So here I am coaching again with Tim (not the one from 2015), who has another son in the club at JV level (7th grade) and has taken on the HC position. This team has a lot of first-time footballers, plus some who may have last played organized ball years ago, because the Covid pandemic and numbers caused the club to not field a team at the level they've been at for the past 3 years; however, that has not been the case for the clubs we'll play against in the Morris County league.
According to our registration, we had a roster of 18, but one was a phantom and attendance has been weak, not only of players but of coaches, of which I'm one of 6. At last night's scrimmage with Randolph at Freedom Park, we had 15 players and 3 coaches. Tim is good, but he has a lot of brain farts (more than me, even), so it helps to have us around to supply the right word when he says the wrong one and catch what he doesn't on the field; like last night the waggle he called got blown up when our guards pulled the wrong way, and Tim first blamed the QB. (But come on, who expects both guards to pull wrong?)
We have a mix of:
- those who are good athletes but don't want to listen to coaching
- those who could be good but don't seem too interested in playing and/or contact
- those who are mentally challenged on the field
- experienced players whose patience I admire for sharing the field with the above
- average players
But last night the team exceeded our expectations, which is always a rewarding feeling. Still, annoying things like our LBs giving ground from the get-go on pursuit to the sideline -- but that's not surprising when we haven't practiced pursuit to the sideline. Maybe I can convince Tim to drop from practice agility and endurance drills, because I don't think either of those can be advantageously developed in the time we have. Given my druthers I'd skip the warmup run and stretching (even though dynamic) too, but too hard to change the culture of the club, especially as AC.
I do have at least one technical fix Tim says he'll consider seriously. We haven't been recessing our line as much as most wing T teams do. We have the OL's toes up to the snapper's heels, and our snapper's head is over the ball (which I've assured Tim is legal). When I suggested more recess previously, Tim was afraid of our pullers colliding with our QB. However, last night both our centers were getting blown back by 0 tech DLs into our back side G's path, and our pullers were nowhere near tripping up or being tripped by our QB. We face odd fronts the great majority of the time, and we're not likely to sacrifice one of our bigger OL to snapping duty, so this is going to come up a lot.
Yesterday we lost at home 20-0 to the Boonton-Mountain Lakes Greyhawks. We seemed to improve as the game went on, in that we were down 13-0 after a quarter and 20-0 at half, and even though the visitors' bench was ample, we weren't playing against a scrub team the second half. Still, they might not have been taking the game as seriously then. But maybe getting knocked around did get our team warmed up.
They kicked off to open, we went 4 and out, and their touchdown came with terrifying rapidity. Our poor pass protection led to an interception when our quarterback threw a soft pass when our receivers were still bunched in their pattern. Our defense looked pretty vulnerable to end runs and swing passes. Our highlight was about a 50-yard trap in the 4th quarter.
Sometimes our defensive lapses looked like a don't-want-it problem. The last TD we gave up, I was sure our safety had the angle to cut him off but he stayed in the end zone while the runner came from inside to score at the pylon. I caught our DE just napping on his feet for a full second after the snap, looking at the ball but not moving -- though his opponent across the line didn't move either. On offense, mental lapses: wrong-way pull, no pull, no cover for the puller.
Sometimes our defensive lapses looked like a don't-want-it problem.
Well Bob, ya gotta want it!
--Dave
"The Greater the Teacher, the More Powerful the Player."
The Mission Statement: "I want to show any young man that he is far tougher than he thinks, that he can accomplish more than what he dreamed and that his work ethic will take him wherever he wants to go."
#BattleReady newhope
Sometimes our defensive lapses looked like a don't-want-it problem.
Well Bob, ya gotta want it!
--Dave
I've seen this problem a few times since I've been coaching here. It usually manifests as a player taking this or that play "off" when they perceive that game as a lost cause. But it could never be as bad as the team I coached in 2007.
But I forgot to tell you the great excuse one of our players gave for blown assignments yesterday: His mother lost his playbook.
HC Tim was out on a business trip all week, and something funny came up in practice 2 nights ago. I got on one of our guards for not releasing on "trap", then found out he had his assignment right.
Early in pre-season our guards were having trouble with trap, so Tim took off the trap action but kept the runner's path, which was eventually modified to a dive, sensibly. Later he put back in the original trap, calling it "guard trap". What I hadn't realized is that he kept the dive play, still calling it "trap". So "guard trap" is like a tagged play, meaning "trap for real". And our players actually kept that straight, which is amazing considering how many things our line goofs otherwise.
HC Tim was out on a business trip all week, and something funny came up in practice 2 nights ago. I got on one of our guards for not releasing on "trap", then found out he had his assignment right.
Early in pre-season our guards were having trouble with trap, so Tim took off the trap action but kept the runner's path, which was eventually modified to a dive, sensibly. Later he put back in the original trap, calling it "guard trap". What I hadn't realized is that he kept the dive play, still calling it "trap". So "guard trap" is like a tagged play, meaning "trap for real". And our players actually kept that straight, which is amazing considering how many things our line goofs otherwise.
Even funnier was that in warmups running thru plays preparatory to last night's game, Tim told me not to let the players bullshit me, that we had only one play with "trap" in its name, that it was indeed a trap play, and that the dive play called "trap" had been eliminated!
I think the kids are genuinely confused on this point, and that unless the call is "guard trap" or there's an explanation in the huddle, they won't know how to block it. Tim may or may not have remembered how he'd left it, but is confident of his memory.
Last night's game at the Denville Blue Angels started out like it was going to be even more of a horror show than our opener. The Braves kicked off and the Blue Angels muffed the ball a lot until one of them killed it; they did have a sloppy ballhandling game. But their first play from scrimmage, telegraphing by alignment that they would run there, they kept around end for a long TD. Their kickoff was chipped into the space between our front and second lines, just as we told them they liked to do, where our returner took it on a bounce and decided to run sideways; not that he would've likely had much of a runback anyway, but what gave him that idea? We then opened from scrimmage with something we don't use much, jet sweep. Unfortunately we need more practice with the high speed handoff, so we lost a fumble, and on the next series gave up a long run around our other end, followed by a TD on the slant-in pass. We were down 16-0 in very short order thanks to a pair of 2-point kicks, the second of which was repeated after a block because our defender had charged directly into the snapper; since we had hardly practiced scrimmage kicks, our players didn't know the rule about that. In fact our alignment on the extra points caught me off guard, not knowing Tim had told them.
However, at that point the Braves sucked it up, stopped giving up easy big gains, and put together a touchdown drive shortly before halftime. One thing that helped a lot was snapping on the second "Go!", causing the Blue Angels to encroach frequently. We had not been confident about our ability to snap on different counts in our first game, inasmuch as our players had so much trouble with that in practice, but we worked on it a lot in the interceding week, chiefly by threat of making them do push-ups. So we were down 16-6 at half, and it felt good that they'd finally scored.
Still, early in the second half, the Braves gave up another TD, and 22-6 against us was the final score. Most galling was that on that final touchdown, everything went wrong for the Blue Angels -- fumbling the snap, then again, until their receiver made a circus catch in the end zone. It seems our players use the opening minutes of our games as practice to figure out what they're doing wrong. In this game it was our secondary to be faulted on defense, taking bad alignments and pursuit angles as well as failing to pick up receivers in zone coverage. On offense belly was our most consistently producing play.
I started with a good omen on the sideline in the rain of Tropical Depression Ophelia in that someone came up to me and said, "Coach Bob, you won $20," and handed me an envelope. I said, "Win it? I didn't even know I was in it!" So I stuck it in my pocket, thinking it to be some door prize I'd gotten just for showing up.
But then the game started and it was downhill from there. The visiting Florham Park Falcons kicked off to the Braves. Then we fumbled the first snap, and on the Falcons' first, our safety waved with the wrong arm as their runner cut back from the sideline for the touchdown. No, seriously, our safety was so slow to react that after chasing the play to the sideline, his arm was still reaching toward the sideline while the runner cut back -- but he was still about 2 steps away when he made his move! Etc. and the visitors won 35-6. Our defense wouldn't be so bad except for our DBs.
When I got home I took the soggy envelope out. It held a check drawn on the club account to a Bob Garman for winning Charity Mania Week 2. I do not know this person, at least by name.
Our practice field will almost certainly be washed out tomorrow. Judging by experience, it may not even be usable Tuesday.
Garman...Goodman... What's the difference? Sign your name on it and hand it to the teller.
Garman...Goodman... What's the difference?
Turns out he coaches Clinic division -- right next to us at practice. But won't get to see him until Wednesday, because we're muddied out tonight and they're off tomorrow.
Monday night's practice was muddied out by Ophelia, and when practice resumed last night, it was apparent the coaches other than me were desperate. One thing we all agreed was that on both sides of the line, our players were standing up instead of firing out, as revealed by HUDL. So chute work for that. Me, I'd've been coaching shoulder and/or flipper blocking from the start, but HC Tim thought that with beginners, which many of our players are, we should coach only one blocking form, and since hands are better for sticking on blocks and connecting at second level, hands was it. (If we didn't do things I think waste time like a warmup run, stretching, wind sprints, and most of the agility drills, I think we could cut out one practice session a week and still have plenty of time to work on form.) I just think shoulder blocking forces lower pad level, and that that experience would carry over to DL play, since most go both ways on our roster of 16. Plus if we recessed our OL, the blocks would come a step later and not need to be held as long.
In addition, Tim and AC Scott (who's coached at the high school) want to try to make up for this fundamental deficiency by reorienting our offense to exclusively spread shotgun, and passing a lot. Last night they even practiced reading handoff or pass, though we're not sure we'd actually install it as a read. We've been a fairly conventional wing T, plus a little trips bunch. Scott points out that the high school now uses a lot of "shotgun wing T". I've made suggestions about our offense scheme-wise, but they've all been fairly conservative, low cost cheap tricks like adding unbalanced line. Maybe if we flopped long enough, they'd get around to sidesaddle T.
We all expected to do poorly this season competitionwise, because the basic skills take more than one season to get good at (especially things like pursuit angles), and our opponents have much more experienced rosters. However, people get restless when they get shellacked every game, and it's been worse than Tim expected. Not worse than I expected, though.
Tim told the players he insists they all get on the HS team when they age into it. I'd be happier if they used this season to learn the game, next season to be competitive, and then mostly find other hobbies in high school.
An idea that just popped into my head is, after the season, play an 8-a-side game with each other.
The week of practice with the revamped offense went remarkably well. We were especially impressed with how our center managed a consistent blind shotgun snap even with a nose defender.
We still lost last night at the Madison Dodgers, 6-22, but this time we really felt we were in the game rather than just having the other team let up against us after getting a solid lead. Once again, it started out looking disastrous as the Dodgers took opening possession for a touchdown, then kicked off a bounding ball, and on a high Field Turf second bounce our front line player, going against the instruction we'd given them all season, reached up for it and deflected it high and back to the Dodgers, and they quickly scored again. And again we settled down and kept the score to 14 at halftime.
One relatively small problem is that many of our opponents are good at kicking 2-point conversions, which we don't even try for lack of a kicker. Lately we haven't even tried punting, and the recent absence of our punter from practices for not feeling well hasn't done anything. But the main problem with defense continues to be in our secondary, as our zone defense gets shredded and we have trouble pursuing to the edges.
We scored our touchdown early enough on a short pass and lots of yards after catch in the 3rd quarter to be a confidence booster, but eventually gave up another 8. We continue to shine in an area we had trouble with in our opener: staying onside and drawing the opponents offside with varying snap counts. So at least that type of discipline our players are actually better at than who we play against.
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