The Football Coaching Podcast with Joe Daniel

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 ethic, effort and mastery of the offense go a long way. Rarely the most talented blocker. It's more likely the opposite. How you coach your Center is critical to score more points. In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I'll break down just what you need to do to get more production from your center. Want to learn more about The Pistol Power Offense System? You'll get instant access to my exclusive 3 Video Series on the Power Series at no charge, when you sign up at http://pistolpoweroffense.com/podcast. Links Jock Sutherland Snap taught by Ted Seay: https://youtu.be/gtboAyXHl_k Gil Brandt's Greatest NFL Centers of All Time

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 track for the second half of the season. Don't forget to visit and follow my Twitter Profile Page @footballinfo to vote for next week's poll topic! We'll be talking about Offensive Line, so don't miss it! Want to check out the newly updated JDFB Insiders right now? You can get a 14 Day Free Trial for only $1 for a Limited Time. Sign up at https://joedanielfootball.com/tryit.

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 research. Resources If you decide to go further, you'll want to check out these resources (I used these for this podcast)... The 1968 Houston Veer Option playbook Controlling Defense with The Veer Option Offense with J.T. Curtis from Championship Productions. Huge Wyatt's article on The Split Back Veer Offense, The Veer Explained Bruce Eien's resources on the Split Back Veer. How to Install the Complete Option Game from Jerry Campbell. Not Split Back Veer but a good book if you just want to learn some Option.

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 not yet. We'll take it back to the days of the Wishbone Option. And even before that. On up to those 1-AA National Championship teams at Georgia Southern in the 1980s and 1990s. I'll also talk about the basic concepts of the offense and what makes it unique. The Flexbone Option Offense is a lot of fun to watch, and it'll be a lot of fun to talk about on this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast!

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 adjustments on your defense, and when you should stick with the plan. How to install a last-minute football run defense adjustment with your players that still allows them to play fast. Links in This Show My interview with Coach James Vint on running the Pistol Option Offense: https://joedanielfootball.com/vint/ Check out The 4-2-5 Defense System to get Instant Access at one low monthly rate with no contract, cancel anytime. Visit http://425defense.com for all the details.

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 went on the Twitter Poll @footballinfo, I had every intention of covering Coach Bryant's entire career. But after doing my research, well… there's just no way. Instead, it's time to lay the foundation on one of the greatest coaching legends of all time! I'll share my thoughts, my own personal (though pretty thin) connection to Bear Bryant, and a few interesting stories on Episode 210 of The Football Coaching Podcast! This episode is sponsored by JDFB Insider, where you can get access to all 5 of my Coaching Systems, plus a whole lot more. Check out https://joedanielfootball.com/membership for all the details on how you can get instant access, right now.

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 effective from week to week and season to season for these guys. Finally, we're going to dive into how to coach the technique for your Strong Safety and Weak Safety to perform their job within the defense to help you shut down your opponent. There's a lot of variation in this topic based on coverage. We could probably break it down by coverage, and again by Strong and Weak Safety. I'll talk about these guys in as much detail as possible without getting too specific to your coverage. But there will be some differences. I also focus a lot on the 4-2-5 Defense System and how we teach our defenders in there. You can get all the details on the System and get instant access today when you check out http://425defense.com.

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 you have? In this episode, I mentioned Coach Lew Johnston's Put the "Special" in Special Teams by Being Unconventional video. Coach Johnston has been a huge help to me this year, so… buy his video! Want more podcasts? More football coaching videos? Support The Football Coaching Podcast on Patreon!

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 more information.

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 more. Everything you need to dominate on defense this season with The 4-2-5 Defense System. I've worked with over 1,000 coaches on installing the System around the country and around the world. At every level including High School, Middle School, Youth, College, and Semi-Pro. Check out http://425defense.com for all the details on The 4-2-5 Defense System and how you can get instant access, today.