF/PASS RUSH
3 – Stance to Go, Get Off to Penetrate = STANCE and GET OFF
4 – Target-Cloth-Separate-Escape = BLOCK DESTRUCTION/DL BLOCK DESTRUCTION/TECHNIQUE PROGRESSION
5 – “Hard as I can, long as I can” = AFFECTIVE/EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT = CORNELL DEFENSE SWARM (PURSUIT)
As you can see, we haven’t been a great GET OFF Team so far in the two seasons of this Program and so the first three points speak directly to this.
Spring Musts
-Similar to the above but perhaps in a more urgent and sporadic form as they may not be addressed daily, the spring musts were a way for us to stay organized in addressing SPECIFIC DEFICIENCIES from the fall of 2014. Basically, this was a reminder that someway, somehow, we needed to find a way to drill these areas in spring football. We were able to get them all in, which worked well.
1 – Target
2 – Long Stick (2 gap movement from outside-in)
3 – 3 Technique Pass Rush
4 – Sweep the Ankle Tackle
5 – 3-Move Personal Pass Rush Plan Progression
Spring Position Warm-Up Time
-To ensure that we stayed on message with the PROGRAM, TEAM, and UNIT, we kept this the same every day emphasizing GET OFFS and MOVEMENTS with the incorporation of BALL DISRUPTIONS. Our program believes “It’s all about the Ball” and our Defensive Unit is striving for 30 Takeaways this fall.
Spring Individual Time – Framework and Menu
-We made it clear to the players this spring the mentality that they need to approach individual time on the field. This is important from a teacher-learner standpoint because in order to understand, one must know WHY. The additional goal was to make the players more invested in their own learning. Thus, in every meeting we emphasized what individual time was meant for and also checked our running menu of drills that we had done thus far. we wanted to make sure we were never asking them to perform something in a GROUP/TEAM setting that they hadn’t drilled in INDY. A constant reminder to the group was that if I was asking them repeatedly to fix something on video against the offense and we weren’t drilling it enough, then they needed to feel invested enough to speak up.
Here is the framework that we felt individual time fell under (the Menu was simply written on the board after every practice):
1 – Fundamentals (Tackling, Block Destruction, etc.)
2 – Techniques (DL Position Specific = Pass Rush moves, etc.)
3 – Schematic Teaching (How does this technique fit into a piece of an 11 man scheme we are doing that day? Example: long stick versus a blocker).
4 – Defeat Offenses (Need to show in Individual time: Blocking Patterns/Protection Schemes/Common Plays).
5 – Fix Your Problems (Constantly check-in).
Spring Pass Rush
everyone
-As listed in the SPRING MUSTS, Pass Rush is always a major emphasis as it is for every one and we hoped to individualize and differentiate this for each player by carrying over a winter project into the spring. During the winter, each player was asked to submit their top/favorite three pass rush moves. The assignment answer could not include a speed (or speed and dip) rush as we all know that is where everything starts and we went through several drafts working toward a base-counter-exotic three-move progression. The final drafts were due before spring break and then we tweaked them early on in the spring. When we worked pass rush in Indy Time, each player, instead of all doing the same moves we were then working on, we asked for their personal plan and we demanded that it show up in group and team work. This was a great exercise to keep things exciting for the players.
Hope spring goes well for all those who are starting soon at the high school level.