The Football Coaching Podcast With Joe Daniel

Your football team will have more success, and you will be a happier coach, when you give an identity to your offensive play calling. Everyone has that team on the schedule. You know exactly what they are going to do on offense. You just can’t stop it. It’s a great situation to be in. One that seems so simple and obvious. But so many High School football coaches are putting way too much time into coming up with the next great thing. Instead, work to establish your offensive play calling identity. Listen to this podcast, and download the document above, to get the steps to establishing your own offensive play calling identity.

  Hopefully I won’t forget these Football Coaching Lessons again before next season... For the final Football Coaching Podcast of 2017, I wanted to talk about the football coaching lessons I learned this year. I sat down and started hammering out a list. It’s a good list. Learned a lot this year. Unfortunately, several of the things on this list are football coaching lessons I have learned many times before. And just seem to forget them. So for you, and for me, this year’s list is not only on The Football Coaching Podcast, but you can also download my 10 Football Coaching Lessons Learned in the box above. I’ll be pinning it up on the wall somewhere, and hopefully looking at it. Before I make the same mistakes again.

Do you need your 4-2-5 Defense to dominate? Take a deeper look at one that has already done it. We’re going deep into the pages of the 1999 TCU 4-2-5 Defense Playbook. This playbook was used when Gary Patterson was still the Defensive Coordinator for the Horned Frogs. It’s a great playbook to look at for any football coach. But 4-2-5 Defense coaches should be intimately familiar with it. I’ll point out what you should take from it, and what you should probably leave alone. And a few things that I’d like to steal, but haven’t done it yet!

Your defense must be ready to stop any RPO the offense can run at you. Getting your defense ready to defend Run-Pass Options isn’t as hard as other coaches will make it sound. At least, the X’s and O’s side of things isn’t so hard. In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll give you a plan for shutting down RPO’s with your 4-2-5 Defense. Just by running your base scheme. Plus, I’m going to share the 5 Keys to Defending RPO’s that every defense must follow. If you can take care of these pieces, your defense will be ready to shut down any RPO.

Are you getting everything you can out of every football run play in your playbook? Take a look at the detailed anatomy of an offensive play to find out. Football seems pretty simple, right? Move the ball down the field. Score. Block. Tackle. End Zone Celebration or Sack Dance. Not much to it. Yeah, if you’re a football coach you know that’s not true. There’s a lot of work that goes into this. On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’m breaking down the anatomy of a Football Run Play. What goes into the play every time the ball is snapped? Any good football coach will tell you that it’s all about execution. The best play designs and ideas in the world won’t matter, if your players can’t execute. If you want to see how we put together some pretty good football run plays (and a play action pass), you need to check out my 3 video series on the Power, Counter and Power Pass plays. Visit https://joedanielfootball.com/podcast to get instant access, at no cost to you, because this is my gift to you.

The Off Season is the perfect time for your football team to make improvement in leaps and bounds. But you’ve got to have a plan. On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, we’re looking at the 6 areas of Off Season Planning you need to be focused on, including… Academics Recruiting Fundraising Character & Team Building Strength Training Skill Development Football coaches have a lot more to work on during this time than most people thing. You can’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to looking for off season improvement. Listen to this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast right now, and get started planning your Off Season Calendar! In this episode, I mentioned JDFB Insider and the Annual Subscription Plan. Annual Subscribers get Unlimited Coach Licenses, because your entire staff needs to be getting better this off season! Click here to check out JDFB Insider

For the first time on The Football Coaching Podcast, we’re doing something a little different. I’m breaking down the 2004 Utah Offense playbook. Urban Meyer was in his second year at Utah, running this Spread Option attack. Even though it’s the standard of college football today, this was an innovative and unique offense in 2004. When I’m looking at this playbook with you, all I’ll talk about is what I would want to steal. For my own players. You will not hear any talk about the athletes at Utah, or even Urban Meyer himself (except a few shots at Florida, because I couldn’t resist). It’s about what football coaches can learn from an old playbook. You’ll hear about the program philosophy as presented in the playbook. We’ll talk run game including those Spread Option plays - like that shovel option everyone’s so excited about today. Then I’ll look at the passing game that Utah was using in 2004. And why it was so effective. This is a great playbook to examine for coaches. Even though it seems complex watching t

Defensive play calling might seem simple. Pick a front, maybe throw in a blitz, choose a coverage. But it’s not. Defensive football in general isn’t nearly as simple as some would make it out to be. Sure, at the heart of the matter you just find the football and get the guy to the ground. But if that was all it took, we’d all be geniuses. On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, we’re looking at how to call you defensive fronts to effectively stop the offense. More than play calling, we’re talking about how to game plan the fronts you want to use. I’ll even give you a 6-Step Process for choosing your defensive fronts when you game plan for an opponent. This is a great to figure out how to put your players in position to succeed! Doesn’t matter what your base defense is, either. No matter what defense you run, this podcast will help you game plan your fronts to shut down the run. Check it out! And if you want to go even deeper in learning defensive fronts, start your JDFB Insider subscription right no

It’s just 3 yards. How hard can it be? 2 Point Conversion Plays seem like easy points. But they won’t be unless your team is prepared. If you have a good field goal kicker, the 2 Point Conversion may be something you only use when you need it. For other coaches, it’s an absolute necessity. There’s a lot to think about when you put together your 2 Point Package. How many plays do you need? Do the come from your regular offense? Or will you use special plays? In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, we’re going to go into preparing a 2 Point Conversion package. From basic philosophy behind 2 point plays, to specific plays that you can use in your offense right now. At some point, you’ll have a football game that will come down to the 2 Point Conversion Play. Listen to this episode now to get the jump on your preparation for that moment! In this episode, I mention the Power Pass and other parts of our Pistol Power Offense System. Visit http://pistolpoweroffense.com to find out how you can get Instant Ac

The 3-4 Defense is one of the most popular schemes being used in High School, College and the NFL today. Unfortunately, just saying that you 'run a 3-4 Defense' won't tell anyone else a whole lot. Sure, you use 3 down linemen and 4 linebackers. But they can be arranged in a huge variety of ways. And flexibility is one of the strengths of the 3-4 Defense.  Within JDFB Insiders, I teach The 3-4 Defense System as my own preferred brand of the scheme. It's not too complicated, and grew from our 4-2-5 Defense playbook.  Find another coach running the 3-4 Defense. It's likely that his version will look different. You might 2-gap the defensive linemen. Or base out of a different coverage. Or you might not call it a 3-4 Defense at all. Maybe you call this a 5-2 Defense. They're the same. Check out https://joedanielfootball.com/80 for my entire rant on how there's only 4 defensive schemes in football. Plenty of people have argued with me, no one has convinced me I'm wrong yet. For this episode of The Football Coaching

Playing Center is not the most glamorous position. It’s the opposite. In the NFL, the Left Tackle gets all the glory on the Offensive Line. Probably the only position to consistently get recognized up front. Sure, there’s a few Centers who become well known. They usually have a high command of the offense and play for many years. And they’re snapping the ball to some of the top Quarterbacks in football. In High School Football, the Center will rarely get that kind of recognition. His recognition is more likely to come from a bad snap, than from anything positive he contributes to the team. Offensive Line Coaches know the truth. The Center is often the single most important guy in your blocking scheme. Within our Pistol Power Offense System, there’s a lot of variation. We don’t always line up in Pistol (less than 1% of snaps this season). And Power isn’t always the top run play (it’s been Zone most of this season). The one consistent factor in our System is that we are as good as the Center. His talent, work e

Things might be going well. They may not be. For whatever reason, you feel like you need to make some changes. Big one’s. It’s time for the playoff push. Or you’re just trying to salvage the season from disaster. So you’re thinking about making drastic changes. You want to change you a whole new defensive scheme. Right now. In the middle of the season. In today’s episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll explain why you should not change your defensive scheme right now! At least… why you shouldn’t make any big time, wholesale changes. There’s always room for adaptation and improvement. It’s absolutely necessary if you want to be successful! If you’re running a well designed defensive system, none of this will be a problem. A good coaching system is easy to adapt and adjust. Game to game and year to year. But if you aren’t doing that, you may be tempted to make some major changes right now. I’ll help you decide what changes to make, and which changes to avoid. And how to get your team’s defense back on tr

  In a big runaway win from our Twitter Poll this week, the Veer Option received 35% of the vote! And I’m excited about that. This episode won’t cover the entire offense, of course. That’s impossible. We’ll be focusing on The Split Back Inside Veer play. Two whole episodes of old school (sort of) Option Football in a row! What a treat. All the Spread Offense guys have left us by now. But we’re still having fun. In today’s episode I’m going to go deep dive on the Inside Veer play. Everything you need to know. We’ll talk about how to line up your offensive formation to get in the right places to attack. Then I’m going to talk about the basics of the blocking scheme for the Inside Veer. After that, it’s all about the Option mechanics of the backfield. The dive, the keep, and the pitch. I’ll close out the episode by talking about some of the counters and play action you can run off the Split Back Inside Veer play. It’s everything you need to get started with this Offense, and decide if you want to do more researc

I love college football. That doesn’t mean I’m glued to the TV all day every Saturday. However, I’ll usually stop to watch Georgia Tech’s Flexbone Option Offense on the field for at least a series or two. Not because I love Georgia Tech, let’s make that clear. I’m a lifelong UGA fan. But man, that offense is a thing of beauty. Most people I talk to don’t understand it. They think the Flexbone Option Offense is boring to watch. Makes no sense to me. How could anything be more exciting than Option Football!? Oh well. At least there’s still a few schools out there doing something to excite us football coaches (and probably infuriate some of their boosters) every Saturday. On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’m going to look back at the foundations and origins of The Flexbone Option Offense. Where did it come from? How did it get to where it is today? Truth be told, there’s not a ton of information on this. Paul Johnson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s interested in writing a book. At least

The mark of a great coach is the ability to adjust during the game. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of experience. Adjusting your football run defense is no difference. Unfortunately, a lot of the football run defense adjustments you make won’t work, just because the team you’re playing is flat-out better than you. Those game winning adjustments will be few and far between, no matter how good you are. But there’s a chance. You will win some games in your career because of great adjustments for your football run defense. Football Run Defense Tips in This Episode What to look for during the game to decide on needed adjustments How to build a library of potential adjustments for your football run defense to be ready for anything. We’ll look at adjusting for problems with individual players, and for your overall defensive scheme. Preparing your football team for the run defense adjustments that you might use during the game (you always need to think one step ahead in your game planning!) When to make adjustmen

Paul “Bear” Bryant is a coaching legend. There’s not much question about that. He won 6 National Championships as the Head Football Coach at the University of Alabama. The image of his houndstooth hat is unmistakeable. But we’re football coaches, and we’re not just interested in the story of a coach who won a lot of football games (323 games, to be exact). We want to know how. And why. In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, we’ll take a look at the early year of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s coaching career. How did he come to be the legend at Alabama? Starting with his upbringing in Arkansas, to his playing days at Alabama, we’ll look at the rise of one of the most legendary figures in our profession. On to his time in the Navy during World War II, and his first head coaching job that followed, at the University of Maryland. Then on to Kentucky, and of course, to Texas A&M. The site of the famous Junction Boys. Don’t get too excited, I plan to leave the Junction Boys story for another time. When this w

The Overhang Safeties in your 8-man front defense set the edge. Defend the flats. They are critical to shrinking the field for your defense. Overhang Safeties are a major piece in your 4-2-5 Defense or 3-3-5 Defense. If you call it a 4-4 Defense or 3-5-3 Defense, they’re your Outside Linebackers. The principles are still the same. Episode 209 of The Football Coaching Podcast will go in depth on coaching the Overhang Safety position. This won our Twitter Poll @footballinfo this week. Check in each week to vote for the next topic. I’ll talk about the alignment of the Strong Safety and Weak Safety. We’ll look at why you use variations in alignment and how to align your defenders to maximize their effectiveness. We’ll look at the most effective stance for your defenders to execute their assignment. In this episode, I’m also going to address the most common question I get about the Overhang Safeties. What keys should they read? My answer is a little different than most, but something I have found to be very effect

Special Teams are one-third of the game. Every coach says it. Most of us don’t actually spend that much time on it, though. In fact, a big part of special teams comes down to execution. Limiting mistakes. If you can do that, you can make big things happen. I posted 4 Special Teams units on our Twitter Poll @footballinfo. The winner by a big margin was the Kick Return schemes. And why not? Kick Return is a huge key to scoring for your football team. It’s probably the single special teams unit where you have the highest probability of scoring (PAT/FG not included). Plus this is what’s going to set up your field position on the next drive. Or the opening drive! In this episode we’ll break down kick return schemes for handling deep kicks, sky kicks, squib kicks and onside kicks. You’ll also learn how to use the right personnel on your Kick Return unit. And last but not least… we’ll talk about practicing your Kick Return team. How can you get the most from these guys in the necessarily short amount of time that yo

The Playbook. It’s like the Holy Grail of football coaches. We dream of putting together that amazing playbook. With just the right selection of calls. You’ve probably drawn up one or two in your time. If you’ve been dreaming of this job for long, you at least drawn up a few plays. Almost every football coach has downloaded a few playbooks from the Internet, too. Good and bad. The truth of the playbook isn’t nearly as sexy. Playbooks don’t win games. Players do. What else do players do? Leave their playbook in their locker (or worse). Forget to study it. And execute the plays completely wrong. No matter how many times you drilled it. In this episode, we’re going to talk about putting together your playbook, so that it actually gets translated to on-the-field success! Want to have a successful playbook? Check out JDFB Insider where I supply you with the playbook, but more importantly teach you how to teach your players so that your team executes on Game Day. Visit https://joedanielfootball.com/membership for m

Press Man Coverage is our Twitter Poll winner at http://twitter.com/footballinfo for this week. I’ll look at some of the myths and reality of coaching Press Coverage. We’ll also talk about technique for coaching press coverage to your athletes. I used to be one of those guys who shied away from press technique. Always thought you had to have some kind of freakish athlete to do it. Now I’m going to share with you why that’s just not true. Why you can use press coverage for your football team, even with average athletes. This episode is brought to you by The 4-2-5 Defense System at http://425defense.com. Visit there to get all the details on this complete Coaching System, including how to put together a coverage package that matches your defensive front. Whether you’re going to run Cover 3, Cover 1, Quarters, Robber, or Split Field Coverages, The 4-2-5 Defense System gives you complete instruction on how to do it. Plus you get base run fits, change-up fronts, blitz package, game planning, practice planning and