Welcome back, coaches. This is the Football Coaching Podcast. I am Daniel Chamberlain. Co-host here, Joe Daniel, as always. What's up, coach? Like riding a bike, man. I f- I feel so much better with you doing it than me. Theo's the only around. Last week I was not around. I have been spending some time in the woods with the US Army and Joe had to get an episode out, so it was actually last night in real people time.

And then tonight opened up for me, but you know, it was a week ago by the time that you guys are hearing this, so it's been fun to hear you get back into this. Twice now you've had to open the show this- Yeah ... this season, in two, in two episodes. I had to close this one too. It's- Oh man, I gotta go back and listen to the close.

I'll listen to the beginning 'cause it's on the, the recording thing, but- Yeah Awesome. Life's good, man. I hope that things are going well over there for you guys, too. Power minute real quick here. Tonight we're talking about defending the wing T offense, which is gonna be a great episode because I'm d- you're pretty much gonna run this one by yourself, too.

I don't, I don't know anything about the wing T offense, so I'm here to educate myself while, Don't you do a podcast with a wing T guy? Huh? Do what? Don't you do a, don't you do a podcast with a wing T guy? Well, I mean, yeah. He doesn't tell you about how to defend it, though. I don't give his secrets, right, yeah.

Yeah. He don't give me the secrets. We're gonna talk about points of emphasis for the wing T game plan for a wing T opponent and adjustments during the game. Last week- Thought about trying to get Kenny on here, but I figured he would lead us the wrong, down the wrong path and be like, "Nah, that won't work."

Well, he's actually very busy. We haven't recorded in two or three weeks on that side, either, just because he's, he's doing traveling. Well, he got roped back into coaching, didn't he? Yeah, he's still coaching. Soccer. Soccer. Last week talked about training your quarterback. If you wanna hear Joe talk about the Bill Mountjoy way of training quarterback, go back and listen to that episode from last week.

Next week is on to how to organize your depth chart, which making substitutions and organizing depth charts, all that is actually a fan request, so, just to show you guys that we do, Yeah ... take requests. So if you- Fan request ... if you are struggling with something, I think another one we're gonna try to hit this season is calling defensive plays, like when to call them, and I've seen a bunch of ways to do that, too, so, should be really, really good season, but that's gonna be a great episode next week, too.

Coaches, we are almost there. In just a couple weeks you know, practice fields start to fill up and it's another season begins, so we're glad that you're spending your time or at least part of your time of your preparation with us here on the Football Coaching Podcast. Remember to send this episode out to your friends if they're kinda getting ready as well.

Let's pay the bills, Joe, and we'll move on, sir. Yeah, the we're gonna be talking about defending the, ... I wanna just make sure I got the right thing here. We're talking about defending the wing T and one of the most effective defenses that we use to defend the wing T. It is not the best defense for the wing T because there's not one.

But if you are looking to strengthen your defense or looking, already run the 4-2-5 defense and looking to get some tips and tricks for that or looking to go multiple front and add in an even front to your odd front defense, any case or just looking to learn a little bit more defense or looking to Find out what the guys on the other side of the ball are thinking.

We have a video series called 4-2-5... three Secrets of the 4-2-5 Defense. And you can get that at JoeDanielfootball.com/425secrets. Just jump over there, and you will get a video series where I talk about some of the, the... a lot of the things that we've talked about really last season. The umbrella run fits is a major part of that, the ASCA, the leverage principle, how those are applied to the 4-2-5 defense in different areas.

It's a very in-depth video series that you can get, and it is free. So go to JoeDanielfootball.com/425secrets to get that. No spaces. My computer wants me to buy Splinter Cell right now for some reason. Why? What year is it? That's- Yeah ... that's something you do not need to buy Splinter Cell, any of you, although it's probably $1.50.

But you don't have to buy anything. You can go to JoeDanielfootball.com/425secrets and get access to that video series. Just put your email address in. We'll send you the first video, and then the videos come about every 48 hours after that. Awesome. Remind you guys about Athletic Speed and Movement. I know we've, we've reached into July here.

If you're a guy that's needing some help planning some speed training or, or getting back into speed training, some guys kind of get... they get away from it at this time. Remember, guys, speed is a, is a skill that has to be, just like you wouldn't stop lifting in season, God, I hope you don't stop lifting in season either your speed is something that has to be trained all season long.

I remember we had Derek Smith on many moons ago, and he talked to us about your strength begins to disappear after something like 13 to 14 days. Your speed starts to disappear after three days of not practicing it. So, Athletic Speed and Movement is a way for you to build speed training back into your practices so you don't fall away from it in season.

Two days a week you know, 15, 20 minutes a day. The in-season product's a little bit different than the off-season stuff, so that's all in there. Athleticspeedmovement.com. Get signed up today. Make sure your cats stay fast all season long. Jumping to part one here, and that's points of emphasis for the wing T, Joe.

So what are those things that we really need to know about the wing T as we're trying to defend it and, and things? Yeah, and I'll just mention one of the things that we are doing, and I'm gonna try to do a little drawing up and things here if we have the ability to, putting a little bit more into the YouTube.

But I do wanna mention we will have timestamps down below. We're adding those timestamps, so if you're watching on the YouTubes, there will be timestamps there. We should have timestamps in your pod- podcatcher of choice as well. I'm working on adding that in, or they're at the website at JoeDanielfootball.com/ what would this be?

This would be defend wing T. So we'll... Is where you'll find additional resources at JoeDanielfootball.com/defendwingt there. But if you're looking for something specific, a lot of times, you know, I notice some of the more we put in the YouTube that guys come up with this, with this in, in your search, and you're like, "I just want to get to defending this or doing that."

Timestamp down below. This is a long form podcast, and it has been for almost 15 years, and it will remain so despite your impatience. But- ... just wanna let you know there's timestamps. So we do listen. We have been working on that. So, what are we talking about? Defending the wing T. Kind of what are the points of emphasis that as a defender of the wing T you need to know about?

So when we're talking about you know, the, the wing T, there's a few things that, that are really important to remember. Guys always come up with fancy plans for the wing T and I think that one of the most important things ... I got a new tablet and it is, it is more difficult for me to remember what to do with it.

One of the most important things is not to do anything really far out of the ordinary for your defense. So you do not want to go put in some special front or some special plan for the wing T that is going to cause your team to not execute the way that they normally do. I think that's one of the biggest issues that we see in the wing T i- i- you know, defending the wing T is like, oh, we, we used to have all of these, and I've written articles about them, they're not on the website anymore.

We used to do all sorts of stuff. We would talk about reading the quarterback's butt side because in the wing T, traditional wing T, the quarterback

would reverse pivot on everything. So, you know, if you had a buck sweep, the quarterback was opening to the left and then giving the ball to the right and it was always, you know, the, you would read the quarterback's butt side. Or you would cross key where your linebackers would cross key because there was always so much misdirection and stuff, they would cross key the opposite wing or something.

And they, so there were, there were all these different things and, you know, varying levels of success and things that work. I, I worked with a coach Ron Gundry, who was a fantastic coach, has since passed away. He was 81 at the time. He'd been, he'd been a head coach in Texas and Houston. He was Michael Strahan's head coach on a team that was so big he barely knew who Michael Strahan was, right?

He was, he was involved in the offense. His defensive coordinator dealt with Michael Strahan. Like that's how big it was. Wow. I mean, those, you know, these schools are huge. But Ron would c- would, would look, and he was the defensive coordinator and I was the offensive coordinator at Amelia, and, and we were, we were a good football team.

But Ron would look at film and he would come up that, you know, Sunday night meeting or whatever and he would say, "Here's what we're gonna read." And it was always brilliant. Brilliant. I mean, he would say, "What we're gonna look at is this guy is gonna key this guy, and if he does this, it's gonna be this, and if he does that, it's gonna be that."

And I mean, it on paper was so simple and amazing. I mean, like, he had a, he had a knack for this. This was, this was tendency, you know, breaking down a tendency of a single player and saying, "Look, this single player tells us everything." And it was different against every team. Right. We played a couple, several different wing T styles.

The problem was, like, just as an example, we had a very good Mike linebacker. He ended up being a Division I long snapper, but he was a, a Division II line, w- would, would've been a Division II linebacker as a position player. He was all-region he was an excellent football player, smart kid. But every week changing the key read just was like, he would have so many questions and so many...

You could just tell it was slowing him down, and he's like, 'cause it changed every single week. And I, I really, even though that is, you know, a, a great thing that he found these tendencies, changing the key reads every week to, to defend a wing T is really gonna slow your guys down. Changing your front, even if you say, you know, "Hey, it's not, it's not a big deal."

My favorite front for the wing T has always been to line up in a, a 4-3 under front, where we would have a, a, a five, a nine, and a, or a one, a five, and a nine to the strong side, and then we would have a three and a five to the weak side. I've always liked that front against the wing T. The problem is that guys will try to put that front in when...

I almost stop, you know, I, I hesitate to ever say it anymore, because guys would be like, "All right, well, we're playing, you know, a wing T, we've gotta go put in this under front." It's like, but you don't run an under front, you don't run a 4-3. You don't, you don't run quarters, you don't run all the things that go into that.

So you have to be really, really careful about trying to come up with something, you know, some wild scheme for the, for the wing T. Roger Holmes who I believe you can still get his stuff through allaccesscoaching.net with Rick Stewart, with Rick Stewart. But Roger Holmes in a clinic talk, he's down in Buford, Georgia.

He did a clinic talk, I think it was in Atlanta, or he was doing it, might've been Charlotte. And Roger did a fantastic clinic talk. I've, I've talked many times about five ways to defend on balance that I got from Roger. Someone told Roger that I had stolen his stuff. He called me very upset, and I explained to him what I was doing.

He was not upset anymore. Appreciate you telling him I was stealing his stuff and giving, giving my number. But I enjoyed talking to him. So, joke's on you- Now we're friends. Take that. Yeah. Joke's on you. And I didn't steal anything, and I've never said it without mentioning Roger Holmes and go buy his stuff.

But Roger is a, you know, old-school wing T coach. He can do a million different things. He's seen it all. So when you come up with Your scheme, he looks at it and goes, "Okay, this is what..." And, and the way he's done it in his mind, and I'm speaking for him, I don't, I, you know, I'm not, we're not super close.

But I can take the five ways to defend unbalanced. He's seen a billion different gimmick junk defenses. And for his unbalanced stuff, he's compartmentalized those, okay, containers, into five things. You can slide the whole defense one man, you can move the defensive line over but leave li- no, don't move the linebackers.

You can move the linebackers but don't move the defensive line. You can bring one man over, or you can do nothing and not adjust to it at all. Right. And so no matter what you do, he, he runs out that formation. He looks at it and he goes, "Okay, they're doing this." And then he proceeds to pick you apart because you've put in a gimmick and you have no clue how to adjust that gimmick.

You have no clue how to change to it. So couple of things. Don't change the key reads. Don't run a gimmick front or change the front, you know, if you have things within your system. We have our double wing defense. It's not our normal defense. Double wing re- really, truly requires something different.

There's 10 gaps instead of nine. It changes things. But the umbrella remains intact. Everybody's basically still key reading on the defensive line, the linebacker. Everybody's still reading the same keys. Everybody's just a different, you know, it's, it's an ASCA adjustment. It's a lever. It's a different alignment, but everybody's still reading the same keys.

Everybody... It's on a new front. Again, how is your defense put together? If you line up in a different front and all of a sudden everything changes, that's very, very bad. If you can line up in multiple fronts and still maintain your umbrella, still maintain your key reads, then you might be fine to do it.

But you know, like the, the four, when I talk about the 4-2-5, the 4-3 under front being my favorite way to defend the wing T, I have not done that in years because I have not run a split field quarters 4-3 defense in years, and we would have to do something different than what we normally do. We would have to change up our, our base alignments.

So I would go those two, and then I would add one more. Well, the, the, the third thing that I would say is in general, we don't blitz a wing T. You talk about a defen- or an offense that, and I'm gonna get into this in just a minute, you talk about an offense that, the, the whole thing is in large part based on, it's based on a couple things. One of the main ones is based on angles, gap- gap scheme blocking, under, you know, you always think of undersized teams run the wing T, right? Down block, kick out you know, all the, the buck sweep, and the power, and all of the counters, and the beautiful counter plays.

It's all based on that, but also it's heavily based on misdirection. So as we get into game planning, and we look at the series in a minute, everything is series based. Everything is geared towards looking like something, but being able to do something else. So when you're trying to blitz, unless you have a really strong tendency, their whole thing is about making you wrong.

Their whole thing is about putting players in conflict, and we've got all... We've talked extensively about our safeties, and don't go till you know, go when you know, and how we try to take away that conflict ability with you, because we're going to take our time and read. We don't care if you... You're not gonna put our defensive lineman in conflict, because they have a key read, and you've gotta block them.

You can put our linebackers in conflict by using influence trapping. The problem is when you pull away, usually influence traps go outside. We hesitate on that, because that outside play isn't our job. And so we've got answers for all of these things built into our defensive systems. But when you blitz, the thing about blitzing is that you are adding numbers to one place.

Great, if you guessed right Even if you guessed right, often with high school kids and younger, when they blitz they just pin their ears back and go, and the wing T loves that because your blitzing linebacker doesn't know how to read and squeeze a down block, and so he gets kicked out, trapped. But the other thing is when you blitz, you add numbers to one place.

So what does that mean? You've taken numbers away from somewhere else. You blitzed because you thought it was gonna be buck sweep, but it's counter, and now you don't have your linebacker moving with the puller. You blitzed because you thought it was gonna be buck sweep and now it's, you know, waggle or play action or whatever, and now you don't have your flat defender where you would like for him to be because you blitzed him off the edge to, to hit the buck sweep.

So not that you never blitz. It's not that you ... And same thing with, with slanting and stunting. They work. They do, they have great purposes for them. Twist game, that kind of stuff, I've used it and y- there's purposes, there's use to it. But especially if you're a little bit sloppy and it's not something you do a lot of then you can really get in trouble with, with those kinds of things doing a lot of blitzing and slanting.

So you wanna be really good at a few different looks. Usually wing Ts are very ruleb- usually. And again, guys, some guy- somebody, some ... You might listen to this and go, "We played a wing T last year. We absolutely killed them." Who else killed them? If everybody else killed them, then that's not because of the wing T.

Okay? I'm talking about high level wing T attacks. Okay, high level wing T attack, not some sloppy, slappy, you know, guy downloaded a wing T playbook and tried to install it without asking anybody how to actually do it type stuff. I'm talking about a good wing T that you're gonna be seeing in the playoffs, the team that you need to beat to, to, to get on top.

That team is rule-based in their blocking. You don't confuse them by lining up in a different formation, by lining up in a different front. You don't confuse them. They have rules. They look and they go, "Okay, this is." It's a rule. They don't look at it and go, "Oh my God, they're in a 33 instead of a 42. What do we do?"

They go, "Well, guys here, here." Okay? You know, a gap down back or whatever it is. Right? He's either in a gap, he's down, he's back. Okay? It doesn't matter to him. It's just the rules. So you, it's more important that you do a great job of running your ... Maybe not your base defense, but some sort of base, you know, base-ish, some sort of home, you know, identity type of defense that you run and you execute really well.

That's gonna take you a lot further than junk blitzes, new fronts, new stuff I love hearing you talk about, you know, we don't, you shouldn't blitz because I feel like it's a lot of people get into that is you try to blitz the backside of a pulling play and hope you get a, you know, an untouched run through.

But man, those cats are so good at- They're ready for it, yeah. Yeah. They're so... You talk about being rules-based and they only block one thing really, like- Yeah. Right ... I love living in that power counter world because you just block one thing all the time and hey, cool, and there's a skinny kid trying to run through here, and now you're down blocked.

Congratulations. Right. Yeah. Or, or now you're kicked out. So, I live and die by that sword, I guess, but yeah, I, I agree with you there. I remember back in high school when we played defense and we were a 4-2-5 I didn't know it at the time, I had no idea what that, what numbers meant, so- You were a 4-4

I was an absolute idiot. You were a fat 7. Thank you. Thank you. When we played wing T ga- you know, we would always, like, cross read guards or- ... like, there was always a thing and, and it was, like you said, it wasn't wrong- No ... at all. And, and we did really good against some of those teams. We had... And, and we ran a wing T and people used it against us, right?

But at least... And so I guess, you know, we knew... I say, when I say we right now, it had nothing to do with me. The coaches knew and the kids that actually played a lot knew kind of what, you know, better how to defend themselves, what hurts us. So if you really wanna get good at defending this, go learn the offense and figure out what, what you know, kind of stops it or whatever, so anyway.

It's, you know, that's a, you bring up a good point. If you run a wing T, you can probably do more of this, of, of the, you know, the adjustments for the wing T offenses because you can actually simulate the offense in your scout team to whereas most of us cannot get close to the look of a truly, you know, well-executed wing T.

We cannot get close to that. We can... You know, so like when I run a scout and, and we, we, we do power counter, we do gap scheme, all that sort of stuff, but I cannot run a really good buck sweep. Okay? Two years ago we ran Mercer's jet sweep package which is wing T, wing T jet sweep deal. And we, we killed truck toss and we, we ran the jet sweep and then we kind of adapted some other things.

It took work. That was a great play for us, but I mean it took work. You could not just simulate. You didn't know the rules. You could not, you know, a spread team couldn't go in there and work our jet sweep prac- package in practice. And so we always, I mean I, I only have this little taste of actually an actual wing T.

We saw so much junk and we knew the answers to it because there were only four plays in the series and it's like well they do this, you do this, if they do this, you do this. Rick Stewart's been on here and Rick Stewart talks about how he calls plays and we've adapted that to what we do and Rick talks about calling plays and he, you know, Rick al- Rick has somebody whose job is to tell him that he memorizes the defense, memorizes the numbers of each player at each position and then somebody, somebody's job is just to tell him who made the tackle.

He's a wing T, okay, again, allaccess.net. He's a wing T base and Rick hears the number of the guy who made the tackle- And it's like, you know, okay, if it was this guy, then I'm gonna call ... You know, y- you've got your base play, and if your base play is getting eight yards, you don't care who made the tackle, you're gonna run it again.

But if you run your base play and he stopped for one yard and he goes to the backside backer and made the tackle, it goes, okay, counter. Like, that's it. That's it. Simple as that. And, and that's ... They've, they've got answers. And so if you're like, "Look, every time that they line up and do this, this guy moves, we're gonna blitz that guy," they've got answers.

They've, they've got ... And, and again, I'm talking the high level. What they don't have an answer for is very disciplined defense that knows when a guard pulls I do this, when a down block happens I do this. You've got spill, you've got force, you've got alley, you've got guys that are playing fast, running to the point of attack.

Okay, they don't have that answer. That's the only thing they don't have the answer for is you playing good football, good sound football. They don't have an answer for that. Yeah. Blitzes, all that, fronts. That, I don't know. No, they got answers. One last thing before we move on here, then we'll kind of get into game planning.

But there's also the ... There's been an explosion of variations of offense- Yeah ... I feel like since I've gotten into the game. So what is this, week or year seven or something for me. But with things like Kenny's Gun T, right? You joked earlier about, "Don't you work for a guy that runs it?" Well, yeah. Now we've got the Pistol Wing T.

We've got ... Like, there's, there's a lot of these things that are changing up and I think you better learn how to defend them each on their own, like by their own merit because- The traditional buck part of buck sweep is gone. Like, Kane doesn't get- ... a, a fullback bucking into the line before you run- Right.

Yeah, yeah ... the sweep, right? Like, that's gone. He's replaced it with- Two guard pulls, but other than that, yeah. Yeah. He's replaced it with, "I'll run my quarterback back there or throw an RPO over your head." So there's still a lot of extra stuff to go on, so it's not, you know, maybe more based on traditional wing T, but there's stuff it absolutely will envelop all of those.

Speaking of that, let's jump into part two here, and that is game planning for your wing T opponent. So how does, does, does your process change at all? Is there anything you're doing different than if it's just a, a pro-type team or a spread team? And then kind of what is the, the magic sauce you're putting in for your defensive game plan that week?

I think being aware of the fact that, and I'll use, I'll mention Roger Holmes even though, you know, again, I don't know a ton of his stuff, but, you know, I've been to his clinic, Glazer Clinics, but, and I've been to a lot of Chuck Apap did a fantastic Glazer Clinic when I was in Cleveland, talked for nine hours about traditional wing, I mean, just not completely traditional wing, he was great.

I spent an entire, off season studying the wing T. And I mean, when I would go to Glazier clinics, I would go to nobody but the wing T guys. And they were always, a lot of times older wing T guys. This is back, the only person back then who was on the Glazier circuit at that time, this is probably 2007, 2008.

The only person I know that was on the Glazier circuit at that time who was doing anything other than traditional wing T was Lou Johnston here in Virginia doing the shotgun wing T. And Lou, you know, he'll, he talked about how that developed was basically out of necessity. It wasn't- Mm ... like, this is gonna be super cool.

But for the most part, Denny Crean's another one. Denny Crean was on the podcast years and years ago. I mean, probably, probably like within the first year or two of the podcast. He's in, he's in the single digits or double digits epis- He's a double-digit episode, I'm pretty sure. And he wrote the best book on wing T.

If you guys wanna learn traditional wing T, the Tubby Raymond stuff is not very good, quite honestly, for just learning. I'm sure as a wing T... And there's some, like, super expensive manuals and stuff, but the, this one It's always close by. I love this. You can see, like, most of my books don't have all this stuff, okay?

This book has been w- everything is highlighted or ugh Yeah, almost Stupid light. You can kind of see. Yeah. Everything is highlighted and whatever. I mean I love this book. This is, this is a textbook on the Wing T offense. Volume two is not, is not necessary, okay, if you're not running it, but this is the textbook on the Wing T and it is, it's just called volume one, the Wing T- The Wing T From A To Z, Volume 1: The Base Plan.

This is the second edition. I don't know what, what edition might be out now. This came out in 2005 from Coach's Choice. Get back on there. I wanna talk about the Al Vidotti pattern read, pattern match book one day, by the way. Okay. It's a really good one too. Even though we talk about not pattern matching, but it's a really good pattern match book.

I don't know the new stuff. I just... I have the old stuff that was really good The everything is series based in the Wing T. So when you're looking at, When you're looking at the series, most, not all, most wing T's will have a series that they're really good at and one or two series that they are, you know, they have the, the series that they major in and then one or two things that they minor in.

And within that series that they major in, they have a play that is the play, right? The better they are, the more they can do. I remember, I remember playing a Tony Franklin team. This was not a, a, a wing T team, but Tony Franklin's system actually oddly, at least back in the day, I haven't looked at that stuff in a long time, at least back in the day, I remember watching it when I was really studying the wing T and we were seeing our first Tony Franklin system team, down in Dinwiddie, and watching it.

I took my Landro blue box home for the summer to watch it. It's... You gotta be real old to know what that is. It is a we- The first video, the first time that we didn't just take VHS tapes or DVDs home, we actually fit, loaded this, loaded our video onto a computer. The Landro was a blue box, like the old school table t- desktop computers.

Okay, so it's a blue box like that, that's a, it's a computer and you... It's got a hard drive and everything in it, and all it does is you can tag your film. Okay? But you can o- you got one. It's not hooked up to the internet. So I'm a young defensive coordinator, first or second year defensive coordinator. I took it home and I watched every- I mean, I took it home with me and just tore it apart and would bring it back every day for, you know, for everybody else to use it.

But at night, it came home with me. And I remember watching it and I was doing a ton of wing T studying and I remember just watching it going, it's probably just, probably just me being young and realizing that there's not that many plays in football, but I remember watching it just being like, "This, this is wing T based."

And I started tag- I started tagging with the wing T names I learned. Like, this is 921. It's not. But, It's not. No, it's not. But in my mind I was like, "I've discovered football." The, the wing T stuff is all series based, and they're usually really good at a series. So when you look at someone your, your l- your, your more basic wing T's, you know, they'll line up in, in a 100 900 formation, right?

They'll line up in... And they use a, the Delaware, nobody, very few people use this anymore. I remember Pat Fox was one that, you know, he was a wing T guy and he started drawing it up and he's like, "Nobody knew what this was." So like this is not 921, it's just 44, you know, power or whatever. It's like the, the old school numbering system that everybody used.

Four back, four hole, you know, whatever. So, but they do weird stuff where they count from left to right. The old Delaware stuff, the Tubby Raymond stuff counts from left to right. Cran uses the same system, so it's really good. But a lot of them will line up- In, in, in their, this always frustrated me because we would see their JV team the the week before and they would be in the old school 100, 900 formation, which is the traditional wing T kind of set.

And with the, with the tight end and the wing to one side, the split receiver to the other side, quarterback under center, and you've got the running back three yards behind the quarterback, like he'd re- reach out and touch him before the snap. And then you've got the offset that's behind the tackle. And the JV team would be running all of that, and we'd see the JV team on Wednesday or Thursday, and we're like, "Okay, this is what they're doing."

And then, but really what you found out was what the, the base was, and then when the varsity got there, you found out what they were actually doing. And so we got all kinds of stuff. All of a sudden it was, you know, the, the red and blue formations, which is essentially a doubles look where you would get the wing backs on both sides and you know, two split receivers so you have, you know, the potential threat of four verts where they could you know, get you something like that.

And then when they wanted to run the play, you get the three-step motion. Instead of them just being lined up in there, you get a three-step motion going away from you, and either one of them can motion. You gotta figure out which one's the best ball carrier, which one's the best blocker, all that kind of stuff.

But it's all series based, and so at the end of the day, what you want to figure out is, okay, can I strip away all of the smoke and mirrors? If I'm gonna play a Kenny Simpson, I'm gonna play a Roger Holmes, I'm gonna play a guy who is wing T based, but it never looks the same. Mm. Can I strip away all of the smoke and mirrors and understand who they really are?

I think that's what I wanna do first, is like in my game planning, I just want to know, like, who are they really? What, what's their bread and butter? What would they run if they, if they have to get, you know, fi- if it's third and five and they have to break off a good run, what would they run? What... Who are they really?

That's what I wanna find out in my game planning. What are the base... Because oftentimes I can't just use the old, "All right. We're gonna find their top three formations, top three plays out of each formation, and we're gonna work on that." 'Cause they'll change it, and you'll, you'll be out there trying to defend something that they're not in.

Like, we worked on this thing all week and they're not doing it. So you've got to strip all that away. I was the, When I was at Ellsworth, we had a, a very young but very hardworking, and he's been very successful defensive backs coach, and he was also the one who did a lot of the game plan type stuff.

And so he would come out with, he'd be like, "Here's the 42 passing concepts that they run And Ricky Coon, who's the defensive coordinator, would be like, "Listen, they don't run 42 passing concepts." Like, just because on this play this guy ran a different route, that's a tag. So that's what you're looking at.

What's a tag? What's a formation? What's a shift? What's a motion? What's the heart of it? At the heart of it, they got gap down backer, right? At the heart of it, they got buck sweep, they got trap, they got waggle, they got rocket toss, they got power, they got counter, they got... You know, what are they really good at?

And the chances are they're not... I, I say all those plays to say what you need to figure out is what are they really good at in that? Are they, are they really good at you know, belly? Are they really good at buck? Are they really good at, you know... What, what is the play? A lot of times they're really good at, you know, belly, you know, buck sweep.

We don't even see that many teams that run a really good buck trap. But we see a ton of teams that, that run the the belly, the weak side belly especially against a four two five especially, where that wing, they'll line up in a, in a red or blue formation and that wing will loop inside and, and give us that look.

So, you know, that, that's like, I think the number one thing is within all of this, if they, if, if you strip away all the th- the motions and everything, don't game plan around the motions. Everybody wants to look at the motions and go, "Oh, they have this tendency. Every time they motion they do this." They want you to see that.

Don't see the things they want you to see. They know the motion is the shiny object. The good ones, they know the motion is the shiny object. They want to s- you know, they know that the tight end wing is going to tempt you to do something that's going to weaken you somewhere else. So you're like, "Well, they've got a, you know, the, that, that formation that some dude got a bunch of people to think they needed to run."

where

Some dude. Okay? Dude got people to think that this was the, the m- magic of football, and they know everybody's gonna do something over here that is going to weaken them. They might do something over here, but this is a little easier, especially for most wing T's o- on the twins side. Some dude got them to look at the tight end wing to one side and the twins formation to the other side, and they all know you're gonna try to stick nine guys down here, which is going to mean that either there's nobody...

You're gonna put somebody in C gap, put somebody in the D gap, put somebody outside the wing, and that means that there's either nobody outside so they can get, get outside on you and they run the jet sweep and beat you to the outside. Or y- you're gonna do something there. Be sound in your defense. Don't overplay all of these things.

Have an adjustment for if they're absolutely killing you in that area. But don't be stupid and just weaken your entire defense because of some little formation tweak that they do. They know that. Don't get distracted by the shiny objects

Oh, man. Some dude. I loved it. I don't know who it was. I, you know, somebody. I, I think you talk about people, you, you still see really good buck sweeps, but you don't see those other plays as much. I think it's 'cause all that stuff marries up with ... Like, even in the offense that I have prepared to run some point in my coaching life, whether that's

Anyway, it's you know, you're just marrying all the gap down back or stuff, like all the gap- ... game stuff, and you can just make it work. But that inside stuff, that's where it gets a little more trickier. I think trap went away because it was- It's expensive. It ain't But, but it is. It changes rules when I don't need to.

Right. So, you know, I heard you say that and I thought, "Yeah, that, that, that probably is the reason why." Yeah, and, and when you're doing a lot of the things that have become popular, the gun and the pistol, they don't lend themselves to trap. Trap is ... Trap needs to be a quick-hitting play. You need the fullback to be sitting there at three and a half yards with his hand in the dirt and, and just hammer straight downhill, and s- very few teams are doing that now.

Even, you know, the most recent wing T that I can think of playing that was really, really good those are just a really, really good wing T team, their you know, whatever you wanna call them, their fullback, the one that was straight behind the quarterback, he was a feature. Not, you know, that fullback

Back in the

day, that full- you know, y- you, you'd hammer that fullback up the middle on the trap, you know, and it was like everybody's chasing the buck sweep, and the trap, the buck trap hits. No- nobody, like the Korean book, the Korean book pulls both guards on the buck trap. Nobody does that. They would try to influence you with the pull and then kick the guy.

Nobody. I mean, I don't see that anywhere. No. Maybe some of you guys do, I know, but I, I mean, I haven't s- I, as somebody who, and you do, too, as somebody who watches a lot of high school football film, like I do too- I've not ... My second year in the game here in Jay, they were offensively, we ran, we had an influence trap.

I've never seen one on film outside of that. I, I remember it was Troy Taylor, it was Meadowbrook and they were running wing T. It's funny 'cause Troy actually played for Mount Troy and ran a lot of his stuff, but I think whoever was running the offense was doing a lot of wing T stuff at the time.

They were ... Well, no, it might've been before Troy. It was Bill whoever it was, it was before Troy. When we, when Meadowbrook was super good, won state title, I think Troy was still an assistant. They were beating the brakes off of us And they ran, I remember they ran an influence trap twice. And it was one of those things that they were just, like, working on something.

Like, "Let's see what happens. Let's put this on film." You know when you're, when you're, when you're just beating the brakes off of a team, you're like, "Let's put this on film for the next..." You know, you're, you're running this play for the next team- ... that you play, not for this one. And I don't know that I've actually seen it run against me since then.

And I'm sure that the, I'm sure that whoever they were playing the next week put, put some time into it, and then they probably didn't run it against them at all, right? Right. They just, it... Put it on film, make them waste five minutes in practice, and then, and that's what you wanna do. It happens, I just, I've never seen a team lose a game because of it.

Right. Because, you know, you don't overreact to it. It's one of those things where- It's either so consistent that it's just a change or, we're gonna talk about that in a minute, right? Adjustments. Well, it's- Or they don't use it enough to really hurt you, hurt you. Yeah. Well, and, and the, the whole idea, it- it's worth telling your, you know, your inside linebacker, for example, because a- again, it's one of those things, put players in conflict.

It's not that they want the inside, it's not that they want the influence trap to pop for 65 yards. They want your inside linebacker who's been doing a great job reading guards all night to all of a sudden question, and all week he's been hammered on guard read, guard read, guard read. And I think when we go back to one of the things we just, I, I kind of glanced over because I said, "Don't change your key reads."

It's read the guards. Like, just, I mean, read the guards. Like, this isn't hard. Everybody usually, almost everybody has this as part of their reads. Our reads, our, our base read, our primary key read in most of our defense is if it pulls follow, if it doesn't, fill the guard. And that's, that's like, you know, pull inside is instant, pull outside is hesitate and go, because you have a little bit extra time.

Your play is, you know, if you're an, if you're an inside linebacker you're probably A gap or B gap responsible, even though we don't teach gap fits. That's the open gap. So you know, you wanna check that and then just fly out of there. Right. Yeah, I think that they, you know, you're keying guards and you're doing a great job and it's taking you to the play every time, and then they run an influence trap, and your 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 17-year-old starts to question it.

That's what they want. So you tell your guy ahead of time, "Look, if they do this and they pull outside and they get 70 yards on it, don't worry about it 'cause they have one less blocker that took you with him, and that's okay." But they want you to, tell them what, you know, this is what they want you to think.

"Oh, I don't s- can't read the guards anymore 'cause that's one time it went the wrong way." If they run that nine plays in a row, we'll talk about it, but- Yeah, for sure ... you know. Yeah, don't get, don't get hung up on the, on the stuff. You've gotta have, and hopefully you do have, if you've got a good defensive system like the 4-2-5 defense, wanna learn more about it, go to 425Defense.com.

No, go to J- you can go to 425Defense.com and you can get the 4-2-5 manual right now if you're interested in that. Printed manual. Beautiful, beautiful printed manual. Oh, where's all my printed manuals? Mm. Kept getting test copies, now I got, like, six of these. Look at, this is a good-looking manual. Hey.

These are good-looking manuals, guys. These are... This is, this is nice. Okay? This is hard- I like it. This is, this is a good... I'm proud of this. All new, updated diagram. 100 diagrams. Beautiful vector graphics. Beautiful vector graphics. Oh, this is the one without the-

Beautiful vector graphics with boxes around them. In this version. This. Do you guys know how hard it is to get Microsoft Word to put boxes around vector graphic? There, you can finally get it kinda- Yeah, yeah That looks good. It doesn't draw around SVG, Mm ... I found out. So anyway, if you wanna get that, that's 425Defense.com.

But if you wanna get JoeDanielfootball.com/425secrets just to get that free access, learn more about the 425. It, I don't even know what I was talking about, but, you know, good base defense and, you know, we're keying the guards and we're squeezing down blocks, that's gonna go so much further, and you don't need to do anything.

If you do anything crazy, it's just gonna make it harder for you. Guys do things that constantly, constantly, constantly, I see guys doing things that, "Oh, well they- we're gonna walk our force defender all the way down on the line of scrimmage." Now they run rocket toss and they're off to the races because you have no one out there.

"Oh, we're gonna use our corner for force." Okay, well they're gonna do some, you know, rocket toss pass, right? They've ... It's there. You have to be sound against the good ones. Yeah. Jump to the last part here, Joe, is we start closing out the evening. Adjustments during the game, and so, you know, we've, we've already hit on, like, you don't have to go into this game with a bunch of changes.

Read the guards. Keep your same key reads. If you can modify your front and keep your pillars or your fundamentals alive, then, then have fun. But you don't need to go out there and try to run something brand new. So now you're, you're in the game with your base stuff plus a couple tags or whatever, but it's time to start making adjustments, 'cause they do.

You just said that. When you take away their good play, they go to the other play, and they go to the other play, and they've seen it all. So kinda how do we start as a defensive coach? I kinda wanna talk about adjustments in two phases, the stuff that you think you're gonna use- ... so you're, you're thinking about it in practice and you're working these adjustments we may use, and then the stuff that on game night, which we've all been there.

My favorite story of football coaching is literally I drew their formation on an iPad and took a picture, or on paper, and took a picture with our huddle sideline so that they could install it real quick at the defense, right? Like, you have to make- Yeah ... those adjustments, which you've never talked about before.

So kind of where are we going with that as we, as we get into the game? The the, the first thing you mentioned is really important. You know what they're best at. You've got your ... So let's say that you've decided you're gonna go in. You know that they're great at off tackle power, buck sweep, something like that, something off, off tackle.

And so you, you're going in with your base defense, but you know that that's a potential weakness. Like, if we don't do a great job reading guards, squeezing down flocks, wrong arming, spilling, whatever, that this could be a problem. And so you say, "I don't think they pass that well. If they're killing us in C-gap, I'm gonna take my free safety out or move my free safety.

I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna bring in an extra defensive lineman, and I'm gonna put him right in that C-gap." And so I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have a five I'm gonna have a, a, a five, a nine, and a guy right outside of the wing. We're gonna load that spot up. I... Shane Sams, who used to run CoachXO.com, the podcast there, now does other stuff.

If you wanna build a business, find Shane. But I... Just the, one of my favorite stories was he was playing a team, and I don't think they were a wing team, but they were killing him with power, strong side power, and he was a 3-3 stack or 3-5-3, and they blitzed, like, three guys into the C-gap over there in the second half.

That was their halftime adjustment. And they shut it down. And he's like, "They just never, they never reacted to it." And it's like, well, if they're killing you with it, yeah, and then make them... Don't... As much as I've said they have a reaction to that, when you start to talk adjustments- ... don't give them credit for things they haven't done.

Now, if you play Kenny or you play Roger Holmes or you play Tubby Raymond, which would be wild. You play Denny Crean, they know Do their players know? Can their players handle the adjustment? Okay. I know the answer. Now they've probably got really well-coached players, but let's, let's, let's go one notch below those guys.

Okay. They know the answer. Can their players execute the answer? So if... So where, where you look at your plan, I would say we have a, a plan B, we have an adjustment, and on Thursday we take a five-minute period of Thursday practice and we say, "This is our big concern." So you only get one. This is our big concern is like if we can't stop this play, they'll kill us.

They'll run it all night long. And so if we can't do it out of the game plan that we have, we think our game plan is good, but if it's not working, here's the adjustment we're gonna make. And you show it to them in a five-minute period, very brief. You know, if you can't, if you can't install it in five minutes, don't install it.

It's one of our containers principle rules. You have a container, any new install, five minutes. So and this isn't even an install, this is a maybe. You say, "Look, we're... This is called," you know, whatever you name it after the team you're playing. And so you say, you know, "This is, this is Wildcat," and we s- if, if the Wildcats are beating us with this play, we're gonna, you know...

Won't be in the middle of a series or something, we maybe will call a timeout and come out and remind everybody, maybe between series we'll get our guys together and say, "Remember we talked about yesterday the Wildcat adjustment? Okay, we're gonna need to run the Wildcat adjustment." You got smart players, they might come over and go, "Coach, we're all Wildcat adjustable.

We get it 'cause we're, you know, we're struggling with this." And they, you know, smart players can even see it. But you pick that one thing that you know ahead of time, this is plan B. That, that's your best adjustment. Now, outside of that, everything else is levers in, in your game plan. For the, for, for me for the most part, everything else is levers.

Okay? I'm probably not gonna change the stance in the middle of the game, but I'm definitely gonna change the alignment. Maybe I could change the key read in the middle of the game, probably not. And I can change assignment, I can put, I can do some blitzes and stuff. So a lot of my levers are gonna be a, a alignment adjustments, and then your other lever is personnel, right?

You go, "Okay, you know, they're, they're doing this. Let me put my best guy right here." I... We play one wing- we played one wing T team. They ended up getting into double wing. But I've talked about when I was... We had a really good team. I had a he ended up playing FCS football. He was a sophomore at the time, but he res- was still a dominant football player.

He was my three tech. I had an all-region defensive end. I had a Mike linebacker who ended up long snapping in Division I, but was a solid, I mean, was an all-region linebacker. I had a- All-state strong safety. They rotated, but when I needed him, he was all-state. Okay? That was the strong side of the defense.

The weak side of the defense was a good kid at nose, a good kid at the weak side end, a good kid at the, at the will linebacker, and a really tough kid, a really good kid, but a really tough kid at the weak safety. Thank God, 'cause he was our leading tackler. But when you looked out there, he was the one where he, he looked like he was about 140 pounds.

He was 5'11". And, like, where are you gonna run? So their wing T, and then evolved into a double wing at halftime, just ran weak every single play. It was a really simple adjustment. I flipped my ends. So now I had my end, my, my all region end over there. I wasn't gonna move everybody over. Right. I had my all region end over there, which balanced things out.

And, you know, he was spilling it to my really tough 140-pound kid who's making, like, 20 tackles. And I got a free safety who's all-state running nip- Running alley ... running alley too, so he's cleaning things up. So those are the, the, the base adjustments are really looking at your be, be thoughtful about your ASCA, and that's when you look at your ASCA, you look ahead.

And we have things like if you go into Linebacker Launch Lab, which is in our store at JoeDanielfootball.com/store Linebacker Launch Lab has a when you purchase it, there's the option to upgrade and add a ASCA sheet. It's like 10 bucks. It's got every adjustment you can make for a linebacker on there.

And so that's the kind of thing that I think with this wing T, you go, "Okay, I... They're hitting us in C gap. I can slide my guy out to a 40 technique so that he's closer to that area. I could slide, you know, I can slide my defensive lineman into a two I instead of a three 'cause they're hitting us with the, with, with the down block or something like that.

You know, they're, they're down blocking the three, so if I put him in a two I or if I put him in..." You know, all these different things that we can do. A lot of the traditional adjustments don't work. Guys will do thing- Against a good team, guys will do things like, "Okay, th- we're gonna put our defense..."

Sometimes this works. Now, listen, sometimes this works, and I've had it work, but not against the really good ones. The, the adjustment was we're gonna take our defensive tackles, we're gonna put them head up on the guards, and we're gonna try to get them to just hug the guards. It's worked. Tackle the guards.

It's worked, but it, you know, against the really good one, they're out of there. They're down blocking that guy before we have a chance. They're set back. They're getting past. But if they're a little slow, you can just run up and tackle the guards, and that's one of the traditional things that guys always try, and they've seen it.

The good ones have seen it. Like, they're out of there. They're too fast for that. The crabbing up for you, we're just gonna crab the entire defensive line, those are your adjustments that don't usually work, but they're, but they will against, you know, if you're getting beat by a team that's not that good and is they're doing junk, you do junk.

Th- that can work out those are kind of traditional things, and it is a lever. I mean, you're changing, you know, assignment, you're changing alignment, you're changing those kinds of things. But for the most part, it is still being really sound in the way that you play, but doing it from... The, the way to think about it is adding numbers.

If they are beating you on the strong side, slide guys over, move guys into that gap, whatever it is. Slide, you know, just adjust that, add more numbers to that area. In the, in a lot of other offenses, we would add numbers by blitzing. In the wing two generally we try to avoid that. So we just slide and adjust the front to try to add numbers, and again, not to try to fool them, but to add numbers.

'Cause the fact of the matter is if I have seven instead of six, I got a better chance of stopping you. Yeah. I'm a lot weaker over there, but I'm, I'm not gonna give you credit until you show me that you can recognize that and, and do it. So I can slide the defense and things, you know, alignment adjustments are really gonna be the key.

Yeah. I don't really have any adjustments in game. I, I think it's very good to c- to carry... You know, we often say that you can't solve every problem with scheme, right? I think what you even just talked about, like just flip your defense, defense. Having personnel adjustments as well. That, I think that's really key.

I know from the offensive side that's something we, you know, when we're going up against a team that just really had a dude somewhere, like I'm... We have five ways to make sure we know where that guy is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what the one thing we can't handle is if you go, "Hey, defense, y'all are switching places."

Because now we had all your rules and now they're all backwards, right? Like, what's going on here? So, so even just something as simple as that, like it's y- still best 11 or your, your, your best kids are still on the field and you're just switching them places in a situation that isn't key reads cha- like they're still same place under the umbrella.

Like, let your kids go play wherever's gonna make you the, the, you know, the biggest- Yeah ... give you the biggest advantage, so. And I, I, I don't mention too, if they're killing you with something, you can do something unsound like I talked about Shane doing. I've dropped the free safety all the way down on the strong side and just said, "This is what we're gonna do until they do something else."

And we basically play with two, you know, with an extra linebacker over there. I've done that, and it's like, and hon- you know, quite honestly I did that in the JV game and I was head coach but I was up top with a headset with my JV offense coordinator and a defense coordinator and I was like, "Let's just do this."

And he's like, "But that's..." 'Cause, you know, normally they've been working with me and I'm talking about the rules, the rules, the rules, the rules, the rules. And I'm like, "Yeah, but they're only running this play and until they do something else, break the rules." It's okay to break the rules in your in-game adjustments.

The, the, the flaw when we talk about the umbrella and the rules and the ASCA and all of these things, blitzing, all of those things, the mistake is, I'll use the umbrella as an example. The mistake is breaking the umbrella and not knowing it. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with doing something that breaks the rules if you know you're doing it.

I talk a lot about cover zero blitzing. Cover zero blitzing, you don't have your guys ... When you're in zero, when you're in cover one you can still force with your safeties, you've got the alley, everything stays in place, man free. When you go zero, you have broken the rules. Guys that are in zero coverage are in zero coverage.

They are, they don't have no run responsibility. You have five guys with pass responsibility, you have six guys with run quarterback whatever, and it's a little bit ugly. We'll force with the defensive end in that case. Do I recommend forcing with the defensive end? Not in your base. I don't even call it force most of the time, just like don't let anybody get out of the backfield.

That's, that's the Tigercat rule. Don't let anybody get out of the backfield. Is he the force defender? I guess. But the umbrella's broken, we're in zero, and that's okay. So if they're beating you with something really bad, break the u- break the umbrella, break the rules. That's okay. Tell your guys you're doing it.

But, you know, just that's all right, just know, know what you're doing. Love it. All right, man, I think that's it. I think we checked all the boxes tonight. We talked about defending the wing T the points of emphasis you need to understand about the wing T game planning for a wing T opponent, and then of course adjustments during the game which we covered there at the end.

Guys, I know the calendar says July, but every football coach knows it's basically Christmas Eve at this point, right? Pretty soon it's ... We will never stop quitting talking about football, 'cause that's what we do. But most of you will stop theoretically talking ball and get out and putting stuff on the field.

If today's episode has helped you prepare for what's ahead, send it to another coach who's counting down the days too just like Joe and I are. Last week we talked about training your quarterback. Next week it's off to how to organize your je- your depth chart, which of course is a fan, fan request, so it's a good one.

Sometimes I think that's one of those that as coaches we, we take for granted, right? We just because we know how to do it, we think everyone does. And s- but that's a great, it's gonna be a great episode. We're off to level ups. Joe, what is your level up, sir? Besides, besides the four-pound bass I caught right before a coach call yesterday.

Yeah. Adam, I'm sorry if I sound a little bit out of breath. I had just caught a bass. I didn't tell you that on the call. But I was... Call... I was, I was fishing in between calls and I get a 10-minute break in between. I book those calls, I'll book up two hours, three hours worth of calls. I have a 10-minute break scheduled.

And a lot of times we, we talk over. You know, I do it because I, I tend to just keep talking even though I want them to have... And then I need to prepare for the next one. But if I got five minutes, I was throwing. And yeah, I caught a four-pound bass while I was, while I was working. Got it. That was pretty cool.

That was a, that was a unlock. Have I talked about Dune? Okay, cool. Been a blind spot in my sci-fi nerd dom for years and years, and I've never watched the movies. The book Dune, sci-fi book. Before we drove, we were in Bethany Beach for a week for my, my big vacation, Delaware. And before we went, I was like, "I gotta get something to listen to," you know, on the car rides.

Because when I'm on a free day, when I'm on an off day, I don't... You know, I like personal development, I like business books, I like podcasts about business, podcasts about football, podca- you know, all that kind of stuff. This is a day off. All that stuff, if it makes you think about work, I'm not gonna do it, as much as possible.

And which is tough 'cause I work football and, you know, I like to talk about football. I don't, I don't... It's not like I won't watch a football game, but- Right

I down- or I got off of the Libby app. For those of you who don't know, get a library card, get your Libby app, you get access to all these free stuff. I have all the local libraries, so I got Chesterfield and Hanover and Henrico and Richmond City, and so I can usually find a book if I want it. And so I was just looking through and scrolling through, and I saw Dune.

Okay? Now I have bounced off of reading Dune multiple times. I have checked it out, started reading it, never got through it. It is, it is long, long. So this audiobook is 21 hours for this audiobook. I only get 21 days on the checkout, and it's got a, you know... So I gotta listen to this thing. I'm listening to it every day right now.

I got about four hours left. I do have about four hours left, but it's like three, three separate books So I feel like I have filled in this void in my reading. And I love audiobooks for that because, you know, it, it can be hard to sit down and read a book, especially a book like this. It can be hard to, the, to, to sit down and read a book like that, but the audiobook, I'm filling in the gaps.

It's not an action... I always knew it was, like, a lot of, like, politics, religion, that kind of stuff. It's not an action, like, Star Wars type of sci-fi. So, but we got really into it. And in fact, when we got home, we were about seven and a half hours into it. And it's a good book, too, because there's not, like...

It's not, like, super scary. I still can listen to it. My son's in the back. He's got his own thing on. He's got his headphones on, on the way home, watching 19,000 episodes of Octonauts. Look, we had been gone for nine days. We ne- just needed to just go back there and sit and listen, just watch this. So I get to the...

Get home, and my wife, who has been, like, just not saying anything, and she's... She lets me listen to whatever I want to in the car, and she'll scroll. She falls asleep, and she's like... Turn the car off, and she's like... We were getting to a pretty big moment, I guess. She's like, "I'm kind of invested now." I was like, "Gotcha.

Gotcha." I was like, "It's only 20 hours." And she's like, "It's a movie." And I was like, "Okay. It's fine. I'm not gonna watch the movie anytime soon." Right. I've invested too many hours in the audiobook. I can't afford to put more. But yeah, I feel really good about fill- I love filling in these gaps of things.

You know, a couple of years ago, it was Harry Potter. I'd never read Harry Potter, and I read them all pretty quickly. So now I f- I feel like I'm filling in this Dune gap in my life, where I've always... It's always interested me. The worm and the desert were just, like, it was the coolest image in my mind of this, like...

And I had friends that were into Dune stuff and the video games and whatever. But yeah, it's... I feel like I've filled that, almost finished filling that void. I still got a few hours left. So I was introduced to Dune. I've n- I've never read the books either. I've... And mainly 'cause the audiobook on, that I bought through Audible, has, like, this guy speaking in weird voices, and I...

Sometimes I just want you to- Yeah, that's... Yeah, it's... He, he does voices for the characters. And he does different vo- like, the character voices. It's a really weird audiobook. I think that it must be very old because it has breaks at points where there shouldn't be a break, and I'm thinking that it must have been, like, when you flip the cassette over or something.

Right. Right. Could've been. You know? But yeah, he's... The s- the sci-fi audiobooks always have, like, voice acting, essentially. Yeah. Like, the reader does... And it's kind of, you're like, "Can you just read it?" Some of them I'm okay. Sometimes I don't, I can't do it. But, Well, and it's this guy who's doing the same voice for...

The, the guy that's doing the voice also does, like, a voice for the girl who's, like, a falsetto voice for the girl, and you're like Yeah, sorry. Okay. All right. But I was overseas, I think Afghanistan with one of my best friends, and he... I think he took, like, four or five of the book- oh, no, he, he, he... At that point, a Kindle had come out or whatever, so he had either- an iPad or a Kindle, and he had them all,

and he's like, he's read, what is it, like, 10 or 12 books in that serie- like, all... he just kept going, and he was like, "Daniel, it's..." He and I had read a lot of the same books. We loved a lot of the same books. Yeah. But he's a bookworm, and he said, "It is by far the best books I've ever read in my life." He's like, "These are the ones..."

And he's like, "This is my third time reading through them." Like, what? Do you not have a life? What are you doing? It's incredible. It's incredible. A- a- and, and I don't know how you read that much on a Kindle because, I mean, like, I... But I read, I read the Dragonlance books on Kindle, which is Dungeons & Dragons, and I've never played Dungeons & Dragons really.

I mean, I played, like, when I was in, like, you know, eighth grade or something like that. I've never actually gotten into it. But I like the books. I like the Dragonlance series of books. And but they're short. You know, they're, they're, like, 300, 400 pages maybe at the most. I say that's short, but compared to Dune, which is, I don't know, 1,000?

10,000 pages? I have no idea how long these books are. Yeah. Long ... I mean long, long, long books. And you're right. I was thinking about it today. I'm like... 'Cause I just got to the third part, and I'm seeing, like, where this is gonna go and starting to think about it, and I'm like, "Am I going to need to read..."

'Cause I just need the first book just to fill that void, but I'm like- Yeah ... "Am I gonna need to read the second book?" Like- Have to ... or the third book or the... Ah, I don't know. See? My level up is, is military related because that's where my mind is, 'cause that's what we've been doing for a week. So I just about everyone knows I commissioned to be an officer after 19 and a half years of being an NCO or, or being enlisted.

Last October I commissioned and to become an officer, and I just hit my 20th year, you know, in June. So that was kind of cool. But since I've been a lieutenant, I've been a PL and an, and an XO for my company, and our drill weekends, man, at the officer level they're almost, almost a waste of time because you have to do so much pre-planning to get there.

It's really just time for, like, the enlisted guys to execute whatever your plan was. And then I, I traditionally just spend drill weekend planning next drill weekend so that I take as little work home as possible. We call that patriot time, when you gotta do stuff at work and you're not getting paid for it at home, and you're not getting paid for it.

So I try to minimize my patriot time. But and so I've, I've not real- there's been a disconnect-ish between me and the soldiers. I've not... It's just like football, guys. Like, you wanna know who's good at what. You know, what are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Who's the kid who can't show up to practice all the time?

You know, who's got terrible family? Who has no car? Who doesn't have a driver's license? You know, there's just lots of stuff you have to think about when you're operating in this military world. It's... The correlation with football is ridiculous, but... So the last five days, six days, whatever we're at now we have got to be together every day, and doing things that had a g- a little bit of planning ahead of time, but most of it is reactionary.

Like, you get there and a problem arises and you solve it, which is where I think I excel in life. So it's been really good. But building the bond, you know, we always talk about building relationships with your players, like getting to build those relationships finally after I've been in this unit for, you know, seven months or whatever eight, nine months.

Finally getting to kind of sit down with these guys and learn. Yeah, it was, unfortunately I learned kind of who the shit bags are. I've learned who the, you know, all-stars are, who the, the people that are kind of just worried about their own career, and the guys that just wanna help everybody and don't care.

Who's the energy sink and who's the energy source. So I'm kind of getting to learn all that. It's been a lot of fun. Gained a ton of respect for one of the NCOs I've got to work with because much like me, she's been stuck in an office at drill and it's a lot of, "Hey, you do this," which is not necessarily the type of leadership you want out of an NCO, but she's a, a full-timer, so she's just like us.

She's kind of just trying to get people moving. So it's been good to see her out of the office and getting to operate. But yeah, so just kind of that leadership difference between when I'm stuck, literally just the guy, I can't leave my desk, so I'm telling you what to do from afar, and I am answering some questions via telephone or a text or like, "Hey, soldiers, come see me."

But finally I can, like, get out in the heat and go out there. We've been running some shooting ranges and getting to let guys have fun with weapons and you know, of course now we go into more of our MOS type stuff, or our, our job duty type work for the remainder. But it's just been really, really nice.

It's been good as a, to get out and see

That I don't have to be completely disconnected from the soldiers just because I'm decided my career was important. And the last little piece here is sometimes age or, or experience in something catches up to you and you don't really know it. Like, or you don't understand how the perception of your experience is.

And so I, what I'm trying to say is a guy walks in my office and I'm a butter bar. I'm the lowest ranking officer. I just commissioned, and this guy's from the battalion, and he showed up with this butter bar chamberlain running a range. And I think he thought, "Here's another butter bar." And which is not generally a good thing.

They're, they're usually really stupid. They're usually, you know, 24, 25 years old, have no experience in life, 'cause all they've done is go to college to get to be an officer. Right. Yeah. So they have no real world experience. They can't communicate well. They're scared of everybody. Like, there's all these things that you don't

When you make fun of lieutenants, that's, that's who you're making fun of, which we do a lot. I do a lot. Anyway, and then so after like, I don't know, two hours of conversing with this guy, he was like, "All right. How long were you in before? Like, how long were you enlisted?" And I was like, "What? You can tell?"

He's like, "Well, hell yeah, I can tell." I was like, "Well, you know, almost 20 years." He's like, "Yeah. Yeah, we knew you weren't regular." Like, you're definitely ... So it was really good to like, you know, I'm still I'm not ... When I put on the rank, I didn't lose all my IQ. So that was really, really good for me. Right.

But anyway, just some jests there. But yep, it's been good week at training. Getting to come home every night. The, the commander made a deal because obviously, you know, mama just gave birth a few weeks ago, and, and little girl's growing up. That was my, my level up last week or two weeks ago, 'cause there's one in between the two that I was on.

And so everything at home's going great. I got lucky that AT's an hour from the house, so I'm getting to drive back and forth a little bit. So it's been a good mixture of my lives for the summertime Yeah, the, the relationship with the soldiers is funny because you're talking, you know, how it's so much like players, and you're in the military, and it is not different in business.

Like- ... you... I think when I started running a business, I... It was almost like the way that I've evolved with players, too. It's like it used to be like, "Here's what I need you to go do. Do... Go do this," with an employee, and now it's like, "No, I need these people to, like, develop and, like, not just do things, and, like, actually talk to them as this is a..."

Especially I've been fortunate to have, like, a team of people who are actually very intelligent and, like, it's a little bit weird. You're, you're not... It's not weird. It's, it took a while to adjust to because they're in the Philippines, but it's like these are actually very intelligent people who have different world experiences and different life experiences.

And, like, starting to unders- when I started to understand that, like, okay, don't just tell everybody what to do, like, actually converse with them and get to know them and find out all those things. It's the same thing with players 'cause you're like, "These kids are..." You know, "I'm gonna tell these kids what to do because they're, they're football stupid."

And it's like, you know, if you actually listen to them you can find out a lot about how to work with them and also find out a lot of things that'll make you a better coach and make the team better because they have input, and they have... You know, don't just, don't just give orders and... We, we have two things that we do.

One is that we... And I don't know if this works the same in the military, but in, it works in football, and it works in business. One is that you tend to, especially head coaches and business owners, tend to just do everything because, "I don't, I don't have time to explain it to you. I'm just gonna do it." And they suck at delegating.

And then when we delegate, we delegate by saying, "Go do this." And when you learn to be like, "This is the result that I need, figure it out," you start to get a lot better. You start to get a lot easier life, and they start to do a lot better work. So. You know, I, I learned... We- we'll close out after this. I- Yeah

I learned maybe 10 years ago, I heard somebody tell me that- They were afraid, like a lot of leadership are afraid that if I start delegating, you know, people will think that I'm just lazy or I don't want to do it, or, or maybe they will screw it up or whatever. But there's always that fear of like, "Well, they won't respect me because I'm just a..."

What we found out was like, the more you delegate, the more people respect you for being a leader. Like, that guy's a leader. How do you know? Well, he's the one that's letting everyone else work while he focuses on problem-solving and, and looking in the future, right? So it was like, if you're the guy that continuously just stops what you're doing to go fix that problem, go do that right now, and you never let anybody ever get experience, they don't really care about you anyway.

Like they... You're not, it's not the-- You're not making yourself look any better to them. Like just, just delegate. Let them screw up. So, and this is, guys, you may take this. I had a really good talk with a battalion commander this week and the battalion sergeant major. And I, and I kind of learned this in OCS.

But basically, you have to understand that until you go to war, nothing's real, right? And it's got-- I think it has to be this way in practice a little bit in, in the schoolhouse. But, and, and obviously I'm not saying any of those are going to war, but until Friday night Guys have to be avail- allowed to screw up and try things and make mistakes and work on timing and work on a, a stepping and you, you- Yeah

you can't have Friday night execution from Monday through Thursday. Like, it's just... And so we're sitting out here in the heat running a range no one's ever ran a range, and we're, we're killing it. And the sergeant major and the battalion commander were very excited about all of our numbers are squared away and we're getting people through and it's efficient.

And he's like, "All your people are smiling." And he, he made some jokes later, I'll tell them. But he said, "I... Like, no one down here seems stressed at all." I was like, "No, Sergeant Major, like, I just told them, like, this is a training environment. You're gonna screw... We screwed up the first couple days." And I was like, "That's cool.

Tomorrow, how are you gonna fix it? What are you gonna do tomorrow to make sure we don't screw that up again, right?" Like, I, I don't need to make every decision. Anyway, Sergeant Major ended the conversation with... Or maybe, I think it was Battalion EXO, which means nothing to you guys. But anyway, another officer said, "Well, there's not enough stress down here, so I wouldn't expect any food to show up tonight."

Like- ... you're fucking starving. I'm gonna give you problems to solve, fuck yeah. Yeah. So anyway but yeah, that was, that was something really neat that I saw in effect this week big time is just, hey, this is a training environment. You're gonna screw up. Quit, quit stressing. Yeah. And maybe that's something for practice too.

I will, I will end this by just promoting the last podcast, the, the one we did on quarterback drills quarterback throwing mechanics and, and drills and, and Coach Mountjoy. And one of the things that I talked about in that episode, if you go back and listen to the episode, even if you're not a quarterback coach or if you're just a defensive guy or whatever, it's worth just how a brilliant football coach put all of this stuff together to...

It, it is the things that I read and the things that I said in that episode was Coach Mountjoy talking to his quarterback, not teaching a coach how to coach a quarterback, but this was what he would give his quarterback, and it was all about figuring out the problem The giving the quarterback a, a list of potential problems and potential solutions was one of the things in there.

So there was the explanation of the throwing mechanics, and then there's a, there's a section where I talk about, or Coach Madrig talks about if the ball is, is going high, this is how you adjust it in your mechanics. If the ball's going low, this is how you adjust it in your mechanics. And you're, you're giving that kid the power to do that, and I think that's, you know, it's not saying, "Do whatever you want and make mistakes and you'll figure it out," but you give them a framework to make mistakes within.

You tell your quarterback, "Here's all the..." If you, if you... A- and that, I think it's a great episode to, to listen to, to, to hear some of that because it's like, hey, you're gonna make these mistakes, and we're always going to be working on one element. One element of your mechanics, we'll always be working to find that one thing that if we make it better, everything else gets better.

We're gonna find that one element that you can work on, but I want you to be able to identify it, and you to be able to even figure out the solutions is awesome. Yeah. That's awesome, man. I like it. I'll have to go back and listen to the episode. Unfortunately, I think it's the first one I've not been a part of at all in five years, so I'm- Maybe, yeah

I'm gonna have a listen to it. I bet there's a couple I haven't been on, but yeah. Social media wise, Oh, actually, is there any sales, opening and closing? Let's do that first. Man, what month is this? July. This will come out in two weeks 4-2-5 Defense. The Coaching Football's 4-2-5 Defense second edition manual, print manual.

Beautiful print manual. Go to Joe Daniel. Go go to 425Defense.com. Sorry, that's the back. That's the front. Beautiful print manual. That's much better ... so a couple things in there. You will get... You will be able to order this manual. You gotta pay shipping and handling, okay? It's not cheap. These d- self-publishing is, this is not cheap to put this manual together.

And I'm not making, I'm making, I made a lot more money when I just sold the PDF. But you get print manual, gonna get printed off. They, it's, it's, it's print on demand, so you order it, they print it, they mail it to you. When you're not gonna sell when you're not gonna be a New York Times bestseller, this is kind of the life that you live.

But it's a really nice manual that you can share with your, you know, keep in your office and, and mark it up and, and I think that's what I wanted and I love it. You also will get the PDF right away, so it takes time to print and m- and mail. Sometimes it can take, you know, 10 days two weeks, depending on where you're at, but you'll get the PDF download as well.

Go to 425D so you can start right now. So go to 425Defense.com to get that. If you are not a current JDFB member, you will also get the option to add, because this is a great manual, but as we talk about the 4-2-5 defense system that's inside JDFB Premium Coaching Systems, that's the ultimate. You will have the option to add a 30-day test drive at no cost of JDFP Premium Coaching System, so you'll be able to have the defensive drill system, you'll be able to have the 4-2-5 defense system, all the videos.

You'll be able to have the film room master classes where you can watch what this looks like on the field and see all of that. So awesome manual. You will get the PDF immediate access, so you don't have to wait for this to get mailed to you. You also have the option of adding a 30-day test drive of JDFP Premium Coaching Systems Gold as we get into the season and, like I said, defensive drill system, 4-2-5 system, film room master classes, our Coaches Edge Workshops, which we have done now, the Coaches Edge workshop on in June on putting together your install schedule and then building your practice plans in July.

So check it out, 425Defense.com. Love it. Social media, I'm @CoachChamboOK on Twitter/X. You can email me at chamberlainfootballconsulting@gmail.com. Joe is on Facebook, Joe Daniel Football, or email joe@joedanielfootball.com. Yeah. Not even on Facebook anymore, right? You just- No ... you, you quitted all the social media.

I quit everything. Look, we- Go to JoeDaniel- We, my, my team, so this is where we talked, we already talked about this. You will see, and you can go follow, and you will get the clips of the podcast, all that sort of stuff, okay? I can just tell you that my team f- has come to me and said, "We need to have stuff going up on social media because otherwise people will f- who don't find us everywhere else, if they only find us on Instagram, they'll think you're dead And that's fair.

So you will see things going up there and it will probably be 'cause they are, that's one of their things that, that I have my team is working on. We talked about it. That's their, that was their decision. They wanted that and I was like, "I don't care," but I love that they're doing it. Yes. I say I don't care, I love that they're doing it, but I'm not gonna do it.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of the Football Coaching Podcast, and remember, coach simple, play fast, win.