Subject: do NOT dumb down the details
Date: August 19, 2026

At one of the first football clinics I ever went to, Ralph Friedgen was giving a talk on his passing game. He was the head coach of Maryland at that time.

After about 40 minutes, the coach next to me leans over and whispers…
“Has he even broke the huddle yet?”

Nope.

I don’t remember what Friedge was talking about. I just remember how detailed he was. And at the time, I thought it was too complicated.

Now, I see this very different. This is what “Coach Simple” really means.

Not a lot of plays.

But the attention to detail? Unmatched.

Yesterday I opened pre-orders for Coach Simple, Volume 1: The Lost Letters. It’s a collection of in-depth coaching discussions that were only available for JDFB clients. They have not been published anywhere since originally mailed out.

No digital copies exist. The only record of these is the few hundred mailed to active members when they were published.

And one of those is the most detailed breakdown of the Defensive Tackle I have ever done. That issue took the ASKA principle and applied it specifically to the 3-tech in the 4-2-5 Defense.

Every lever. Every little tweak. To the point that I had written about 8,000 words and… well, the ball had not been snapped. It was all alignment and stance levers.

I had to do a pretty dramatic re-write for that one. Paper and postage are expensive and these writings were sent by mail only.

But it’s in the Lost Letters. You can pre-order it now. We expect to start shipping in the next week:

Pre-Order the Lost Letters manual now >>

Coach Simple means attention to detail, but that doesn’t take a lot of drills.

When you understand ASKA and the Levers principle (deep dives on both in
the Lost Letters), the drills get simple.

On the most recent episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, Daniel and I talked about defensive line drills. You don’t need much to get the work done.

Alignment and Stance can solve a lot of problems. Cheap levers that don’t require much practice time.

Our drills focus on the Key Reads. Key Reads take the defensive lineman on a natural progression to his assignment.

Less thinking. More action.

In fact, the Defensive Lineman only has 5 things he’ll ever need to react to in a game. Why would you work on anything else?

No chutes. No bags. No boards. No sleds.

“Partner up and spread out.” That’s the set-up for my Defensive Line drills.

Want to get those drills? They’re in this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast:

Listen or Watch Defensive Line Drills now >>

You’ll also find related articles and podcasts on that page. If you listened to the episode already, that page has your next steps for defensive line dominance.

~ Joe Daniel​