Game Preparation

Dave, good to see you back here on the board. How did it go at Hopewell this year?

The head coach should have two meetings a week with the staff:

1. To grade the previous game's film before the film is reviewed with the athletes.
2. To meet with the staff and discuss the opponent and the practice focus for the week. This must be done before the practice focus is given to the players.

The head coach will add an additional meeting to meet with his coordinator(s) if he has a coordinator(s).

Don't just meet for the sake of meeting... meet with a purpose. The head coach must be as efficient as possible with these meetings out of consideration for the assistant coach and his family.

I hope this helped and I look forward to discussing this further.

Sleeping can wait for NFL coaches
Lifestyle almost 24-7
By Jim Armstrong
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:10/19/2006 12:14:59 AM MDT
Broncos coach Mike Shanahan spends much of his 16- to 18-hour workdays watching video of the next week's opponent. "You're looking for every nook and cranny on that film," he said. "You don't want to leave any stones unturned." (Post / John Leyba)

Competitive juices aren't all that flow at Broncos headquarters. Coffee and Diet Coke are all the rage, too. So is anything else that might help the coaches survive their latest 100-hour work week.

Mike Shanahan has lived an NFL coach's life since the mid-1980s. To hear him tell it, there are two requirements for success in the Sunday coaching ranks: Pour yourself into the job and pour yourself plenty of java.

"I don't know how many I drink, but it's quite a bit," Shanahan said. "I might only have four or five cups, but I probably go in there 15 times a day."

Such is life for NFL coaches, the game's day-and-night watchmen. They live a surreal existence of 12- to 18-hour days spent in the eternal pursuit of a competitive edge. They watch more videos than Ebert & Roeper. They put away their golf clubs in July and don't touch them again until early spring. In between, they spend their time trying to outmaneuver coaches who share their hours, their lifestyles and, most important, their passion for all things football.

It isn't hard to find the coffee in the Broncos' front office. The break room has a row of six canisters, each of which is filled and refilled. Shanahan's secretary, Cindi Lowe, estimates she pulls refill duty 20 times a day.

For the men who coach at the game's highest level, caffeine qualifies as a basic food group. Most of Shanahan's assistants drink coffee, some deep into the night, and those who don't can often be found chugging down a can of soda.

"I drink eight to 10 Diet Cokes a day," assistant head coach Mike Heimer- dinger said. "It's so intense, you're working so hard, you don't come down until after the game. I go home after a game, have a couple of beers and pass out from exhaustion. Then you wake up and start getting ready for the next game."

History is filled with tales of coaches who put in more time than a medical intern, if not a prison inmate.

Perhaps you have heard about Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs sleeping on the sofa in his office. But did you know that, back in the day, he had his wife tape dinner-table conversation so he could catch up on his family life? Or that he had the clocks removed from the team's headquarters? Or that, when Gibbs was on Don Coryell's staff in San Diego, the coaches often met at midnight or 1 a.m.?

Former Broncos coach Dan Reeves was a player-coach for the Dallas Cowboys in the early 1970s. He, too, ground out long hours. According to Reeves, the only difference between then and now is technology and the size of coaching staffs.

"When I first started, we had three offensive coaches, three defensive coaches and a head coach," Reeves said. "We got it done with that number of coaches because that's what everybody else had. Today, I'm seeing 20-some coaches on a staff. What do you do with all those guys? You do more because everybody else is doing more.

"There's more information now. Everybody has computers. I didn't know what a computer was until seven or eight years ago. We used to break down film by hand. We had a 16-millimeter projector and we'd sit in a dark room all hours of the day. Today, if a coach wants to look at every pass play inside the 20, he hits a button and, boom, it's there."

Reeves, the Broncos' head coach from 1981-92, also drank his share of Diet Cokes, a habit developed in his youth, when he was raised on Coca-Cola in small-town Georgia. He also smoked cigarettes, a common trait among the previous generation of NFL coaches.

"I smoked a pack a day, but I probably never finished one," Reeves said. "I'd smoke maybe one-third of it. You'd start watching film and you'd have a cigarette. Thank goodness I gave up that habit."

Unwavering challenge

The challenge is the habit coaches can't kick. It prompts them to endure the long hours away from their families. With only six days, if not fewer, between games, every week is a deadline to meet, a novel to finish, an ad campaign to finalize without a second to spare.

"You're looking for every nook and cranny on that film," Shanahan said. "It's so competitive in this league, you're looking for that one play, that one defense that might be the difference in a game. That's why people spend that time. You don't want to leave any stones unturned."

Shanahan and his coaches typically arrive at the team's Dove Valley facility at about 5 in the morning. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are 16- to 18-hour days, with most of the time spent poring over video of that week's opponent. They start with the offense and defense and narrow their focus as the week wears on.

Goal line, short yardage, three- and four-wide sets, red zone, check-offs, gadget plays, scripted plays ... the list goes on and on. By Tuesday night, the coaches have to have playbooks ready to hand players Wednesday morning. If you're quarterbacks Jake Plummer or Jay Cutler, you're receiving faxes Tuesday to get a head start on the game plan.

The coaches' schedule eases up Thursday - 10 to 12 hours - and by Friday they're usually home by late afternoon. Then it's on to date night with their wives. At least that's the drill in the Heimerdinger household.

"We started a tradition on Friday nights," he said. "That's our date night, our one night a week when we could talk or go to a movie. When I was at Tennessee, Jeff Fisher and I used to race out of the parking lot on Fridays to watch our sons play high school football. It's crazy. You do football all week and what do you do Friday night? 'Hey, honey, let's go watch a football game."'

Unhealthy climate

Coaches' devotion to their craft doesn't come without a price. Several coaches, Reeves among them, have undergone significant health problems.

Reeves experienced blocked arteries in Denver, a condition that ultimately led to bypass surgery during his days with the Atlanta Falcons. Cowboys coach Bill Parcells has a long history of heart problems, as has former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka.

Seattle assistant Ray Rhodes has suffered two strokes and was so ill on a recent road trip that the team charter had to make an emergency landing. Then there's former St. Louis Rams coach Mike Martz, who took a leave of absence last season to recover from a bacterial infection near his heart.

Longtime Broncos offensive line coach Alex Gibbs, now a consultant with the Falcons, walked away from the everyday grind out of concerns for his health. He says the pressure on coaches is more intense today than ever.

"I was going at a pace that was ridiculous," Gibbs said. "It's scary. There are more (coaches with health issues) than you know. It's just frightening, but we kind of get suckered in because it's all we can do. I didn't rebel against it. I knew I created my own ghost, but I did it because I thought it was best for our team. I don't see myself any different than all the other guys doing it. I know there will be 32 teams working late tonight."

And 32 teams' coaches working out in the morning. That also is a way of life for NFL coaches. Wherever they can squeeze in a quick workout, they do it. Not just to stay in shape, but to keep alert and ward off the constant stress of a job that invariably will lead to the nearest unemployment line.

Shanahan usually is on a treadmill at 5 in the morning at Broncos headquarters. Occasionally he changes his routine by working out at home or jogging around Cherry Creek Reservoir. His coaches, or at least their silhouettes, often can be spotted jogging near the team's facility in the dark of night.

"I try to stay pretty consistent with my workouts," Shanahan said. "You don't want to get worn down, especially as you get older. With the pressure that's involved, you want to make sure you're healthy and on top of your game. The only way to do that is to stay in shape."

Even then, the grind can wear you down. That's why coaches look forward to Saturdays, which are spent walking through plays and reviewing the game plan. Unless, of course, the Broncos have a road trip. When that team charter takes off, the coaches doze off.

"If you ask any of us, we all look forward to road trips," Heimerdinger said. "The minute we get on the plane, we're all asleep. None of us could tell you what movies they've shown or any of that stuff because we're out. It's like, 'Oh, man, here comes a road trip. We're going to get a few extra hours of sleep."'

Staff writer Jim Armstrong can be reached at 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com.

We worked on Sat. from 8 AM until about 4 PM
and then again on Sun. from around 9 AM until sometimes 2 AM.

I think this a bit long. What do you guys think?

I have mentioned this fact to the other coaches and our HC, but now I have been labeled as someone whom is not willing to do what it takes to win. It is a truly frustrating situation since, I love coaching these kids and teaching at this school.

I HIGHLY suggest the Landro Play Analyzer Coaches!
This was only my fourth year as a Head Coach so I haven't been around too long.
But, this Landro has cut back our film prep and film watching by about 30% I would guess.
Just AWESOME!
So, it cuts down your workload but more importantly prepares your team so much better!
To be able to pull up every third down pass play in 1 second to show the team versus searching and searching and cutting tapes together, MAN! What a blessing Landro is!

I have a VCR w/a cowboy remote and a LCD projector at home, so I get a copy of Friday nights game and go home and take the defensive stats (TKLs, ASSTs, TFL, INT, etc.) and email to our radio/stats guru. Then I go back thru and grade my position and if we gave up big plays, I make notes as to why. Bad call on my part? Effort? etc.

I go watch my son play pee-wee football on Sat. morning, while our HC trades film with our upcoming opponent. He brings it back and my DL coach makes me a copies of the opponent tapes. I go and pick up those tapes and head home. On my film breakdown sheet, I have room for 4 plays. A box to draw the play and a box to list D/D, HM, FORM, PLAY, BC or WR, RESULT, etc. I will do a half, then take a break and play with the kids or watch some college ball on TV. I do this off and on until I have broken down all the tapes. Then when the wife and kids call it a night, I enter all the data into the computer using digital scout and print off the scouting report and head to bed.

Sunday morning I look over the scouting report and use a highlighter to mark it up, then its off to early church service. After church, I leave for the office and make copies of the scouting report for my position coaches and make a cover sheet with their offensive personnel depth chart with name, #, ht & wt, class. By this time, the assistants have arrived and I review the previous game notes with the coaches. We discuss any personnel changes that might need to be made or techniques that we failed to perform well at so we can correct on Monday.

Now we get to our opponent. I give a breif overview of our opponent and we begin working on the board. Drawing formations and listing fav plays and what from our defensive package we like against their sets. After we have hashed out all our differences and made our final decisions, I have an assistant copy down the information from the board and make copies. Then we go thru all the plays our opponent ran in the previous games and begin drawing play cards. We keep everything from the previous years, so if their scheme hasn't changed we will pull plays and check to see if the blocking assignments have stayed the same. If so, we don't draw a new card, just use the older ones and finish up drawing any new cards we will need.

Once the cards are drawn, we begin to separate them into categories, i.e., openers, 3rd & L, 2nd & M, GL, SHT YDG, etc. and decide which part of practice we want to see them (inside drill, perimeter drill, skelly, or team). After this is done, we begin writing the practice plans and scripts for the week. We film each of these periods so we can evaluate what we game planned on the board and see if it holds up. If it doesn't we will look at something else and then add that play(s) into the script for the next day.

I do my team scripts of based on D/D & Hash so the kids get a feel for what they like to do on Fri. nights. Thrusday is walk-thru day. We stretch just like on Friday nights then go over special teams. Defense comes next and we align the scout team in their formations and talk about tendencies, then the offense finishes off the walk-thru. As they leave, the 2-deep defensive personnel are given an opponent tip sheet of personnel, formations with fav plays drawn below he main formation, and the last page has our keys to victory listed.

No more football until 4th block on Friday, when we garther and have brief walk-thrus again and watch a motivational movie before pre-game meal. Then it starts all over again around midnight. I also didn't mention film study with the players. We review our previous game on Monday before practice (not every play) and discuss the highs and the lows, and give out grades. On Tuesday & Wednesday before practice we will look at our practice performance from the previous day and correct errors, then after practice we will watch selected plays of our opponent.

Patrick Montgomery

As a defensive coordinator there is a ton of preparation that goes into creating a weekly game plan and most of that work comes in the film breakdown. We start breakdown preparation the week before the game (on Thursday) where we offer our previous two games as trade films. By rule, in our league, you have to have your two previous games’ trade films to the other team no later than Friday by noon the week before you play each other. Once I receive the two trade films, I send them to HUDL assist. Last year was our first year using HUDL assist and it is a life/time saver. Before, we would delegate hours of tedious data input for down and distance, run pass, play type, ODK, formation strength, and gain/loss for all of the trade films that we would get. This would take us hours to complete and each member of the staff would have a different responsibility. We would show up early on Saturday morning to complete this or stay late after the game on Friday night to get started. HUDL assist now does all of this for us. I send the game into HUDL and I mark which team I want them to scout and what things I want entered for data entry. I have HUDL do all of the data entry (besides formation and plays because I want to do this with my defensive staff so that we are on the same page on how we call a formation and a play). It usually takes HUDL assist one to two hours to complete all of the data entry and then I can start entering (on Thursday night) the first game’s formations and plays. On Friday, I finish the second game ‘s formation and play so that we only have one more game to break down on Saturday. I try not to go too far into the opposing team breakdown because I am still focused on the current week’s opponent and their tendencies and how we want to play them, but I want to get some of the leg work done before Saturday.



On Saturday, we come in around 7 am and the defensive staff gets the previous night’s game film in a trade with the other team and send it into HUDL for breakdown (so we end up with 3 films on the next opponent). While it is getting broken down we make notes on the previous week’s game for coaching points for the following week and grade out our position players to see if we need to make any changes to the depth chart. By this time, most of my assistants are getting ready to coach the JV game and I am getting the last night’s game back from HUDL assist. I then enter the formation and plays for that game and we then have all 3 games broken down for that week’s opponent before noon on Saturday. I then run tendency reports on the following: backfield set by offensive play, down and distance to play, formations, field position chart, and an overall summary. We will use these tendency reports (created by HUDL) to allow us to create our game plan and defensive call sheet on Sunday during our defensive meeting.



On Sunday, the defensive coaches meet from 3-5 pm, before the entire staff meeting, and we break down the tendency reports and create our run cards, pass cards, and team cards. We also use this to set up our defensive call sheet. We take the top 5 run and pass plays and we see when they like to run them, out of what formations, and these are plays that we will rep continuously in our game plan. We also look for any tip offs from the other team or habits of formations and plays. This would include always aligning their backfield a certain way in a formation which is a 100% run set as compared to the back being weak in the formation which means it is 100% pass. This helps us on Friday nights, with our coaches in the box, looking at formations and recognizing what plays they run out of them to set up our defense and to relay messages on the field. Our formation tendency report is huge because it gives us the top 3 run and pass plays out of that formation and our field position charts tells us what they want to run in certain areas of the field run/pass wise.



During our meeting the defensive line and inside backer coach breaks down all of the run plays and creates 12 run group cards out of their top formations and plays. They then set up their top 5 run calls to use to stop the run out of our different fronts. The outside linebackers coach and DBs coach break down and create the pass cards which is the top 12-15 pass plays and formations and then they are responsible for coming up with the coverages they want to run that week and the checks to any motions or formations. While the position coaches are doing this, I am creating a call sheet for down and distance based on the tendency report and creating 5-6 calls that I want to use (2-3 run and pass calls for each down and distance to make up his call sheet). To finish up the meeting the group creates a wristband call sheet for 10 calls that they can wristband in if a team has a tendency to play up-tempo in certain situations.



Finally, we meet as a whole staff from 5-7pm and I present the game plan to the staff and the head coach and we talk about the other team and strengths and weaknesses and strategies they are using. We also have our scouting report handout ready to go for the players with the game plan and weekly goals, top 5 formations and drawings, top 5 run plays, and top 5 pass plays with diagrams to hand out to players on Monday. On Monday, we hand out the scouting report to players and our practice is centered around the scouting report - a lot of coaching and formation recognition, run recognition, and pass and route recognition. It is a lot of walking and talking with a few short individual sessions to go over fundamentals and any game plan changes for the specific position. We then go in to the school on Monday and watch the previous week’s film to learn from our mistakes and talk about how we performed. We only watch a set amount of plays and we watch both good and bad clips. On Tuesday, we do a lot of group work during our practice, as well as, an individual and team session. Wednesday is our defensive practice priority day and we go in depth to our scouting report and have periods dedicated to certain situations to rep them. After practice on Wednesday, we watch film of that week’s opponent and we make all of our calls and checks to their formations and look for tendencies on plays and answer any questions. We feel like this is when we find out if our players understand the game plan and are confident or still have questions and we need to condense the game plan or simplify it. Thursday is our walk through and we start the process all over again that day.