I hope that none of my coaching friends who read this blog find themselves in the situation I was in last week at this time. We had a great pre-season; performed well in both of our scrimmages and our hopes were high!
We faced a strong opponent that beat us up last year to the tune of 38-16. We lost on a missed extra point 14-13 to open this season. Then in our second game we faced the defending state champions who thumped us 38-0 last year. We went up to their place and lost on a questionable call on our 2 point conversion with just over a minute left, 27-26.
So there we were sitting 0-2 when we were 2 points away from being undefeated. What did we do? What we didn”t do was “hit the panic button.” We have good kids who understand that the margin of error is quite thin. We just kept working on fundamentals and preached execution and effort. Instead of installing more plays, we focused on getting better at our base offense. Our defense needed to tackle better and pursue to the ball. Guess what we spent extra time on?!! So what happened this past Friday? We went up against the state runner-up from last year! We led 14-6 at halftime and I was not pleased with our effort. I spoke pretty strongly at halftime about picking up our intensity. We went out the second half and played perhaps the best half of football that one of my teams has played in 10 years! We pretty much dominated all phases of the game. Our offense scored 4 times in the second half and our defense gave up one long pass play when the game was just about over. It was very gratifying to see the look of “mission accomplished” on our kids’ faces after the game!
Moral of the story? 1- Keep doing the things you’re doing…. just do them better. I have high expectations and that challenges the players to work hard to reach those expectations. Our practice schedule was built around working on fundamentals. It’s not very “sexy” but it’s what we needed to improve upon. 2- Don’t panic! The tendency to start trying new stuff is tempting. Stick with what you know best. Encourage the kids—don’t berate them. Help them to see that with a better block here or a finish on a tackle there, it would have been a different outcome. Kids are very resilient. Give them the encouragement they need to get focused on improving. Like Coach John Wooden used to say: “I’m much more concerned about having my team prepared than worrying about what the other team is going to do against us.” That means focusing on those fundamentals.
Does your book include practice plans? We are struggling with our fundamentals. It seems like all we do is go over plays, not how how to execute those plays. We are 2 – 3 right and are reeling. I cut the playbook way down last week and we played much better on offense, we just shot ourselves in the foot. Most of my guys are leaving everything they have out on that field, I just want them to be successful.
One more thing? Do you ever talk about winning or losing as it pertains to the result of the game? I read where John Wooden, never talked to his teams about winning or losing the game. I wonder if we focus less on the outcome and more on our effort and fundamentals, that it might help.
Don’t know. I am just struggling and I mean big time.