I’m getting a lot of questions about what needs to be done at this time of year from head coaches trying to solidify things as we (finally!) begin to move towards Spring! One of the KEY things, in my mind, that needs to get done is to be sure that your individual staff members KNOW how to coach their position. Particulary if you have a new staff member, it is imperative as the head guy that you “coach your coaches” so that they know their assignments.
I am surprised that Head Coaches will strive to be sure that their players know their assignments and never take the time to teach and quiz their staff members to be sure that they know their assignments.
It starts with going over your over-all defense and offense. I’ve found assistant coaches who seem to feel that as long as they have a “pretty good” idea about the skills and drills involved in their position… that THAT is enough! HC’s: you need to be sure that everybody on your staff has at least a working knowledge of what your offensive and defensive packages are all about. You’re uncovering a potentially “lazy” assistant if he is only interested in learning his position and nothing more.
Once you feel comfortable with all of your coaches having that “overview”— you can begin to review and test (yes) each assistant on his position. There are 2 effective ways that I discovered to be sure that every assistant is ready to coach up his kids. 1- each coach has to take several quizzes on the different aspects of his position. For instance, my Off. Line coach has to take Blocking Rule quizzes on every series we run. Until he’s perfect on one series, we don’t move on to the next. Your LB coach has to be able to give back to you his LB’s alignments on all of your fronts; detailed description of your blitzes and the LB’s pass coverage responsibilities. 2- The second way to be sure that your assistants are ready (and this is one of my “101 Little Things” that I go into detail in my book) is each coach has to get up in front of the rest of the staff and, with the coaches role playing as “players”, the coach has to take the rest of the staff through a demonstration of his “core drill” sequence that he will use in practice.
You want to know why you haven’t been as successful as you’d hoped to have been in the past? Maybe it’s because you haven’t been “coaching your assistant coaches” like you should!
Please email me if you have any more questions about this or any other “little thing” subject.
In Christ,
Lew
