Post by Coach Campbell on Aug 3, 2014 13:27:12 GMT
Brandon Dematto
A successful football program begins with a year-round outlook. This year-round outlook dictates the importance of preparation 365 days per year. This outlook provides meaning to your program and attaches significance, not only to the season, but to the other phases of the program that lead to the success of the season. We believe in stressing the importance in all that we do. A season consists of the 365 day approach, not just the practices and games you play in August through November. Win everyday, not just on game day! That goes for the work in the classroom (as a student and an athlete), in the weight room, in the film room, on the practice field, on game day, and in the community. Expect greatness by committing to exemplary effort!
Offensively, we are a pistol team. The pistol gives us the versatility that we need year-in-and-year-out to be able to modify our playbook to the type of talent we have on the field. The pistol gives us the option to spread teams out with 2x2 sets, trips sets, and empty sets; but also allows us to go double-tight, balanced, full backfield, etc.. in order to pound the football. We are a zone running team, as we tend to be a little bit smaller up front. The zone concepts we use allow our players to easily identify their responsibilities and, so long as we don't face a five-man front, allow for us to combo block regularly. We also believe in making things easy for our linemen. Because we run a zone blocking scheme, we have been able to pair a lot of our plays to have the same blocking schemes up front. This prevents complication up front. Our base plays consist of inside and outside zone, zone read, power, and counter.
As far as our passing game goes, we don't believe in a lot of deep drops. We are a quick-game passing team. We believe in flooding zones with three level routes and taking what the defense gives us. We believe if we can get our athletes the ball in space, they are good enough to make moves to improve our field position after the catch. In addition to that, we run a lot of playaction pass off of our base run plays. We feel that if we can run the ball well enough to get safety and linebacker commitment early, then we can go over the top with the pass.
Defensively, we like to make things very simple for our kids. Our base defense aligns our front in 3's and 7's so that we have gap control with our linemen and our linebackers. At times, we can combo our defense so that we have our strong side DT and DE in 3's and 7's, while we have weakside in 2's and 5's (rolling an outside backer down to the LOS for contain, when necessary). We are a zone coverage team that runs a lot of cover three on the back end. We will occasionally run some man and cover 2, but primarily cover three.
On special teams, we load up with talent. We put our athletes on special teams in an attempt to be as special as possible. Many times, special teams allows us to use younger, athletic guys that currently, just aren't quite ready scheme wise for offense and defense. This gives them the opportunity to get experience with the speed of the game with very little to have to think about. In addition, this helps us spell a few guys that might be going both ways and allow them to catch their breath. However, some of our best athletes, find themselves going three-ways at times. Again, on special teams, we keep things relatively simple. We assign responsibilities to positions and will, occassionally, change formations to force the opponents to think a little more. However, everything we do on special teams, no matter the formation, everyone will still have the same responsibility.
In-season, we focus our efforts six days per week. Because we are a middle school, our game days are on Wednesday after school. So, our week begins on Thursday and ends on Wednesday.
Thursday:
Thursday, after the game, we bring our kids in for a heavy stretch period and light conditioning period. The conditioning is long, slow type of running to try and work some of the soreness out. We, then, take our kids into the weight room for a light lift. In addition to that we have our kids meet with our athletic trainer to take care of any bumps and bruises that might have occurred from the previous day's game.
Once practice is complete, the coaches meet to break down film from the previous day. We identify areas of weakness and some points that we need to emphasize for the upcoming week. In addition, we chart plays, tackles, and stats to be printed out for the kids to see the following day. Once we have completed our film study of the previous day, we focus our attention to the next week. Because we do not exchange film in middle school, the best we can do is look at film from the previous year. With that said, we chart plays and tendencies for our upcoming game week. We then make playcards on offense and defense so that our kids can get quality looks in preparation for our upcoming game. Once all of that is complete, we focus our attention on our weekly awards that will be handed out on Friday. We hand out awards from performance in the previous game, character awards based on the characteristic we were emphasizing that week, and achievement of team goals for the previous game and for the season.
Friday:
Friday begins with the analyzing of the previous day's game. We watch a little bit of film on areas that we did well, as well as a few clips of areas that we did not do so well. Unfortunately, we only have access to one television, so we have to do this as a group versus doing this in individual groupings. Once we have identified areas to correct and explain how we are going to go about correcting them, we move on to weekly awards. We distribute the awards (helmet stickers) for individual performance in Wednesday's game, the character award, and the team goals awards. Once all awards are finished, we discuss the game plan for the upcoming week and begin to discuss any changes or installation that we will go through.
Friday's practice will be a bit slower, as we will progress with our installation on offense. We will walk through the plays that we install and then begin to step up the tempo so that we can get optimal reps within them. We will still run offensive individual periods, but we will focus more on the installation aspect for the week.
After Friday's practice, coaches will meet about the installation of the offense and discuss any changes that might need to be made.
Saturday:
Saturday will be very similar to Friday, except without the awards. On this day, we focus primarily on the defensive installation/changes that are necessary for the week. We will talk about keys and how to defend their best five running plays and their top three passing plays. We will get a lot of reps for all teams during this practice and ensure everyone is comfortable with the game plan.
After the Saturday practice, we will meet with team captains to discuss any issues that the team is having with the week's game plan or any issues that might exist between teammates or in the locker room. This will also serve as a 30 minute lesson to our captains on the leadership qualities that we intend to teach to them. The theme of the week that we use for our team, will also be the theme that we use with our captains. The only exception that we will use is to describe to our captains how that particular characteristic should be exhibited through the eyes of a leader.
Sunday:
No contact can be made between player and coach on Sunday.
We use this as a family day for players and coaching staff.
Monday:
Monday we use as reps day on offense and defense. We try to polish everything that we have installed on Friday and Saturday and ensure that we are going 100%. This day will be a day that we really move. We want to be efficient with our time and execute with perfection in mind. Individual time will be minimized during this practice, as we will prepare more group and team time to get more reps as units.
After practice on Monday, the coaching staff will finalize details for the upcoming game on Wednesday. We will have depth charts made, all special teams personnel will be accounted for and our play sheets will be created and finalized for the game.
Tuesday:
Pre-game practice. We will spend about 15 minutes offensively and then 15 minutes defensively going over our keys and our responsibilities. Then we will play our "Play the Game" portion of practice with perfection in mind. We will script this out and make sure we all are accounted for offensively, defensively, and on special teams.
Pre-Game Dinner after practice served by the booster club.
Wednesday
Game Day
Go take care of business
We handle leadership differently throughout the year. In-season, we use our character development to guide our kids into possessing leadership and quality human characteristics. We use weekly themese to describe which characteristic that we will emphasize. We, then, have a lesson everyday (mini-lessons) before practice to get kids to think about their character and begin to motivate them to live their lives according to building such character. If it is in the forefront of their minds, then they are more likely to exhibit that behavior throughout the week. In addition to that, we host leadership meetings on Saturday, after practice, with our captains. This is specific to leadership and how we take the weekly theme and apply it to a leader's role.
In the off-season, we begin a leadership development class as soon as we return from Winter Break. We run these classes at 6:30am to 7:30am every Monday and Friday. We meet in my classroom and we use a 12 week leadership book to guide us through the lessons. Anybody that intends on playing football for us the following year, will be asked to attend these meetings. We even open these meetings up to any kids that don't play football, but compete in other sports and want to learn about leadership.
Our off-season program, much like our leadership program, begins when we return from Winter Break. We meet after school from 3:30-5:30 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to lift according to our offseason workout program. On Tuesday and Thursday, we meet from 3:30-4:30pm to work on agility and cardio conditioning. We continue this program until the end of the school year, where we transition to our Summer program.
Our Summer program is, simply, just a transition from our offseason program. However, we do change the schedule up a bit. We go Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings starting at 7:30am. WE break the groups into two equal groupings. The first group will perform their lifting regiment and complete it within an hour. Meanwhile, the second group will be in the gym working on agility, explosion, power, and conditioning. After the first hour is finished, they will switch and do the opposite workout. This will give the kids three days per week of lifting and conditioning.
On Monday nights, we will meet to do 7on7 work with our kids. On Wednesday nights, we will focus on individual, skill specific work with our athletes. Half of the segment will be focused on offensive positioning and the other half will be dedicated towards developing defensive skill-specifics.
A successful football program begins with a year-round outlook. This year-round outlook dictates the importance of preparation 365 days per year. This outlook provides meaning to your program and attaches significance, not only to the season, but to the other phases of the program that lead to the success of the season. We believe in stressing the importance in all that we do. A season consists of the 365 day approach, not just the practices and games you play in August through November. Win everyday, not just on game day! That goes for the work in the classroom (as a student and an athlete), in the weight room, in the film room, on the practice field, on game day, and in the community. Expect greatness by committing to exemplary effort!
Offensively, we are a pistol team. The pistol gives us the versatility that we need year-in-and-year-out to be able to modify our playbook to the type of talent we have on the field. The pistol gives us the option to spread teams out with 2x2 sets, trips sets, and empty sets; but also allows us to go double-tight, balanced, full backfield, etc.. in order to pound the football. We are a zone running team, as we tend to be a little bit smaller up front. The zone concepts we use allow our players to easily identify their responsibilities and, so long as we don't face a five-man front, allow for us to combo block regularly. We also believe in making things easy for our linemen. Because we run a zone blocking scheme, we have been able to pair a lot of our plays to have the same blocking schemes up front. This prevents complication up front. Our base plays consist of inside and outside zone, zone read, power, and counter.
As far as our passing game goes, we don't believe in a lot of deep drops. We are a quick-game passing team. We believe in flooding zones with three level routes and taking what the defense gives us. We believe if we can get our athletes the ball in space, they are good enough to make moves to improve our field position after the catch. In addition to that, we run a lot of playaction pass off of our base run plays. We feel that if we can run the ball well enough to get safety and linebacker commitment early, then we can go over the top with the pass.
Defensively, we like to make things very simple for our kids. Our base defense aligns our front in 3's and 7's so that we have gap control with our linemen and our linebackers. At times, we can combo our defense so that we have our strong side DT and DE in 3's and 7's, while we have weakside in 2's and 5's (rolling an outside backer down to the LOS for contain, when necessary). We are a zone coverage team that runs a lot of cover three on the back end. We will occasionally run some man and cover 2, but primarily cover three.
On special teams, we load up with talent. We put our athletes on special teams in an attempt to be as special as possible. Many times, special teams allows us to use younger, athletic guys that currently, just aren't quite ready scheme wise for offense and defense. This gives them the opportunity to get experience with the speed of the game with very little to have to think about. In addition, this helps us spell a few guys that might be going both ways and allow them to catch their breath. However, some of our best athletes, find themselves going three-ways at times. Again, on special teams, we keep things relatively simple. We assign responsibilities to positions and will, occassionally, change formations to force the opponents to think a little more. However, everything we do on special teams, no matter the formation, everyone will still have the same responsibility.
In-season, we focus our efforts six days per week. Because we are a middle school, our game days are on Wednesday after school. So, our week begins on Thursday and ends on Wednesday.
Thursday:
Thursday, after the game, we bring our kids in for a heavy stretch period and light conditioning period. The conditioning is long, slow type of running to try and work some of the soreness out. We, then, take our kids into the weight room for a light lift. In addition to that we have our kids meet with our athletic trainer to take care of any bumps and bruises that might have occurred from the previous day's game.
Once practice is complete, the coaches meet to break down film from the previous day. We identify areas of weakness and some points that we need to emphasize for the upcoming week. In addition, we chart plays, tackles, and stats to be printed out for the kids to see the following day. Once we have completed our film study of the previous day, we focus our attention to the next week. Because we do not exchange film in middle school, the best we can do is look at film from the previous year. With that said, we chart plays and tendencies for our upcoming game week. We then make playcards on offense and defense so that our kids can get quality looks in preparation for our upcoming game. Once all of that is complete, we focus our attention on our weekly awards that will be handed out on Friday. We hand out awards from performance in the previous game, character awards based on the characteristic we were emphasizing that week, and achievement of team goals for the previous game and for the season.
Friday:
Friday begins with the analyzing of the previous day's game. We watch a little bit of film on areas that we did well, as well as a few clips of areas that we did not do so well. Unfortunately, we only have access to one television, so we have to do this as a group versus doing this in individual groupings. Once we have identified areas to correct and explain how we are going to go about correcting them, we move on to weekly awards. We distribute the awards (helmet stickers) for individual performance in Wednesday's game, the character award, and the team goals awards. Once all awards are finished, we discuss the game plan for the upcoming week and begin to discuss any changes or installation that we will go through.
Friday's practice will be a bit slower, as we will progress with our installation on offense. We will walk through the plays that we install and then begin to step up the tempo so that we can get optimal reps within them. We will still run offensive individual periods, but we will focus more on the installation aspect for the week.
After Friday's practice, coaches will meet about the installation of the offense and discuss any changes that might need to be made.
Saturday:
Saturday will be very similar to Friday, except without the awards. On this day, we focus primarily on the defensive installation/changes that are necessary for the week. We will talk about keys and how to defend their best five running plays and their top three passing plays. We will get a lot of reps for all teams during this practice and ensure everyone is comfortable with the game plan.
After the Saturday practice, we will meet with team captains to discuss any issues that the team is having with the week's game plan or any issues that might exist between teammates or in the locker room. This will also serve as a 30 minute lesson to our captains on the leadership qualities that we intend to teach to them. The theme of the week that we use for our team, will also be the theme that we use with our captains. The only exception that we will use is to describe to our captains how that particular characteristic should be exhibited through the eyes of a leader.
Sunday:
No contact can be made between player and coach on Sunday.
We use this as a family day for players and coaching staff.
Monday:
Monday we use as reps day on offense and defense. We try to polish everything that we have installed on Friday and Saturday and ensure that we are going 100%. This day will be a day that we really move. We want to be efficient with our time and execute with perfection in mind. Individual time will be minimized during this practice, as we will prepare more group and team time to get more reps as units.
After practice on Monday, the coaching staff will finalize details for the upcoming game on Wednesday. We will have depth charts made, all special teams personnel will be accounted for and our play sheets will be created and finalized for the game.
Tuesday:
Pre-game practice. We will spend about 15 minutes offensively and then 15 minutes defensively going over our keys and our responsibilities. Then we will play our "Play the Game" portion of practice with perfection in mind. We will script this out and make sure we all are accounted for offensively, defensively, and on special teams.
Pre-Game Dinner after practice served by the booster club.
Wednesday
Game Day
Go take care of business
We handle leadership differently throughout the year. In-season, we use our character development to guide our kids into possessing leadership and quality human characteristics. We use weekly themese to describe which characteristic that we will emphasize. We, then, have a lesson everyday (mini-lessons) before practice to get kids to think about their character and begin to motivate them to live their lives according to building such character. If it is in the forefront of their minds, then they are more likely to exhibit that behavior throughout the week. In addition to that, we host leadership meetings on Saturday, after practice, with our captains. This is specific to leadership and how we take the weekly theme and apply it to a leader's role.
In the off-season, we begin a leadership development class as soon as we return from Winter Break. We run these classes at 6:30am to 7:30am every Monday and Friday. We meet in my classroom and we use a 12 week leadership book to guide us through the lessons. Anybody that intends on playing football for us the following year, will be asked to attend these meetings. We even open these meetings up to any kids that don't play football, but compete in other sports and want to learn about leadership.
Our off-season program, much like our leadership program, begins when we return from Winter Break. We meet after school from 3:30-5:30 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to lift according to our offseason workout program. On Tuesday and Thursday, we meet from 3:30-4:30pm to work on agility and cardio conditioning. We continue this program until the end of the school year, where we transition to our Summer program.
Our Summer program is, simply, just a transition from our offseason program. However, we do change the schedule up a bit. We go Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings starting at 7:30am. WE break the groups into two equal groupings. The first group will perform their lifting regiment and complete it within an hour. Meanwhile, the second group will be in the gym working on agility, explosion, power, and conditioning. After the first hour is finished, they will switch and do the opposite workout. This will give the kids three days per week of lifting and conditioning.
On Monday nights, we will meet to do 7on7 work with our kids. On Wednesday nights, we will focus on individual, skill specific work with our athletes. Half of the segment will be focused on offensive positioning and the other half will be dedicated towards developing defensive skill-specifics.