First, some good clips from our first game:

CB's were too far back and out of the play, and our Dogs here were not the right kids.

Well, we did chew up most teams' second offenses, LOL:

And a bad spread is NOT a good idea against our D:

Now the ugly from that game:

Just bad angles all the way around - Dog, CB, R, you name it:

Some lovely tackling, flag was holding on them:

This is what happens when a DW takes out your C gap defenders - OS has to be tougher than this, and R and CB need to get there faster:

What happens when your CB is too short and followed by really bad tackling - this happened to us 2-3 times during the year:

This is for sure bad angles, but also what happens when the better athletes are on the other side of the LOS - he just outran us to the corner.

And this one pissed me off, and was one of the reasons the RCB got fired after this game - the Dog played it okay (went down kind of easy), no excuse for the OS and CB on the right to get sucked in:

Some ugly from our second game, against the second best team in our conference, a 13-6 loss that wasn't as close as the score indicated:

Just bad angles and a whiffed tackle - and again a little bit of evidence of being out-athleted - this kid was one of their worst athletes, and he dogged two of our better kids:

For most of the year, we were very good on PAT's in 60 GUTS. Less space, so our lack of athleticism wasn't as exposed.  This play, though, really, really pissed me off. This was just embarrassing:

I guess we kind of learned from the week before, but not really:

Awful angles - we really struggled all year on sweep to recognize the fact we were slow and needed to use angles. We practiced the crap out of it and got better, but man...

Some good from game 2:

This was the play after the bootleg above, we stopped them on 4th down, so no harm done:

This might have been their first play from scrimmage.  Just feeling us out:

We definitely learned after being beaten on that first bootleg:

This was the play after the reverse, so again it was no harm done.

Game 3 was interesting - we had scrimmaged this team, and we knew they had much better athletes.  They had a couple of kids that were running down everything we did in that scrimmage, but I intentionally didn't run our full offense that day because I knew we were playing them. 

We ended up hammering them 30-6, which IMO happened because of two things - our D being high-pressure and not giving them a chance to figure anything out, and our O going no huddle.  They had a short roster (17 kids), we flat out wore them down. We didn't get many long plays, we had a bunch of long drives that just beat them up. Lots of 4th down conversions.

This game was the start of our MASH unit, though.  We "lost" 3-4 players during the game to "injuries". Quotations because none of the kids were truly injured, just banged up. We just weren't a tough team.

Here are the bad plays from game 3 - there weren't that many:

This is the 43rd play of the game, and the first one they ran that gained yardage.  We were up 22-0 or something like that at this point. As mentioned, we had changed CB's in game 2, this was the first time #14 had seen the TE seam route.  He learned...

Then we continued to shut them down, until these two plays in a row.  This is what spread can do if your Dog doesn't do his job, leaves space for the QB to run.  Please note - these are the 66th and 67th plays of the game, and other than the play above, the first time they got a first down...

This is a sweep late in the game - Dog and CB did a poor job.

In the next post you'll see 2 plays later the same sweep get shut down.

Here are some of the good plays we made in game 3:

These first two are 1st and 3rd down of their first series - going backwards. They punted on 4th.

Again, bad spread = bad idea.  And an indication of how hard it is against this D if you aren't perfect. By the time he came down with the slightly bad snap, he was running for his life

They just couldn't figure out how to block 8:

And our pass D got a lot better, they didn't complete one the rest of the game:

#22 showing off, LOL - was a heck of a pick:

The exact same play that beat us for the TD - great play by the CB:

And #22 doing his thing again:

And much better sweep defense - the Dog forces the runner to bubble back, the CB meets him at the LOS, and even though he misses, everyone else gets there fast.

Game 4 - won 28-0.  We put it into running clock in the first drive of the second half, I just wanted to get out of there healthy.

We had scrimmaged this team.  Poorly coached, but had some real athletes.  Their best kid, who just dominated us in our scrimmage, didn't make weight so he was out. Made a huge difference.

Low-lights - not many.

This is what can happen when you're in Grim and have a N that doesn't listen.  We'd been telling him to bull rush the C in Grim - sorta "2 gap"  but not really - just don't pick a side and leave the other A gap wide open.  Does he listen?  Nope.

Dog and CB not doing their jobs:

OS tapped inside, the DT didn't really get enough push to his outside gap. Left the C gap wide open.  CB got there within 3-4 yards but whiffed.  Lucky this wasn't a TD. Dog didn't do a great job, but we'd been killing him about diving inside that FB block, so really he was doing what we wanted him to do.

And this is what happens when you sub on D, LOL.  MS did not do his job - instead of hitting the hole he decided to "read", the FB blew right through where he was supposed to be.  This kid didn't play D for us normally, we were in running time so he was out there.

Obviously going to be far more "good" clips in a 28-0 win.

Nice R play - our new R didn't hit as hard as the old one, and was just as small.  But he was a year older, and that made a difference.  He is also a slightly better athlete.  Good nose for the ball.  Really hurt us later in the year when he went down with a concussion.

A poorly executed sweep - Dog did exactly the wrong thing here, but the CB came up well and made a play.  This kid wasn't a hitter, but he was a good athlete, smart, and TALL.  Which as you saw from some earlier clips, was important, LOL. He was also the charter member of the owie club.  Soft.

I liked our D staying with this play, and again our R sniffed it out well.

A couple clips of our pass defense.  Again - they learned from getting burned in game 3.  That's what I like about this D, you learn.

And some better sweep defense - again, some poorly executed, but I'm looking at the kids doing what they are supposed to be doing:

And why I like Grim against sweep -

This is better N play in Grim (this kid - #54 - was 9 years old, playing against 11's and 12's...STUD) -

Thanks for putting up all these clips!

Thanks John. Always enjoy the Good, Bad and Ugly Threads. Very helpful especially with your narratives. WAY better than any stand alone playbook.

Game 5 was a forfeit as they only had like 14 kids (need 16) - we played a running time game and won 35-0, but no film. We got better work in practice against each other.

Game 6 - awful angle, no bleachers. Big game for us, as winning this guaranteed we made playoffs and finished at least .500. Good program, but this wasn't their best team. I had some film on them ahead of time, and they had a kid (#1) that was REALLY good, but undisciplined.  I was told if you hit him enough, he'll quit.  And that's what happened.  We ended up winning 22-7 but it was a dog fight. And, even though it was the high point of our season, it was also the beginning of our end. This team hit us hard enough to make a few kids quit, and we never really got them back. 7 or 8 kids were down by the end of the game. Didn't cost us this game, but it cost us the next week, and in the playoffs.

If #1 hadn't taken himself out with a stupid penalty, they may have gotten us at the end.  But without him, they couldn't compete with us.

Low-lights - well, the first one is easy, the only score we gave up.  They just lined up #1 as a deep TB (he was like 8-10 yards deep) tossed it to him and let him go one on whatever. And in this case, he won.

He got loose again but fortunately they had a flag bring it back.  This kid was scary when he had the ball.

Sweep right, goes back left and still gets around the edge. Open field was not our friend:

While they did us a favor when he went to QB and gave someone else the ball, he was still scary scrambling.  We had prepared our kids for this pass in the first clip, you can see him pull up to throw but it wasn't open. Then he ran...

The good from game 6 - pretty much every time they didn't run #1, LOL.  We shut everything else down pretty easily. And got to him eventually.

When they didn't give him the ball...

Or he threw the ball - anything to get it out of his hands. Incomplete.

We kind of started to play at the LOS, more bend don't break, to track him down.  It wasn't intentional, it was just how our kids reacted.

And this is the one that put him out of the game - he got up and spiked the ball, got a 15 yard penalty.  Coaches pulled him, never put him back in.  We stuffed them, then scored again to ice the game. If he stays in the game, I'm not sure if we win. We were up 14-7 I believe at this time. He was just as good on defense - played in the middle and we struggled to get past him. One of the few players that was probably better than our #22 - our kid was more disciplined and probably mechanically better, but this kid was a ridiculous athlete.

Game 7 was a tough one.  We were SURE we were going to win, and win big.  All of our common opponents pointed to us being significantly better. This was going to be win #5, locking up a winning record and 5 wins in a row.  This is our HS rival, turkey day games going back over 100 years.  I had never coached against them - in fact they were in our program until about 4-5 years ago (is a big part of the rift with our local HS HC - we dared to have the enemy within our program). Last year our C team blew them out and caused some bad blood. Their D team beat our other D team last year, but we were better than our other D team, and our current team combined both D teams. But what I didn't realize was how much that game 6 win took out of us. And how soft the kids from our other D team really were.

Early in the game we lost #14, one of our starting CB's (and starting TE), when he banged his head catching a pass. Our other starting CB #34 was out of the game with an owie. Then it just cascaded from there.  By the end of the game I think we were down like 8 starters on D, including both CB's, R, N, and one Dog. But we STILL could have won the game if I just called the damn offense right.  We lost 24-22 - they scored 4 TD's with no PAT's, we scored 3 and kicked 2 PAT's. We had the ball TWICE inside their 40 in the 4th, up 22-18 and then down 24-22, and gave it up on downs both times.  I SUCKED that game.  Total choke job.

It's going to take me a bit of time to go through this game for the plays - I'm still a little annoyed, LOL. This was the last game we got on film. I'll post clips when I can.

I could almost just post this and say "this is what the game was".  First play of the game. Our f*cking Dog didn't even get blocked. Our CB was too deep to start and didn't come up fast enough, should have read run all the way and been on that within 3 yards of the LOS. Can't blame the R, he got blocked by the TE. I think the left stack and DT both went inside. Ugh.

Okay - here's the rest of the ugly from game 7, still bugs the sh*t out of me...

#11 just killed us. In fact, in hindsight I think I understand why teams that we beat handily, they struggled with. Those teams were athletic enough to match up with #11 and big enough to match up with #9.  We were neither. In other words...match ups.  And even then - at full strength we win by 2-3 scores. But that's part of the game.

Anyway -

Bootlegs - we also nailed him a few times, but in key spots, we got burned.  Ugh.

We had just stuffed them inside the 5 twice, and then we give this up.  Maybe I should have been yelling watch the boot.  Might have been yelling that, can't remember.

The Dog played this okay - did force the bubble, but should have been flaring out as the TB moved.  That's something we worked on a lot in practice. Apparently not enough. But he got no help here either.

Short DB's - both plays defended well, they just went over the top.  Our two starting CB's, who were tall enough to play these balls, were out.  You can't see the second one completed, but the kid on the ground was the CB defending - he jumped, the other kid jumped higher:

Our outside stackers were nowhere to be found all game:

No idea what the RCB was doing here.

Late in the game - we turned it over up 4. And this is how we respond on D...

Winning TD: