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So last week we saw the passing of the oldest member of the NFL football hall of fame, Slingin’ Sammy Baugh. I am sure that you got a chance to see the many highlights and stats that eh accumulated over his career. Most importantly he was a revolutionary in the fact that passed the football. That one act single handedly revolutionized the game of football. Besides passing he was a football coach’s dream player with his defensive skills and special team efforts.

This weekend saw its fair share of upsets and many great football games on virtually every level of play. Mount Union Football team regained its Division III championship and for what its worth a high school national champion was crowned. Not to despair though there are still plenty of bowl games to watch. I always like to see how the teams play in the college bowl games since they have not played in real action since the end of the regular season. I think the performance of a team in those circumstances has a direct correlation to how they are coached. Plus the bowls give the nation a chance to see some football players and teams that they would not normally get the chance to see.

On a side note, one of the great coaches of this generation has ended his career in Seattle. Mike Holmgren has coached his last game as head coach of the Seahawks. I have to say that he has impacted the NFL in many ways over the years. Think about all the coaches he has brought up the ranks and even the players the he has impacted over the years. He will be missed.

Well all you football coaches out there, have a Great Holiday and Be safe!

Tags: Mike Holmgren, Mount Union Football, Sammy Baugh

Here is another great contribution by Coach Dan Levin. He is a head football coach over in Australia. Please let him know how you like the article. We are always looking for Football coaches or players to contribute their knowledge of the game. Drop me a line at the contact form if you are looking to contribute.

In Australia, there are 3 levels of American football at all age groups.

1. Local Competition
2. National Competition
3. International Competition

It’s very different from the US football structure, where people toss around “All-State” or “All-American” quite frequently, but how often do those players actually prove their worth the designation?

In Australia, we have a National Football Competition every 2 years to see which state plays the best American football or gridiron. Debates rage year after year in the US as to which state plays better football (Texas, Florida, California, etc), but they don’t actually have a national tournament proving it. We do!

Individual football players are nominated by their respective coaches to the state football team. From there, they have to prove their worth to be selected to the final squad that will represent the State at the Nationals tournament. It’s a major honor for the players. Those who perform exceptionally at Nationals will be selected to represent their country in the IFAF Championship Tournament. In previous years, Australia has played New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Sweden. 2009 will mark the first Junior World Championships (under 18’s), to be held in Canton, Ohio.

I’ve served as a coach for two of the Victorian Junior State football teams, and it’s a new challenge all of its own. I suspect its like coaching a college team, with all the players coming from different teams and football coaching styles, but it’s not even that simple. Training for state takes place during the season for many leagues, so players are hearing two different sets of coaching each time. As a football coach, you have to
balance teaching them your technique while being fair to the technique their football coach wants them to use at their club. Terminology can get confusing, and don’t even get me started on teaching them playbooks!

Having done this a few times, I would strongly suggest that other coaches try and get involved in an all-star or other similar types of American football teams. It’s a challenge as a coach but one that’s very doable and fun to be a part of. It’s always nice to meet other football players and coaches, even your rivals. If you do end up coaching one of these squads, the best advice I have for you is this:

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE - You’re only going to have a few practice sessions with them. Anything more than the absolute basics is just going to get lost in the shuffle.
2. KEEP IT FUN - Remember that unless they’re a graduating player, you’re not their full-time coach. These players have already had a lot of football and won’t respond well to another drill sergeant on this type of team. That’s not to say you shouldn’t discipline them when necessary, but if you grind them into the ground, a lot of them will quit on you.
3. KEEP AN OPEN MIND - You won’t know most of your players or fellow football coaches. Be willing to listen to their suggestions regarding technique, scheme, routines, etc. Just because it’s different to what you do, doesn’t mean its wrong. You don’t have to adopt the suggestions, but football players always respond better to American football coaches who are willing to listen to their players than those who always take the “I know best” approach.

Tags: all star coaching, all star coaching tips, all star football, all star football team, coaching an all star team, coaching tips

Here is another guest post by Coach Dan Levin. He is coaching in Australia and is lending his expertise of how the game is played down under to the Football and Coaching Community. He always likes to hear feedback on his articles so make sure to leave him a comment.

At the high school level, the days of playing the game of American football for fun are pretty much dead and gone. Parents, players, coaches, administrators, and even the media now have placed such an importance on winning games that the concept of fun is pretty much absent.  If it’s not about winning football games, then it’s about scholarships and the potential NFL contract that could come along to those especially talented players.  American football players spend increasing amounts of their summer offseasons not going to the beach or the woods, working summer jobs or pursuing personal projects, but rather in the weight room or on the track with teammates (and some cases coaches).  For many players, football comes before academics, despite what American football coaches and parents may want and say.

Not here in Australia.

Almost everywhere else and certainly in Australia, players pay to play.  Our under 18’s squad pays ~$150 for a 8 week preseason and 7 games minimum.  Not much in the grand scheme of things, but I dare you to go ask any high schooler now if they’d be willing to pay over $150 just for the right to play, let alone start. I doubt you’d find many takers.  No, our players play for fun, and it’s an extremely difficult mindset for a high school football coach to get around.  Once you do though, it’s harder to enjoy yourself more as a football coach.

We had a semi-final game this past week against the top ranked side. They were filled with 18 year olds who had been playing the game for a few years, whereas we were mostly first year players and mostly under 17.  My coaching staff and I did our very best to prepare our team to win that game, and for most of it, we hung in with them right until the last quarter.  We had a few passes intercepted that were tipped balls and were just bad luck, and our best running back happened to have his first fumble of the year, not to mention we lost our starting QB to injury early in the game.

But throughout the whole game, none of our football coaches raised their voices, got frustrated, discouraged, or upset.  We knew these kids were playing the hardest they possibly could, but it just wasn’t enough on the day.  At that point, we decided to let our graduating players play whatever position they wanted to (within reason) and let them wreak havoc.  We had linemen running the ball, QB’s playing safety, and nearly everyone wanted to play linebacker.  On the second to last series of the game, one of our linebackers absolutely crushed a receiver running a slant.  The whole sideline erupted on the hit, you’d have been confused who was winning the actual game.  Afterwords, the team was so pleased with themselves that you couldn’t tell they lost the American football game.  Heck, I even got a Mountain Dew bath after our final Bull in the Ring.  Parents came up after the game and congratulated me on the football season, and that they were happy to see their kids happy.  At the end of the day, that’s why we all play or coach the game of American football - to have fun.  It’s important not to lose sight of that.  If you and your players are enjoying themselves, trust me, the winning will come.

If you would like to contribute a coaching lesson or story to Football and Coaching, Please use the contact form to drop us a line.

Tags: Australian Football, Australian Gridiron, Football For Fun, International Football, Playing American Football

The fourth installment of Coach Dan Levin’s series on football coaching tips for American football coaches from an Australian point of view. If you are a coach and you have some tips that you would like to pass along then please drop me a line using the contact form.

Everyone hears about how football coaches pour over football film day and night, looking for any little bit of an advantage they can possibly get, but few people are actually coached on HOW to breakdown football film.  Most coaches I suspect don’t have multiple angles to use, or have fancy computer software to help them breakdown football game film.  I know here in Australia, the best we get is a parent’s hand held angle from the sidelines.  However, hi-tech software isn’t really necessary to get a lot out of a film session.

The following are pointers on what to look for when you’re watching game film from an American football coaches perspective:

1.  Check your own football mistakes.

It’s incredibly hard to see everything that’s going on on the field during an American football game.  only afterwords can you evaluate where certain players went wrong and when.  Does your American football player miss a block for a reason?  Did the defender not read their key?  Was there a breakdown in football technique? It’s much easier to correct a problem if the football player sees themselves doing it incorrectly.

2.  Check your own football tendencies.

Write down each play, either during the game so you can have it for the football film breakdown session or write them out during the session. Include the down and distance when you called particular football play and the result of it. This will tell you your own tendencies.  One of the cardinal sins of coaching football is being predictable.  If you find that you call runs on 1st down 90% of the time, other football coaches will pick that up as well.  If you call playaction on every 2nd and short, no one will bite on the playaction.

3.  Check their football tendencies.

Now that you know your problems, you can focus on the other teams’. Same as scouting your tendencies, look to see what they call and when. Who do they go to in 3rd down situations?  What do they like to run on 1st downs?  Do they always run strong and counter weak?  Identify key players and watch what they do and when.  This will help you to pick up keys.

4.  Check their football mistakes

What plays worked against them?  What are their player weaknesses?  Do their CB’s watch the backfield?  Do the linebackers over pursue?  Do running backs lean one way or another?  Find your opponents weak points and exploit them!

Tags: Break Down Football Game Film, Football Game Film

The third installment of Coach Dan Levin’s series on football coaching tips for American football coaches. If you are a coach and you have some tips that you would like to pass along then please drop me a line using the contact form.

It’s amazing how important play execution is, and how much a coach can take it for granted, until players do exactly what they’re not supposed to be doing.

Most coaches I suspect, will never be too upset if their team gets beat because they’re simply over matched with speed, strength, or talent. There’s only so much you as a coach can do to get your
players physically prepared for a game. However, the one aspect that drives myself and I suspect everyone else bonkers, is players not doing what they’re supposed to be doing when they’re supposed to do
it.

The phrase “keep it simple stupid” should be in everyone’s mind when dealing with people new to the game, but even simple can be complicated for players if they don’t practice enough.

It’s very easy for a coach to fall in love with technique and hitting drills until sunset, with the expectation that because you know what each person is doing, and they’ve been given a playbook, they should know. But until they actually get out onto the field and run their plays against different types of fronts and formations, all the technique and aggression in the world won’t save you from being beat. As they say, there’s nothing more valuable than on the field experience. The same holds true in practice.

When practicing, I’ve found that it helps to run the same play against an offense/defense at least 3x in a row, possibly 5x, so you as a coach can see different aspects of the same play. Running a play every so often (especially against air) doesn’t give you a good idea of who’s doing what and when. Some players may think they’re doing the right thing, until you actually see them screwing up - only then can you fix it.

That brings me to my last point this week - player pride. Most players won’t tell you they don’t know what they’re doing, out of fear of looking bad to you or their teammates, and will leave the huddle clueless as to their assignment. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN. Make sure that players have the self-confidence to ask if they don’t know, to avoid having blown plays or worse, injuries. I tell my players that if you THINK you know what you’re doing, you probably don’t. They either know for certain, or they don’t. It never hurts to ask, but it always hurts to do it wrong!

Tags: Football Caoching Tips, Football Play Execution, Football Plays, Football Practice

So I recently got an email from a gentlemen named Dan how wanted to promote a new website called BrainLine.org. As football players get faster and stronger every year, football concussions has been on the rise and should be a concern for every football coach. Here is what he has to say about the new football concussions website:

The site is officially launching November 11, but we are hosting a free webinar featuring Christopher Nowinski on November 7. You may know Chris from his days as WWE professional wrestler Chris Harvard or as the all-Ivy defensive tackle from – you guessed it – Harvard.

After suffering a career-ending concussion in 2003, Chris left wrestling and is now the president of the Sports Legacy Institute, which is working to advance the study of sports related brain injuries.

Part of Chris’s work is reaching out to professional athletes and their families to see if they will leave their brains to science so that more can be learned about long-term effects of successive brain injuries. So far, more than a dozen professional athletes have committed themselves to this project.

Chris is also the author of Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis.

One of the largest at-risk groups for traumatic brain injury are teens between the ages of 15 and 19. Sports and “extreme” activities are one of the big reasons why. Think about how many times a kid takes a big hit and then, because he wants to stay in the game toughs it out for another set of downs. Successive brain injuries can have dramatic long-term effects. Knowing when to take a player out of the game could save his life.

Chris will be joined by BrainLine executive director Noel Gunther who will speak briefly about the BrainLine project. The web site is maintained by WETA, the PBS station in Washington, D.C.

We’ll also be setting aside some time so that both Chris and Noel could answer some questions.

If you would like to attend the event,  you can send an e-mail to info@brainline.org (subject: Webinar RSVP) to get their own registration ID.

Tags: Football Coaching Tips, Football Concussion Webinar, Football Concussions

This is another guest post by Aussie football coach Dan Levin. He provides a great international flare to the blog and allows the rest of the coaching world to see how things are done down under.

By the time a player gets to high school, they’ve already had at least
3-4 years of playing experience at the junior high and pee-wee levels,
or if they haven’t, surely haven’t played another football code.  As
such, coaching is as much about managing good technique as it is about
teaching new ones.

This is FAR from the case elsewhere in the world.

In Australia, we have two football codes (Aussie Rules & Rugby) which
are far and away more popular than football, which leads to tremendous
technique challenges.  For example, in AFL, people receive passes with
the chest, a BIG no no for receivers.  In Rugby, players drop their
head to protect their face in scrums, which is a great way for a
football player to end up in the hospital with a broken neck.

Because of this, my job, and the job of many other coaches, is to
break them of these bad habits and get them doing the right thing.  As
a coach, the importance of simple, basic technique drills are
invaluable, and can mean the difference not only between winning and
losing, but the difference between a player being injured or not.

Football is a contact sport obviously, but so is Rugby and Aussie
Rules.  The difference though, is the level and the degree of contact
involved with the sport.  Even in Rugby, with rucks, scrums and
tackles, the consistency of contact and violence thereof is less than
football on any given play.  The challenge is to get players to trust
that the pads will protect them and help them get through the contact,
rather than letting natural defensive insticts take over, such as
slowing down into hits and standing upright.  AFL players have it
worse, because they turn their hips and shoulders into tackles, as
they’re taught to try and spin away from overpursuing defenders.
Obviously, that’s a great way to get bruised kidneys and broken ribs.

Here’s a couple of very basic drills to instill confidence with our players:

• Explosion Drill:

We don’t’ have sleds, but we do have bags/shields, so I get the whole
team exploding into bags out of a 4 point stance a few times, with
their head up looking through the bag to myself or another coach, who
is holding up fingers.  Each player must shout out the number of
fingers, or they do 10 pushups.

• “Truck Drill”:

It’s the simplest drill you can imagine.  Partner players up with
someone of their own size, then have one of them run into and through
the other at increasing speed.  The guy getting “trucked” gradually
lowers his shoulders and starts stepping into the contact until it’s
100% speed.  This teaches the runner to lower himself into contact,
and teaches tacklers that getting a shoulder in the chest really
really hurts!

If you have some tips or ticks on how to stop players from using those bad habits then please drop me a line on the contact form and your post could be up on the blog for thousands of coaches to see.

Tags: college football coaching tips, high school football coaching tips, international football coaching tips, youth football coaching tips

Last night I got an email from a reader, Joe Byrnes, about a story concerning a high school football coach in Ocala, FL. A player, Josh Sagrista, filed battery assault charges against James Lindsey, the head football coach at West Port High School, for allegedly throwing him around at practice. Below is the video of the story:

Here is the full story link if you would like to read it. Who knows if the verdict in this case will affect the football coaching profession as we know it. I have coached with emotional coaches in the past some even get quite physical with the players, but American football is a physical game. We as coaches walk a fine line when coaching this game to young people and we have to remember that at all times. I hope the truth comes out for both of the parties involved and I will keep you guys up to date on what transpires from this if anything. Thanks again Dan for the contribution.

If you have interesting coahing or football related news that you would like to share with the football coaching community, please drop me a line using my contact form.

Tags: football and crime, football coach in trouble, football player versus coach, Ocala Florida, West Port High School Football

Every so often I get an email from a fellow coach who would like to contribute to FootballandCoaching.com . One such coach is Dan Levin. He wanted to bring an international flare to the site and enlighten the rest of the football coaching world on the many obstacles and rewards that come with coaching overseas. Here is his story:

There’s a small group of football coaches out there in the world that may have the toughest assignment out there:  coaching internationally.

I currently coach a squad of high schoolers (14-18yrs old), as well as adults for a local club team in Melbourne, Australia.  The challenges I face are phenomenally different from those in the US, where
practices are daily, coaching staffs large, and players are committed only to the game.  For us here (and I suspect everywhere else in the world), we deal with only having players a few times a week, with
little help, and struggle to get consistent numbers at practice.

"Coaching the worst team ever"

My adult squad is quite possibly the worst team ever in American football history.  I’m not joking.  Two years ago (2007), they didn’t score a point, forfeiting 4 times on the way to a 0-12 winless season. This past year, they scored twice (once against an expansion team), and again, went 0-12. I’m sure many coaches would attribute that atrociousness to a lack of coaching, and that’s certainly true.  But, it’s considerably more than that.  I came into the squad three weeks into the 2008 season after my own team obliterated them by the score of 109-0 (and this with 12-minute quarters and a running clock).  I felt embarrassed for them, and felt obligated to help them out as best I can.  When I got down to
a practice, I saw I had my work cut out for me. When it comes to coaching, it’s always easier to coach a blank-slate, particularly here in Australia.  It’s always easier to teach someone new technique than it is to break them of terribly bad habits.  With this club, not only did I have to teach them the right technique, I had to essentially re-teach every single offensive position, starting from the stance up, plus I had to completely re-design the offensive playbook.  If people want to know what a winless playbook looks like, imagine a playbook where there are no counter plays, no misdirections, and no play-actions.  It was truly deplorable. The funny thing is that once I arrived and started teaching them plays that could work and technique that’s accepted, they started moving the ball with pretty decent consistency, and yet they still couldn’t score.   Some may wonder if that has to do with the coaching, and I assure you, I only wish it did.  That relates to a different issue altogether – healthy players. When you have a team that only suits up 17 healthy bodies a week, and that 17 is usually down to 15 after the first quarter, it becomes incredibly difficult to compete against other squads twice your size in number and experience.  One game in particular was incredibly frustrating, when we had installed a slew of new plays only for me to find out on the day that our starting receivers and center had to work, and our left tackle was at church.  This meant that our starting QB had to play left guard, our starting RB to play QB, our corners going both ways at receiver positions even though they couldn’t catch, and every member of the line going both ways against the second best team in the league.  Suffice it to say, we lost by a lot.

I’m curious to know what problems other coaches deal with on a regular basis?  What are your struggles, and how do you overcome them?

If you would like to contribute your knowledge or expereinces to the site whether as a player or coach, simply drop me a line using the contact form .

Tags: american football in australia, australia football, coaching international football, International Football

So I was recently contacted concerning this new product/ service that could help football coaches or coaches in general with the issue of team communication. We all know that with today’s football players they are always on the go and are into the latest high tech gadgets. I know the majority of my players are texting and listening to their ipods on the long bus trips to games or while they are in the locker room. So as a coach. I am always trying to be up on the latest music and pop culture in order to help with recruiting and to bridge the gap between player and coach. That is why when I heard of Tatango I had to put it up on the blog.

What is Tatango?

• Well it is an online service where you can send out mass text messages with just a click of the button. Here a how the company explains the service:

“Tatango, unlike its competitors, provides a group text messaging platform that caters to a wide variety of groups, ranging from small recreational athletic teams to large organizations and businesses. Tatango offers a completely intuitive feature set that allows any group to easily connect their circle of contacts, regardless of mobile device or carrier.

So How can Tatango Help Your football Program?

This service can do two things:

1. It can save time with recruiting and might even give you the edge on the competition for that prize recruit.
2. it can help you to keep in touch with your players while in season and out. This could help your team gel and feel more like a family with the open lines of communication.

So I am not endorsing nor bashing this service, just simply giving fellow football coaches the 411 on a new way to keep in contact with players and other members of your football program. If you would like to learn more about Tatango, stop by there site here.

Tags: football communication, football recruiting, tatango