You've been doing... WHAT???

Get Ready To Freak Out...

I've been pretty busy figuring out the last 8 weeks or so of my teaching year, enjoying Spring Break (sort of), and learning some great stuff. What great stuff, you might ask? OFFENSE! Weird as it may seem, I've been really, really enthusiastically boning up on my offensive knowledge recently, for a couple reasons:

1. I need a break from defense. There needs to be balance, or the attempt at balance.
2. It's been really interesting.
3. As a future HC (someday... ?) I think it's pretty important to know exactly what you want on both sides of the ball and how you want it to happen.

Future HC?

Yeah, it's one of my goals to be a header some day. I'm not desperate to do it, I'd rather be a DC for a while and accumulate varsity experience underneath a man who's a legend around California, waiting for the right job, right position, right situation to present itself. I've a buddy who's desperate to be a HC, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind, but I'm fairly confident that what will happen is that he will end up putting himself into a bad situation for his first gig. I want to be in control of what situation I put myself in and I want to make sure that when I do take that leap, I'm as ready as I can be (Not to be mistaken with ready, I don't think anyone's ready for their first header position).

Being ready implies having a complete vision for your program and what you want to do with the offense and defense. I think that it's totally cool for a HC to run the defense and have an OC that calls the plays, in fact, that'd be my preference in a perfect world. However, coming into a new program I think that it would be easier and more feasible to have a DC who runs your defense while calling your own plays on offense. Eventually, I would want to find an OC who can call, organize, and teach the offense the way I want and transition to the defensive side of the ball.

So, What's The Offense?

Well, taking a page from some particularly successful playbooks, I'm pretty sold on running the split back veer as my offense. I like triple option football because of what it does to the defense and it's big-play capacity, I like that the traditional split back formation forces the defense to adjust to a tight end, I like that your passing game is still relatively intact. If you watch De La Salle of Concord, they run a very simple, very execution-based split veer offense and do it very, very well. When Coach Lad took over at DLS, he went around to his friends who were football coaches and asked them what was the best offense he could run with slow, nonathletic smart kids. They all told him split back veer, so he learned it, and learned it, and learned it, created an atmosphere where his kids work their butts off year round, and mastered the teaching of technique to his players. Now, he has fast, athletic smart kids and wins state titles every two years or so.

My ideal situation for becoming a head coach would be one of these two options: 1-Taking over a private school with a losing program, or 2-Starting a program of my own. I'm going to do one of the two at some point, maybe even both. Heck, I could start my own program at a private and kill two birds with one stone. Regardless, either situation would be a great one for me to install the split veer as my offense.

Also, it would be run as an up-tempo, no-huddle offense to force the defense into very vanilla schemes, prevent adjustments, tire the defense, and have fun.

My Homework

What I've been reading to prep/educate me on my offense:

• Complete Book Of Triple Option Football by Jack Olcott
• Complete Guide To Football's Option Attack by Drew Tallman
• Coaching The Veer Offense by George Thole, Jerry Foley
• Homer Rice On Triple Option Football by Homer Rice
• The Hurry-Up, No-Huddle by Gus Malzahn
• Veersite.blogspot.com and it's ensuing message board.

And what's still to come/in the mail:

• Attacking Modern Defenses With The Multiple-Formation Veer Offense by Steve Axman
• Attacking Modern Defenses With Belly Option by Al Black
• Coaching The No-Huddle Offense by G. Mark McElroy

I've also been reading a lot of threads, new and old, on CoachHuey.com about the split veer, triple option, and double dive/inside & outside belly series. It's amazing how much knowledge there is in one place, I particularly want to thank Lochness, BLB, UCBears, and GroundChuck for their contributions, none of which have been small.

Books That Influenced Me

Jumping on the bandwagon, inspired by Chris Brown's SmartFootball.com:

(In no particular order)

1-Redwall by Brian Jacques. If it weren't for fantasy literature, and especially this series, I would be a VERY different person. I was an early reader and always loved it, but this series launched me into the realm of devouring books and eagerly anticipating the next one. The first time I stayed up past 11pm was when I just HAD to finish the first book of the Redwall series because I couldn't wait to experience the finish. Hugely influential book in my life.

2-The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. Recent read, within the last year, but this book just exploded my conception of how to coach and how to approach competition and personal effort. I cannot recommend it enough to coaches, athletes, and PEOPLE.

3-Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger. Kind of a cliche, but I loved this book nonetheless. Excellently written, perfectly executed with great depth and analysis of almost every aspect of that football season. Reveals the ugly, the good, and the insightful. Not for the faint of heart, however.

4-Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Good Lord, what a book! Hugo LOVES his characters, he writes them with passion and fervor and empathy as he tells a remarkable tale that spans several decades of a man's life and explores many, many deep issues, the central of which is the nature of redemption and forgiveness. I love this book, it took me a long while to read because I had to stop, chew on what I'd just read, absorb it, think about it, before I could allow myself to move on. Not because it was difficult, but rather because it was SO GOOD that I had to savor it. Probably my favorite of all time.

5-The Malazan Book of The Fallen by Stephen Erikson. Technically 10 books, but it's my list, so deal with it. Erikson is an amazing author who creates fantastically interesting and deep characters, along with an entire universe that is never fully explained, but revealed as the stories go on. The first book, Gardens Of The Moon, is a labor to get through, but it's worth it. Erikson shows such discipline as a writer that the main focus of the series doesn't even appear until the THIRD NOVEL, with at least 1100 pages in the first two. After college, I'd been pretty burned out on reading for fun, what with being an English major and all, but this series restored that love to me.

6-The Bible. I'm a born-again Christian (OH NO HE SAID IT!) and the Bible has been an amazing thing in my life. I don't read it as much as I should, which is unfortunately a bit of a meta-statement about my faith, but it's a journey, not a destination. Wonderful parables and stories, the best selling book of all time!

7-A Love Worth Giving by Max Lucado. Written for Christians by a Christian pastor, Lucado uses the very famous passage of I Corinthians 13:4-8 (Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.) as a starting point for a series of essays about the nature of love in a Christian setting and how we can use God's love for us as an example in our own lives.

8-A Season Of Life by Jeffrey Marx. Excellent read, another that I'd consider a must-have for football coaches. Examines what it is to be a man, what our roles as coaches is, and tells a beautiful story about a man's reunion with his fairly estranged father. Touching book, easy read, no reason not to do it.

9-Norton Anthology Of Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare, always have, always will. I can't really single out any one thing, but some of my favorites: A Winter's Tale, R&J, King Lear, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Henry series, it goes on... Fantastic storyteller and writer, I've never read a play by Shakespeare and been disappointed by it. Hell, I even liked Shakespeare In Love (movie) because of all the references/tributes/nods to famous lines and events in his life and stories. Plus Gwenyth Paltrow reminds me of a girl I went on a few dates with.

10-The Dragonlance series by Margret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. Total fantasy lit nerd, one of the better fantasy lit series made, chubby childhood, roll them together and you get me! I'm no longer chubby or a child (I like to think fit and young adult) but the other two are still true and, like Redwall, I read the shit out of these books. Somewhere in my parent's basement are BOXES of books from this series that I read several times. Hell, I still remember important lines of dialogue and it's been like, a decade and a half.

So there.

Book Review: Football's Eagle and Stack Defenses by Ron Vanderlinden

Buy This Or You're Dumb

It's really about that simple folks. I don't care what your defensive system is, 3-3, 3-4, 4-3, 4-4, Bear, Variable UFO Defense of Doomination, this book has something in it that you'll read, re-read, and realize that it's not only good, but it can help you. I read it in about 2 days, which is saying something because it's not a light book at 248 pages which are largely dense, technical football writing. It's not a book of diagrams and whatnot, it's friggin' WRITING. It's cheap, it's thorough, it's one of the best football books written in a long time.

So, What's It About?

Imagine if you could buy the basic, nuts and bolts knowledge needed to install and coordinate a defense that's flexible, multiple, and fairly simple. This is your chance to do that. It's no Tony Franklin System for defense, but it IS quite excellent for gaining a very functional understanding of exactly how Vanderlinden's scheme works. He gives you a thorough explanation of how they set and dictate the fronts, how that overlaps with the coverages, and how people's run responsibilities play out. Not only that, he gives you very easy to understand directions regarding how his defense would defend common run plays versus the different fronts that he runs.

That alone would be good stuff, very valuable for everyone's growth as a coach, regardless of scheme. But what I really, really like is he gives a pretty sweet explanation of coverages, techniques, and defensing some common routes that might be an issue. I'm the first to admit that my knowledge of DB play is quite limited. This gave me some really great insight into HOW some coverage components work, from a schematic and a technical perspective. I'm no DB guru now, but reading that was quite helpful for me personally.

Lastly, Vanderlinden explains a few of his favorite blitzes. I love blitzes, I love blitzing. One of the things I grew to love about running a 3-4 defense was how damn flexible it was for blitzing and blitzing creatively. Being a football coach, I love to steal, and Vanderlinden's got some good stuff. He explains them pretty thoroughly, which is cool, but he also explains a lot of his thought process behind them and when/why he uses them. Getting insight into the mind and motivations of one of the best coordinators around is precious information and he offers it readily.

Oh, there's also a fairly extensive section on technique for positions.

So, What You're Trying To Say Is...

First, buy this book. Second, read this book. Third, ???. Four, Profit!

Understanding Youth, Society, And Crime: The Wire

If Snot Boogie Always Stole The Money, Why'd You Let Him Play?

The Wire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wire), created by former Baltimore Sun crime reporter David Simon, is arguably the greatest TV show of all time. This isn't just me saying it because I happen to be a huge fan of it. It's been in the discussion for years by a lot of people who are much, much smarter than me. There's a class on it offered at Harvard University. President Obama lists it as one of his favorite shows to watch. My pot-head, tie-dye wearing, bike to school 16 year old TA raves about the symbolism, parallelism, and cinematography of it. It has a universal appeal to just about anyone. It's most prestigious award was a WGA award for best drama in 2008.

It's A Thin Line Between Heaven And Here...

So what's it about? EVERYTHING. The show is remarkable in that it operates on layers and levels that I've personally never seen before. My best description goes something like this: The Wire is about the way that drugs in Baltimore infect and influence life on every level, from the street corner 'hoppers' to the mayors and senators, and in a variety of settings. One of the most interesting things about the five seasons of The Wire is that in each season, creator/producer David Simon chooses a new focus to examine. In season 1, we get to see the role of technology in the pursuit of drug traffickers, season 2, the role of the docks and dockworkers, season 3, the influence of drug money on politics and business, season 4 (arguably the most important season, in my mind) the role of youth in the drug game, and season 5 examines the role that the media plays in this whole drug 'war'.

The plot is excellent, never predictable (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnyoneCanDie), and the show is fantastically acted. The strength of Simon's drama, however, comes from his characters. This is true of his other works too, Generation Kill had some fantastic characters (based off of real people, but excellently presented nonetheless). The Wire features an amazing assortment of characters, a few of my favorites:

• Omar - Frequently quotable stick-up artist who makes a living knocking of drug dealers' safe houses and stashes. Also, a gay black man, which makes him an outcast in just about every way in the black community of Baltimore.
• Jimmy McNulty - The ultimate good guy who doesn't wear white. McNulty sleeps around, drinks excessively, lies, manipulates, the whole she-bang. But, McNulty is "natural po-lice" and is ultimately the one responsible for the whole series.
• Stringer Bell - One of the heads of the Barksdale drug empire, Stringer is refined, well-kept, and determined to treat drugs as a business. A highlight moments feature Stringer lecturing two of the workers at one of his fronts about the difference between an elastic and inelastic product or consulting his professor about economic strategy that he then puts to use in the drug game.
• Bubbles - Transient drug addict who works as a CI for the BPD. Bubbles has one of the few happy endings in the series, but also goes through probably the worst torments, too. Brilliantly portrayed by Andre Royo, based on a real person that Simon met while working at the Sun.

And All The Pieces Matter...

So why am I talking about The Wire on a football coaching blog? One, it's that good. It really is. Two, I think that watching the fourth season is a great exercise in reminding us as coaches how important we really are. Our wins and losses and various battles we fight are important, no doubt, but the most important thing we can do is keep kids from turning to other things. Season four shows us what happens to kids in bad situations who don't get the important, positive, nurturing and supportive MALE leadership necessary in their lives. It shows us what happens when kids are given options in what they should be doing with their lives. If you can watch season four and not feel a little more motivated to be there for your boys a little more, to provide that much more of a role model, to sacrifice just a few more moments to make sure that they're taken care of, well, I'm at a loss for words. It's powerful, enthralling, and relevant.

Watching seasons 1-3 in order to be well informed while watching season 4 isn't crucial, but c'mon, it beats the hell out of basketball season :)

Being A Professional: What's It Mean?

Whore For Money

I don't think that getting paid to do something necessarily means that you're a 'whore', but I joke about it because I think I have a weird approach to work. Simply put: If you're paying me to do a job, I will do it. It might be demeaning and unfair and more than a little crappy (I've literally had a job where I was asked to dig up septic tanks), but I'll do it because you're paying me and that's what comes with the job. I don't complain, I don't work any less, I don't look to avoid my responsibilities. If I hate it, I'll either voice my thoughts in an appropriate setting or quit. Haven't quit a job yet. Working at a summer camp, I've had to teach art, make PB&J sandwiches, operate a ropes course, plan the parents night, pretend to be a lifeguard, rent a sno-cone machine, spend ~36 hours straight with my campers, go to meetings on personal time, go without eating for a day, give away my lunch, hug a boy who'd just wet himself and me, break up arguments/fights, build an RC car track, make stew for ~180 people, and clean the bathrooms. It was my job to do each and every one of those things, and more, and I did them without complaint because I believe that if it's my job, my duty is to soldier on.

I don't believe in being a sycophant, I like to think I speak my mind consistently. I don't believe that I have no rights as someone who is being paid to do a job, nor do I think any employer should be able to dump on their employees just because. I just think that too often people make a big deal about the things that, in my opinion, are actually a part of their job. Don't like it? Do something about it or quit, don't bitch and moan.

So Maybe I'm A Hypocrite

And yet, I find myself unhappy with my current situation. We've hired a new HC who is a proven winner, a guy who is widely regarded as a legend in the central valley of California. At a gathering of Wing-T minds yesterday (I don't have the secret handshake down, but I know the location of their lair) I watched him speak informally for 45 minutes and blow about 30 minds with simple, concise advice for everyone he'd listened to for the previous 4 hours. Dude's unbelievable. I have no doubt in my mind that our league is about to get ripped a new one. The kind of physical training, mental training, and specifically offensive brilliance that he's introducing just doesn't exist in this part of CA.

So why am I bummed out? Well, the defense that we ran last year has been scrapped. I worked damn hard on developing a 3-4 scheme that I felt good about and, for most of this offseason, I'd done the majority of my work on making it better. I won't say that it's been wasted, because no learning is ever a waste, but it's definitely not as useful as it could have been. We had some great success last year, sporting the #2 defense in our league and #6 defense in the local tri-county area, which I was very proud of. We had one game where we allowed 37 yards, total, against a team that finished 2nd in their league. We forced 5 turnovers in one game, recorded 7 sacks in another, and kept our team in games much longer than we should have. The kids liked the scheme, the coaches liked it, I began to love it.

But none of this matters now. We're moving to a 4-4/4-3 hybrid that is predicted on simplicity and bodies to the ball. One front, minimal blitzing, lots of Cover 3 and only a smattering of Cover 4. I have a hard time feeling comfortable with several things within the scheme. I don't particularly care for the way we're going to play our front, I don't like some of the nuts and bolts of the scheme.

What does matter, though, is that as the DC, it's my job to coach and run what the HC wants. He wants his defense to be a certain scheme, then if I am going to be his DC, I'm going to do it that way. I won't complain, I will ask questions, I will try to see what leeway I have, and I will bite my tongue, but I won't complain. I won't saying anything negative about it to anyone but the HC and MAYBE a few, select others. I will coach the hell out of our guys, regardless of anything else. It's my job, my duty, my role to be supportive and loyal. If it's intolerable, then I can either voice my concerns or do something else, but I will stay true to what I believe it means to be a "Pro".

Off-Topic: Coach Speckman

Ran into my college HC last week when he was in town visiting two of our guys. It's always a lot of fun to see him because he's such a great guy and such a priceless character. For those of you who don't know about him, Mark Speckman, HC at Willamette University (DIII) in Salem, Or. was born without hands. Rather than be limited by them, he's been motivated by them, accomplishing things that most people never will. Read more about him at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Speckman or http://www.speckmanspeaks.com/ (I'm just off-camera in that one).

I'll give you an example of what makes him so incredible:

For some background info, I hate Oregon. Well, I hate it now, I liked it for like, two years before growing to hate it with a passion. I hated the rain, hated the weather, hated a lot of the type of people that I'd run into up there. What was always a surprise was how hot and almost muggy August could be up there.

One August it's particularly hot in Salem during our fall camp. We're having a team meeting in a small lecture room type thing and it's uncomfortable to say the least. 100+ football players in a poorly ventilated room = no bueno. Coach Speck is up at the front doing a talk about something that involves the overhead projector. He's a little grouchy because it's hot, but his grouchy is usually pretty funny, until he gets mad.

Using a project for Coach Speck isn't easy and this one was no different. Turns it on, it's out of focus. Focuses the lens, but forgot to separate the coversheet from the xerox transparency. Lens is focused, transparency is visible, but the screen is too small. For a man with no hands, there's a lot of grasping and turning and whatnot that needs to be done. Speck's getting frustrated. He's fighting with each cover sheet on each transparency because it's hot and his wrists are a little slick from perspiration and so he can't get as much friction as he'd like to separate the two.

So Coach Speck reaches over and turns on the fan so he can cool off a bit. Fan starts in the stationary mode, but he puts it on oscillate because it "reminds me of that good ol' modesto breeze, like being at the dump..." Problem is, he had to move the cart that the projector was on in order to plug the fan in. So he has to go through all the trouble of fixing the focus, adjusting the size, etc all over again and he's getting down right annoyed. Guys are complaining about the image on the screen, so he pushes the cart forward to where it had been. Cart moves forward, pushes on the cord of the fan, fan turns and oscillates right into a stack of ~110 papers Coach was going to hand out.

FWOOM! Papers every where. Speck grabs his visor, throws it on the ground, and we get ready for the fury. "GOD DAMMIT!" Collective intake of breath. "I can't do anything right today! Friggin' projector is out of focus, slides are being a pain, fan's blowing paper everywhere, I GOT NO GODDAMN HANDS!" 110 men absolutely loose their shit.

Anyone would have excused Coach Speck for getting annoyed with the situation, except for him. There was never an excuse that was good enough for him, never a reason why something couldn't be done. It was either that you hadn't figured out how or you didn't actually want to.

To leave you, here's a short list of the things I've witnessed him do:

• Play racquetball
• Throw a 40 yard spiral
• Play the worst Rock Paper Scissors 2 out of 3 you've ever seen
• CATCH A WATER BALLOON THROWN FROM THE PRESS BOX
• Drive, while talking on his cell phone, pre-Bluetooth
• Mimic boy scout flag signals to hysterical effect
• Play the trombone (Not in person, but seen video)

So what's stopping you from accomplishing your goals?

Busy, Busy, Busy

Holy Cow!

Getting this teaching job has been awesome for me in a lot of ways, but my goodness have I been slaving to catch up to where we're at in terms of grading and lesson plan prep, etc. I'll try to start re-posting regularly in another week or so, but I've got to get settled and into a flow first. I just submitted progress reports last night and approximately 45% of my kids have "F" grades because they're just not turning in work, which means emails home to parents all weekend, among other things.

On the coaching front, it's been a very exciting time as we've hired a new HC who is a top-notch coach. He's been a winner pretty much everywhere he's been, with several section championship rings and a state coach of the year award to his credit. With him he brings the Wing-T, complete with the winged helmet design and all, and a very interesting quiet intensity and confidence that are obviously indicators of why he's been so successful in the past. I'm hoping I can convince him to allow me to retain our 3-4 scheme, but if he insists on a 4-4 look, well, I've got some ideas on that, too.