As we are wrapping up the major college recruiting dead period and the rest and relaxation period that most people (especially football coaches) get to enjoy this time of the year, we are set to embark on the heavy lifting that leads to success nine months from now. For football coaches, just like any educators taking time away, the holiday break is and should be a season of the year for reflection. Football is unlike any sport for the multitude of reasons that we all love it and most especially because success or failure is always determined long before the games are played. What follows are some specific areas for reflection that can hopefully help any coach towards refined practice as we move into the New Year and embark on the real work for winning games in the fall. All of these areas must be drilled down into and built back up NOW in order for the segments to fit together congruently and allow for victory. The constant mantra is hopefully: “Focus on the present, plan for the future”.
Master Yearly Calendar:
-No part of a football program or team is separate from another. Each day is precious and part of a specific segment that fits into the entire year.
Player Development – Strength and Conditioning:
-What are the players doing EVERY DAY to become bigger, faster, and stronger regardless of position? What is being done to address specific players’ needs in terms of flexibility, injury prevention, and individual strength and conditioning problem areas or deficiencies through the strength and conditioning program? Are there realistic, attainable, and incremental goals that everyone in the organization is accountable for?
Player Development – Positional Skill Set
-Each positional group should, through quality control video study, have specific technique areas that need to be either totally revamped, refined, or simply just improved upon because they are fundamental to that position.
Player Development – Unit Schematics
-The base menu that is never going to change, only evolve, for all three phases needs to be somehow reviewed and re-taught as necessary well before spring ball.
Player Development – “Winter Mat Drills”
-With the football coaches, not just the strength and conditioning staff, what format and what drills will be done that will functionally help the players become better at playing football?
Player Development – Team Building
-Activities and events need to be planned and executed that bring the people in the organization together and make relationships stronger well before any type of a formal football practice.
Recruiting
-At the college level – most importantly: what multitude of actions will allow the pool of prospects to potentially select from be deeper and wider then it has ever been?
-At the high school level – most importantly: what multitude of actions will allow for the players in the program to have more opportunities to play college football then they ever have had?
Coach Professional Development
-Who and what needs to be visited in person in order to increase their knowledge base?
-If gross schematic changes are going to be made, how can what is already been established be kept and refined and not completely overhauled so that the players can add to their existing schemes and not have to build new ones?
Video
-How will video, the fundamental teaching tool in football, be used more efficiently in the new year? WHO will do it and HOW?
Spring Football
-What are the goals for spring football? Pen to paper for specific practice plans as soon as possible is integral.
Summer Football
-Most importantly: what is the expectation for the players and what is the accountability system?
Training Camp
-Working backwards from the first game, checklists for every area need to be made and applied in order to drive the makeup of the practices available in this segment.
Fall Game Week Schedule
-The model is the model and it should take an emergency for it to change. Consideration towards tapering in the second half of the season is paramount.
Hopefully, these areas can help to springboard us all towards the general outcomes that we are all after: more successful individual players and more wins.