Essays from the sideline. Practical, opinionated, and short enough to read in the car before Tuesday's practice. Updated whenever there's something worth saying.
Every season I see teams stack the playbook with reverses and trick plays. They lose to the team that pulls flags cleanly. Here's the drill progression we run with every age group from K to 7/8 — and why we never tell defenders to "wrap up."
Read the full noteThe midfield and goal-line no-run zones are the most under-coached part of the South OC game. Get the pass concepts right in those windows and you score on Fridays. Here's the framework I run.
Cliches get the kids fired up for sixty seconds. What they actually need is one specific job, one teammate to look out for, and a reason to play loose. Here's the framework that travels with every age group.
You get one practice a week, max. Here's how to spend the hour: ten minutes of warmup, twenty of skills, twenty of team install, and ten of competition. Why competition is the most important block.
Halftime is two minutes long. You can't fix a season in two minutes — but you can ruin one. The three-question framework that keeps your team focused without crushing them when they're down by two scores.
Set expectations in week one or fight them in week six. The five things to cover at your parent meeting before the season starts — playing time, position requests, sideline behavior, and the two topics every coach forgets.
Most K–4 division QBs can't throw a tight spiral. That's fine. Here's how to build a passing offense for a kid whose ball wobbles — and why that matters less than you think for getting first downs.
Pre-snap motion is the cheapest yardage in football. It tells you man vs. zone, it creates leverage advantages, and it gives a slow receiver a head start. Three motion looks every offense should run.
Your QB doesn't need to read the whole defense — but you do. The four pre-snap tells that tell you what coverage they're running, and the simple hand signal that lets your QB know which play to check into.