Just because we know how to talk doesn’t mean we know how to communicate. How many times have you been misunderstood or misunderstood someone else though you clearly heard what was being said? Have you ever had to say, “What I meant was…” or you’ve been told, “What I was trying to say was…”? We tend to overlook these statements because we usually manage to work things out and that is why the statement is being said to begin with. But how many times do our statements go unchecked? How many times are we not questioned because of our position or title? How often do we not communicate with each other when we think that we have?

At the freshmen level we play a fifth quarter after the regular game has ended to give the players who are still learning an opportunity to play and learn on the run. As such, coaches are allowed on the field to give instruction. During one such fifth quarter I noted a guard who was not getting his drive block done on our run plays. When the boys came back into the huddle I quickly explained to him his short coming and coached him up. I told him that the defensive lineman was nothing more than a blocking sled dummy and his job, like with the sled in practice, was to hit him low and drive, drive, drive to the whistle.

Back in the huddle I give the players the play. Up to the line of scrimmage they go. Down! Set! Hut! The center snapped the ball and this lineman firers off like never before! He hits the defender nice and low, gets his hands up under the kid’s pads and he drives him 10, maybe 12 yards. Back to the huddle he comes with the widest grin ever. “Kid, you did a great job on that drive block, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Too bad it was a pass play.” I forgot to tell him in my instruction that the drive block is used on run plays only. He did exactly what I told him to do!

It is so important to think before we speak. It’s too easy to fly by the seat of our pants, and some of us can do it fairly well, and hope to get by. Especially when it’s something important that needs to be said. If I’m planning on speaking to the team regarding an important matter I often will take a 5×7 card and just jot down key words or statements that I need to touch on. It doesn’t have to be a typed speech. Sometimes I can get by simply by just running through my mind what I want to cover and that will suffice. If I’m going to be speaking to a group of parents you better believe I’m going to have things written down! The bottom line is being prepared. I never trust to chance that which is important and risk not being understood. The last thing I want to have to do is explain myself later. If there is something that needs saying, then prepare a little, say it plainly and be done with it.

Ahh yes, the off-season: Time for some rest and relaxation, getting away from it all, connecting with people you haven’t seen in a while or perhaps reading a good book. Where do you coach buddy? My off-season is filled with preparation for next season, broadening my knowledge of the game, preparing improvement plans for my coaches and promoting LinemenInc. Players need time in the weight room and meetings regarding changes to the program. The off-season is the perfect time for self-improvement.

When do you stop learning? Well, if you want to improve, never. I once had a ski instructor tell me that if I wasn’t falling down at least a couple of times each day, then I wasn’t trying anything new. I wasn’t opening myself up to the possibilities, wasn’t being challenged. It’s very easy to become complacent in coaching. You put together a good program, you’re successful, and you even have some winning seasons. Hey! That doesn’t mean you’re done! It doesn’t mean you know it all! It might only mean you’ve had a good run with what you know or what you’ve been doing.

The game has always evolved and as coaches, if we want to stay up with it, we too must evolve. So, if you’re gonna read a book, make it something you can learn from. Entertain a couple of new ideas, a few new formations. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Certainly has its place but there isn’t anything wrong with slapping a new coat of paint on it so it at least looks fresh.

Back when I was fighting crime, an elder, wise and experienced sergeant explained his view on the idea of self-promoting. You know, that which we do to bring ourselves into the spot light so as to be looked upon favorably for the furtherance of our careers. Put simply, he said, “When you become a sergeant, you stop promoting yourself and start promoting your men.”

As a beat officer you’re out there doing the job and loving most every minute of it. However, after a while you might want to experience something more than patrol. So, you start putting in for special assignments or task forces. You get one or two here and there and five or seven years down the road you think you want to be a supervisor, a sergeant. The process is the same, you go before a board and list your accomplishments, you tell them about yourself and why you should get the job or the promotion. Basically, you spend 30 to 40 minutes bragging about yourself. That’s cool, that’s what they want to here.

So, now you have the promotion. You’re a supervisor running a squad. At this point your focus is all about the squad. Making sure the vet’s are looking out for the rooks, insuring that their reports will get cases charged with the D.A. and that squad stats are at expected levels. Yes, cops keep stats, not quotas. Every time one of your guys does a good job it is a reflection of your leadership. Every time your squad leads the department in arrests, recovered stolen vehicles or whatever, it is a positive reflection of you and your leadership. And, when one of your squad promotes or gets a special assignment, it’s noted that he is one of your guys.

The same is true of coaching gentlemen. We all promote ourselves to advance our coaching careers as we move from an assistant line coach, to line coach, to offensive coordinator, to head coach. But, when we get that head coach position how many of us stop the self-promoting and start focusing on our staff? Just like with your players, the key is in recognizing your talent and putting that talent in the place where it can benefit the team the most. Then you coach them on their position, or in the case of a coach, their job. Part of your responsibility as a head coach is the development of your staff. The better your staff, the better your program. The better your program, the more recognition of your program and by association, the more recognition of your own talents. After all, it’s your program, your staff.
Take a look at the programs/staffs of Bill Walsh or Mike Holmgren. Can you count the number of head coaches in the NFL or the NCAA that came out of those coaching staffs? That alone speaks volumes on the leadership they tutored under. And, do you think for one minute either of these great coaches was afraid of their assistants getting some attention? Do you think these coaches feared the promotion of their assistants? What greater compliment than for the teacher’s pupil to become the teacher? The knowledge that this new star, rising on the football horizon, is one of your own. When you become a head coach, you stop promoting yourself and start promoting those around you.

When I first started coaching, some umpteen years ago, I had a conception of what a coach was suppose to be. He’s a leader whose word will be obeyed. He’s a motivator who pushes players forward through his own sheer will. He’s a tactician in the middle of a war. Talk about a misconception. Of course a coach is a leader, a motivator and a tactician but not in the image I had fashioned. With the passing of each season, I learned more about coaching and about being a man than I had ever bargained for in my life.

Coaching is kind of like being a parent, only the handbooks are better and there are more of them. In both cases you’re really not sure what you’re getting into until you are there. Oh, you can try to prepare, you can read, watch, ask questions and so forth but until you jump in with both feet… And in both cases, you never realize the impact you will have until it’s too late.

My first year as a football line coach was spent in a youth program. I wanted those kids, those linemen, to be the toughest squad on the team. I wanted everyone else to respect them and be in awe of their power and tenacity. To that end I worked them everyday. Drills, push-ups, one-on-one, tackling, block and shed, drive blocking and something I called “King of the Hill”. I pushed them like no other squad on the team. They were the meanest, toughest nine and ten year-olds you ever met, yeah, nine and ten.

One of them, the biggest of the group, came from a broken home. He never knew his father and was court ordered to live with his grandparents as mom had a habit and could not care for him and his younger sister. I paid no attention to these facts but to the matter at hand, football. As he was the biggest, my expectations of him were the greatest. I pushed him harder than the rest, rode him the most and displayed my distain at his short comings more frequently than with the other players. Basically, I was a real jerk. Things culminated one day on the practice field late in the season. I was chewing him out in front of the team, God, and half of Texas. He responded by yelling back, bursting into tears and running off the field. I’ve never felt smaller. All the right words and apologies couldn’t make up for the wrong I did this young man, this boy, though I tried.

I don’t know where he is now or what he’s doing but I owe him a lot. He taught me to first think about my players and not myself. He taught me that each and every player is different than the other and therefore should be handled different. That what motivates one doesn’t necessarily motivate another and that as a coach, I need to look at each player as an individual and get to know them as such. I learned that although there is a time and place for yelling, there is also a time and place for quiet guidance. I learned that not all players can be pushed or motivated in the same way. I hope I didn’t do any permanent damage to this boy because I also learned that the things we do and say, whether for good or bad, can have a lasting impression on these kids, just like being a parent.

Okay, usually I’m figuring X’s and O’s or watching tape or reading about Vince Lombardi. So, how do I find myself here? Simple, my wife. You see, she seems to think I need to do this and that you are going to be interested in what I have to say. Why would you be interested? Well, let’s give it a go for awhile and see if the answer comes to us both.

I don’t proclaim to be any kind of coaching god or have all the answers or some incredible insight into the game or coaching for that matter. What I do have is year’s of experience reading, controlling, training and coaching people. Years of listening and observing. At first, as a police officer and later as a coach. I have witnessed first hand the human spirit at it’s lowest and at it’s zenith. That has to be worth something. All I’m going to do here is try to talk a little football and share some of my life’s experiences and hope in some way, you the reader, can take something positive from it. There might not always be a lesson in it, hell, it might only be a funny story but I’ll do my best.

So, hang in there for awhile and let’s see how it goes. One coach to another, one coach to a player or just one guy to another guy. Now, I’m sure I have some film to watch or a Lombardi-ism to learn. Catch you later.