Sunday’s Schedule
The coaching staff will meet together early Sunday morning and go over the film of Saturday’s game. While the assistant coaches are studying and grading the film, I will meet with the assistant coach who scouted the team we will be playing this coming Saturday. In addition to receiving a thorough scouting report from him, I want his recommendations offensively and defensively of what we should do against the opponent. The scout will then complete his report as he will present it to the squad members on Monday night.
In the meantime the other assistant coaches have completed their grading of the film, and then we discuss personnel. As the result of game performance, we commence to make plans as to the personnel we will be using in the upcoming game.
Monday’s Schedule
On Monday morning the scout will give his report to our entire staff. He then answers questions relating to the opponent we will be playing on Saturday. After we have fully discussed the opposition from every aspect, our defensive coaches will have a separate meeting and make plans to set up the defenses which they would like to use. The offensive coaches have a similar meeting, and map out their strategy versus all of the various defenses the opposition has used in various situations. We recognize the fact that some plays are good only against certain defenses and not all plays are successful against all defenses. Therefore, we try to limit our offense to the best possible plays against our opposition’s anticipated defenses. Of course, we must have a valid, reliable, comprehensive scouting report in order to make our plans. We also understand and recognize the fact that some teams will change practically their entire offensive system from game to game. However, this gives such teams only one week to perfect a new “favorite” series, and this is almost an impossible feat.
All of our coaches will meet together again around 10:30 A.M., with the defensive coaches making their recommendations for Saturday’s opponent. The strategy is discussed at length before a decision is reached. Let me digress for just a second to say that once we have made our decisions, we will stick with them tenaciously for fear of confusing our players by changing defenses later in the week.
The procedure is repeated again, this time with the offensive coaches. All coaches, regardless of position or whether they specialize in offense or defense, will enter the discussion. We have found following such a procedure helps us do a better job of coaching, and some of our best suggestions relating to offense have come from our defensive coaches, and vice versa, defensive suggestions have come from the offensive coaches. We are always open to suggestions!
After we have made our plans, we can then make out our work schedule for Monday afternoon. Although I usually make out the remainder of the schedule for the week each night after practice, you can see the necessity of waiting until Monday in order to make out the day’s work schedule.
After lunch we will have a short squad meeting. First, we go over last Saturday’s game discussing both the good and bad points. Then we will inform the squad of our plans for this coming Saturday’s game, and change assignments, make adjustments, etc., at this time.