Video: Top Plays of the Week // Week 5 Steve Montoya and Chris Stonebraker tackle the best of the best from the week past.
Let's face it, if you've coached for any time at all, you've probably sat in a weekend staff meeting that consisted of a whole lot of wasted time. Sometimes that's a great thing. But sometimes it's an awful thing.
It's a great thing when staff bonding is happening, when there are a lot of laughs and just great chemistry in the room. I've been on a staff where we would get together and before you knew it an hour had passed and nobody knew it, especially after a win.
It's an awful thing when you want to and/or need to get home to tend to other matters with your family or job. Sometimes staff meetings can take forever with nothing getting done.
Successful coach meetings lead to proper preparation and increased chances of success on Friday nights.
File photo by Ralph Thompson
With Hudl, many on your staff can do their work on their own at home and then come together with their own notes. This is a good idea, but can also be negative for your program if coaches aren't doing a very good job on their own.
Productive staff meetings can be held in a much shorter time if coaches come prepared with notes about what needs to be covered. We all know that one coach who comes to the meeting with nothing prepared, and brags that "it's all up here." In other words, he didn't watch a lick of film.
The head coach should create a scouting list of what each person is responsible for. For instance, the defensive backs coach can chart the passes, the top routes to defend and a personnel report on the receivers. The defensive line coach can breakdown formations, their favorite runs and a personnel report on the offensive linemen.
Come with a planDevelop your plan of attack for the upcoming week by preparing your scouting report. I have found that many coaches know how to watch film, but then lack the understanding of what to do with that film and knowledge.
Coming to the staff meeting with a plan will help to get the discussion going, and will help the staff to put together the game plan. This will take some of the guessing out of things, and will erase wasted time of "what should we do this week?"
Come to the meeting with an idea of the game plan you think will work. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your team's offense against this team's defense, etc.? The head coach should put together a simple order of operations for how your staff prepares a game plan, a checklist so to speak. This will help everyone to have a laser focus, be detailed, and save time.
Come with practice plans, ideas, scripts
In education teachers use the phrase "data drives instruction." In the classroom, data — test results — should drive instruction as to how you deliver information to the class on a daily basis. The same is true of football, but I think that many coaches can overlook this important step of preparation. So many teams, mine included the first four to five years of being a head coach, just followed a cookie cutter practice script that we inherited from the previous staff. Instead of really detailing and thinking critically about the exact instruction that needed to happen to prepare for each specific opponent, we just rolled out the same old practice script and drills, etc.
Chris Fore is a veteran Head Football Coach and Athletic Director from
Southern California. He consults coaches and programs nationwide
through his business Eight Laces Consulting.
