The Football Coaching Podcast With Joe Daniel

Opponent scouting is an event that can quickly eat up most of… if not your whole weekend. In fact, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it could steal your whole week away. We’ve all fallen into the “just one more watch through” trap as coaches. We want to make sure we’ve taken everything we can from the film to help us win. On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Southside’s HC Kenny Simpson in a discussion about the benefits of breaking down your opponent’s defense, what changes you should make to  your scheme to attack them, and exactly how film breakdown is most efficiently done.

Yes, Special Teams is one-third of the game of football. If ST hasn’t won or lost you a game as a coach yet, it’s coming. There are times that Special Teams practices can feel chaotic, like no one knows what’s going on, and 1 coach (whomever had that ST Coordinator role thrown on them) is coaching 11 players, and the other Coaches are standing around watching the kicker.  On this episode we’re talking to Coach Joel Mathews on ways to prevent the nightmare written above. We talk not only scheduling a special teams practice, but having it scripted ahead of time. Let everyone know where to be, who to coach, and what they’re responsible for.

The first drive, or the first few of them, of any game of football can give you nearly all the information you need to be successful the rest of the night if you use it right. Although we’d all love to run our bread and butter ad nauseam and hope to put some points on the board, you have a low risk situation to ask several questions of the Defense and see if they have answers at all, and what those answers are.  On this episode we dive into the science and art of scripting your first drive with Southside Southerners Head Coach Kenny Simpson. We discuss what questions you should be trying to ask, how to dress up your common plays to confuse the Defense (and next week’s DC), as well as the benefits of having the first drive written down well before the first kickoff.

Now that just about everyone is back to practicing football (with real helmets and everything), it’s time to streamline our schedules and get them into the most efficient formats. You don’t have to make that a daily chore either! On this episode Joe and Daniel talk with Coach Justin Dottavio about the makings up a practice schedule shell for each day of the week, what key components you need to add, and how to adjust them as the season goes on.

Injuries are very much a part of football. We coach a contact sport, and that contact can create a vast number of different injuries to players of any age. A part of being a coach is mitigating the risks that lead to those injuries by modifying the practice schedule to get the most out of our kids without unnecessary risk. On this episode Joe and Daniel talk with Antoine Smith about how he keeps 5 teams of youth players healthy in practice to ensure they stay in love with the game, their parents don’t pull them out completely, and how we keep teams ready for a playoff push.

Getting your players in game shape is usually held as one of the highest priorities in Summer Pride and pre-season practices. There is without a doubt a benefit to being in prime shape as the season kicks off, but maybe it shouldn’t be as high of a priority as we make it out to be. On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Southside ( Batesville, AR) S&C Coach Deerick Smith (www.smithperformancellc.com) as we discuss the mistakes coaches make by forcing the conditioning issue too fast too soon, when your team should really be in the best shape of the season, and ways to measure your players’ fitness level without killing them with some ridiculous fitness test.

Your Pre-camp practice schedule is, as it should be, its own beast. Getting your players ready for the first camp, and laying the foundation for the rest of your season is possibly one of the most important things you’ll plan and execute until your first Friday night snap.  On this episode Coaches Dave Dugan and Rick Stewart join Joe and Daniel to discuss pre-camp practice planning. Listen to identify how these coaches use the time leading up to the first camp with installs, drills, packages, and basic football information.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a scientific phenomenon in which people who are relatively new to a field, such as coaching football, often think they have all the answers when they actually have little to no knowledge of the subject at all. This effect is seen in nearly all aspects of life, even growing from a child into an adult (think about a 4 year old who has ALL the answers and a teenager who is frozen from fear of getting into the real world). It stems from the fact that you generally don’t know what you don’t know, and a false confidence in your ability to control what you do know. All of this can lead you to believe that you’re the smartest man in the room. On this episode, Joe and Daniel discuss the challenges of believing you’re the new greatest thing in football, what to do if you find yourself actually being the best coach on staff as an assistant, and the unfortunate situation in which you’re a Head Coach with a subpar staff.

Linebackers could be considered the most important players in your defensive scheme. Regardless of how you rate them in importance, they can definitely make or break your defense if you aren’t playing the right kids in each position. On this episode Joe and Daniel discuss what the ideal backer looks like, what the player you’ll likely be playing there looks like, and what type of player to fit into the inside backer positions in the scheme you’ve chosen.

Picking a defense doesn’t have to be a very difficult task, but it is one that can easily be overthought. Some guys get stuck looking for the “perfect” defense, when that simply doesn’t exist. In this episode, Joe and Daniel discuss the varying levels of difficulty and complexity in running each of the most prominent defensive schemes and what factors you should consider when picking one to run.

As coaches, we’re constantly performing a balancing act; run plays vs pass, playing time for our players, time at the office on the weekend… the list goes on ad nauseum. Only one small part of that list is the number of touches our players are getting.  On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by coaches Kenny Simpson and Max Wilson to discuss the pros and cons of spreading the rock around in your offensive scheme to maximize experience, minimize wear and tear, and have your team ready for the high pressure moments on Friday nights.

Our teams are composed of athletes of a large range of experience levels. In football especially, players pick up skills and abilities throughout their career that usually result in them being more experienced and seeing the game differently than younger players. This leads to complications during practice when it comes to running drills that have to benefit everyone on the team. On this episode we talk with Coach Justin Dottavio about the importance of differentiating drills and how to add to and take away from your drills to ensure every player is getting max benefit from them.

You cannot expect, through any amount of drills or training, for an incoming freshman to show up and be the stud on the team. Realistically, you probably can’t even expect them to be game ready with a single fall camp under their belt. However, you can and should have a plan to make them serviceable as a player. On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Lynn Shackleford and Antoine Smith as we discuss developing your team, and building them physically and mentally.

“I run six plays, split veer. It’s like novocaine. Just give it time, it always works.” - Herman Boone Although Coach Boone had T. C. Williams rocking and rolling to a 13-0 season and a state title in 1971 with the Split Veer… Most of us can agree that you likely need more than 6 plays in today’s football game. Not that the split veer, wishbone, or other offenses won’t work. But, you can at another level to these schemes with a simple RPO or or mixing in a little pass game to keep defenders honest. On this episode Joe and Daniel discuss how many of each play type you should carry in a playbook vs a system, how to decide how much to install each year, and the benefits of keeping things simple.

As the school year winds down, and football season gets ever nearer, you may find yourself as the newest defensive play caller on your team. Or, maybe you’re a new DC on a different team than last year. Regardless, if you’re in a position to determine which defensive coverage your team will use, you’ve come to the right place. Defense doesn’t have to be complicated, and it often starts with keeping your coverage package(s) simple. In this episode Joe and Daniel discuss why you need to stick to a base coverage, which coverage you should likely be using, and whether zone or man coverage is right for you.

In small town high school football, where the running game reigns supreme, the cornerback position is often greatly overlooked. Many coaches don’t know how to properly coach the position, so they’re schemed into a deep third of the field and forgotten about until they give up the big play that seals a win for the cross-town rival. However, if the proper personnel are used, you may find the confidence in your players to get them more involved, and even break free from the overly-common “we don’t have the players to run man coverage” ideology. On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Dominique Franks, DB coach for the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, to talk all about how to pick the personnel you use at the cornerback position based off of your scheme and ways to identify who your best corners really are.  

The offensive line could be considered the most important “team” to take the field on Friday nights. Sure, special teams is one side of the ball and defense wins championships, but you can’t win 0-0 and the offense goes as your O-line goes. Piecing that team together can be a daunting task, especially for small schools where you may or may not have five guys that look the part. On this episode Joe and Daniel are joined by Coach Jack Dingus and Coach Matt Allen to discuss the personnel of perfect O Line positions, and what the “right guy” looks like for each one.

Coaching kickers seems to be one of the most overlooked and underappreciated skills in the football world. For a team that’s supposed to entail the figurative third side of the ball, it seems there is very little info out in the football world about how to take the average high school athlete and make them into the one kid held responsible for all of your special teams situations. It’s even been said that some very large colleges will not staff a kicking coach throughout the year. On this episode Joe, Daniel, and Coach Joel Mathews of Headcase Kicking talk through some of the easiest reasons to get involved in your kickers training, the basics of kicking a ball off of a tee and punting, how to identify your next punter and the proper practice plan to make them better without burning them out.

Not every player learns best the same way. I’ll say that again. Not every player learns best the same way. Some of your players cannot sit down with a playbook and learn how to play football. The white board looks nothing like a football field to some of your players. You’re writing Greek up there. Your practice schedule, as well as your coaching style, should incorporate as many learning styles as possible to ensure every player on the team is taking something from it. On this episode Joe, Daniel, and Coach James Vint discuss the types of learning styles there are, why they’re all important, and ways that we’ve been adding them all into our practice plan to get the most benefit for the most players.

A hybrid position on defense can bring something different to the game of football that other positions simply can’t, flexibility. These positions, and the players that fill them, have begun to pop up on both sides of the football and for some of the same reasons. A “jack of all trades” is more versatile in your defensive scheme than a “master of one”. Coaches have quit prioritizing size in an effort to get the best 11 players on the field, and letting their athletes play more positions and techniques. On this episode, Joe, Daniel, and guest HC Kahn Chace talk about using hybrid defenders in their defensive schemes to better equip them to face the ever changing offenses in High School football.