Tendencies

I never like to try to scheme against every play. I like to try to find thier 4 or 5 best plays and try to school the kids up on those plays. If it is a team who shows plenty of formations, make sure everyone can align to those every time with no delays. These along with finding thier best "skill" players and their line strength are the most important thing I look for. Of course I look at other pieces of information, but I think I could get a gameplan together quite well with just this information.

I'm a college player right now, and I think that our head coach's biggest strength is his defensive game chart. In season, this guy gets to the building at 4AM and he usually doesn't leave until 8PM. Every single down and distance, he knows the exact percentage our opponents are running certain plays. Knowing that, he has pre-determined defensive calls he will use in certain situations.

We've got really high admissions standards, so we are ALWAYS less talented than our opponents, but by out preparing our foes, we do quite well. I will admit, however, that our coach sometimes does get burned big time when tendencies aren't followed. I really like what he does, but as a coach, I will probably be a bit more conservative.

I would say that in our most succesful years we were probably the most predictable, even if you know what we're running, you still have to stop it.

We do pretty much all of the tendency charting I listed about plus a few more.

I will say this though. We also chart our own offense and we purposly build in tendencies knowing the the well coached teams will pick up on them and it becomes, we know what they know kind of deal so we run against the tendencies at a crucial part of the game.

We all play teams that you know they don't do their homework, we all play teams that you out-coach themselves. We also play teams you won't outcoach because they do just as much as you.

They are the teams where the chess game of tendency and tendency breakers come into play. It is an awesome feeling to know you just busted their Defense because you went against one of your own tendencies that you pretty much purposly built in for a particular play in the game you circled on your calendar.

Almost like when Patton defeated Rommel then screamed out accross the battlefield "I read your book".

We have our rival and every year it comes down to 2-3 plays that decide the game (like most rival games). Most are coaching decisions on a defensive call or play call knowing a certain tendency to a formation, D&D, etc... In rival games, at least with us, the records are thrown out the talent is thrown out, its a back yard brawl of epic proportions and the seeds were planted the year past.

It why I love coaching so much. Those moments in the season where the card being played was put into motion 5 games before. Its a kick to see it hit.

Just like having your opponent check raise you and you call and bust him. Love it!!!!!

That is why I think too charts on tendencys can hurt. If you know too much, it is easier to be burned if you design schemes and automatics based soly on tendencies, especially when it involves rolling the dice as you can crap out if they go against the grain. Really good coaches know when you found a tendency, they then lay the trap and its over.

Love it!!!