By Darrin Sheffer It's 4th and long, 1st quarter of our 1st game of the season and we send out our punt team for the 1st time. We were confident in our special teams due to our multiple reps during practice and the fact our kicker had one hell of a leg. The snap is low but our guy fields it beautifully, he gets the kick off and it's a high punt that lingers in the air long enough for our gunners to get to the returner before the ball does. Just before the returner catches the ball, our gunner tackles him. I'm stunned. "Why in the heck would you tackle him before he had the ball?" "Coach, you told me to tackle the return man!" It was at that moment that I knew that this was going to be a long, long season. http://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2014/08/0821_oag_nfl-penalty-flag.jpg Moral of the story: Communication is KEY. I made the mistake of assuming that my players knew and understood the rules of the game. I also assum
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By Darrin Sheffer So I'm sitting here on a Friday night watching college football on TV with my 4 month old and I'm longing to be on a sideline. Perhaps next year, depends on if my wife allows it and I mean come on guys, we all know who really makes all the decisions. Anyways, while I'm watching the game I'm listening to the game announcers try to use football terms, sometimes they get it right. But it made me realize something, there is a ton of vocabulary that is specific to our game. For me being a football junky I pretty much never have trouble communicating with other coaches about schemes or other stuff, but I can imagine where a young player, especially one who has never played American Football before will struggle to communicate. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mfl-vocab-target-02a.png As a science teacher I have had uncounted experiences with students struggling with scientific vocabulary, literacy and communication. Those same
By Darrin Sheffer http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing We all have that one kid, the one who believes he knows everything about football because he watches the NFL, but he doesn't know how to put his knee pads in his game pants. He is also the same kid that never remembers his assignments on O and D and still complains about not getting playing time. As coaches we have all had THAT KID, and many of us have had teams full of them. If you haven't read my post a few months ago 0-8, How A Losing Season Made Me a Better Coach part 2: Never Assume a Players Football IQ please click the link below: https://obsessedwithoffense.blogspot.com/2017/07/0-8-how-losing-season-made-me-better_6.html I teach/coach at a school where we have a 60% Hispanic population, not a population of kids who are familiar with American Football. I coached the freshmen level team last season, we had about 25 kids on our team, only about 6 of them had any significan
By Darrin Sheffer Lots of high school teams do it, many well known college teams do it, but no pro teams do it: reward stickers. You may know them as helmet decals or just stickers, but if you ever played or coached football you are probably familiar with them. The most iconic helmet stickers in college football are the Ohio State Buckeyes with their Buckeye Leaves stickers, The Florida State Seminoles and their Tomahawk stickers, and perhaps my personal favorite the Georgia Bulldogs Dog Bone stickers. Those stickers are a part of those schools' rich football tradition, but what about your HS team? Do you utilize reward stickers in your program? If you don't, you might want to think about starting to use them. https://www.reference.com/sports-active-lifestyle/stickers-ohio-state-helmets-mean-1310634caa8984e3 When I was in high school we were the Knights. Our school colors were Black and White. We were known for being a tough team who played hard no mat
By Darrin Sheffer If you have read any of my older posts you will know that last season I was the HC of a winless freshman team. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg of the issues that litter our schools athletic programs. To protect our school and players I will not name the school or the school district. Since I have been a teacher at our school we have had ONE athletic team with a winning record at the end of the year (2017 Varsity Baseball). I asked around and it turns out that our school has struggled to be competitive in any athletics for the past decade. The last time that the Varsity Football team made the playoffs was in the early 2000's and only had one winning record since that time. So what's going on? http://sportschump.net/2014/02/13/bad-teams-bad/13290/ We have a new Head Coach and mostly new coaching staff for our football team this year. So far the JV is 1-4 and the Varsity is 0-5 just losing to a team that they should have beate