[00:00:00] Welcome back, coaches. This is the Football Coaching Podcast. I'm Dan Chamberlain. Co-host here with Joe Daniel as always. What's up, coach? Coach, I have to laugh at football right now. Yeah. So the weather is 106 degrees at 6:00 PM when my six-year-old, that's a lot of sixes started practice today. And if you've ever seen like a varsity team just be dumbfounded by everything, get a bunch of six-year-olds out in 106-degree temperature It was it was comical.

You just, it's one of those you just gotta laugh and be like, "All right. We'll, we'll try again tomorrow." You know what I mean? 'Cause ... Well, actually Thursday, but that was funny. And then our starting quarterback was missing, so, go for gold, Jeffy. It was amazing. I hope all of you get to do that at least one time in your career, where you just have to go, "You know what?

Just call it. Just call practice." Let's play Red Rover. Something. Maybe we should've. [00:01:00] Just get kids sprinting. Yeah. Get a, get a little workout in. Turn into PE. Little sharks and minnow. We're just gonna play sharks and minnows right now. Ultimate football, yeah. But all in all, still, still a good day. Or Carolina football.

It's always nice. I don't know what you guys call it. You guys probably don't call it Carolina football. Never heard of that in my entire life. You throw the ball all over the place. It's like soccer with a football. With- Oh, okay ... throwing it. Yeah. That sounds like ultimate football. Which I've never seen, but I've seen ultimate Frisbee.

Ultimate Frisbee's- And I think, I think- ... golf, isn't it? Sure. Why wouldn't it be? Or is that Frisbee golf? I think it's Frisbee golf. Anyway. Anyway. Power minute. Tonight we're talking about group passing drills. Talking about planning your group pa- passing periods, how to build progression into your group passing, just like we've done with everything else this season, really about progression, and then helping players translate that 7 on 7 that we all just got out of to the field on Friday nights.

Last week we talked about how to defend the spread option. A great one on defense. Go back and listen to that especially if you're struggling or you're gonna see [00:02:00] that this year. Option ball in general, it's all talked about in that episode. You can do it 4-2-5, 3-4, 4-3, whatever you wanna do it with. It works.

And then next week's topic, we're onto offensive line drills, which is the ultimate episode. I'm excited for that one. I'm excited. The greatest position on earth is the offensive lineman. 100%. Football f- season is officially here, so whether you're getting ready for game one or l- listen, Florida's in the playoffs I think, or Georgia.

I- Florida and Georgia are in the playoffs right now. Utah Utah legitimately is going into week two, I think. I think they just, ... Matter of fact, we got some GFAs out of Utah game film analysis, for their week one. Yeah. Utah, Football's here, baby. Yeah. And then we ... I've, I talked to coaches in like, I don't know, Massachusetts or Washington or something, and we were like, "We got practice coming in three weeks."

I'm like, "What? What are we doing?" Well, it's so crazy it's not universal. It shouldn't be universal, because you know, like, it's hotter than heck down here and- But it's backwards. Yeah. Yeah. For [00:03:00] sure. Why are the ones up there starting later than the ones down there? Yeah, the ones up north are gonna wait till it snows.

We can only play on the snow, boys. But- Like, it always, it, it, and it's so ... I, I always look back when, when I Coached in Iowa. When I, and when I got to Iowa, it was June, I wanna say it was July 27th. I said June. Yes. June. It wasn't June, it was like July 27th. We had a week of basically coaches meetings before the players got there.

This is a junior college, you know, the players, you know, aren't, aren't there all summer- Yeah ... like they are in a division one or something. They go home. Although their home may be, you know, we have a lot of ki- we had a lot of kids from Florida and stuff, but, you know, even the, you know, they weren't community local kids, most of them.

Couple of them were. Had a really good tight end that was local. It was like July 27th, and we went down to Ames for something, I wanna say. I think it was to Ames to, to watch... I don't even remember what [00:04:00] we were doing. Coaching clinic maybe. There might even have been a coaching clinic in Ames that late, 'cause I definitely went to a coaching clinic.

And on the way down, we were listening to the baseball state championship. These kids graduated A month, you know, the seniors graduated a month, month and a half ago. They're going to college next week, but the ... If they're seniors. But because of the fact that it's too cold to play baseball until, like, April, their state championship is, like, the middle or the end of summer.

So it makes sense. Yeah. But then in Florida it's, it's too hot to play football right now. And, and, and I, I remember talk- I, I talked to one coach, it might have been you, but it w- but I know another coach was saying the same thing. He's like, "I don't understand. Game time though there's no bulb?" Yeah. Not right now.

You know. No, we do. We've delayed games many times, but, you know, it's too hot to practice, but if it's, if it's dag gone if it's [00:05:00] 7:30 on Friday night- ... doesn't matter. The bulb is irrelevant. But like, you know ... And Georgia and Florida are, are what they are as far as football and, and, you know, it's just craziness, but it, it, it, it is.

And I remember we did it. I mean, I did it, and I'm here. I'm, you know. Yeah. Funny wet bulb story and then, and then I'll talk about Utah, and then we'll go on. Love you ... in the Twitter network today, a guy says, and, and Coach, if you're out there, by all means, share this, that's fine 'cause I, I know you're l- I, I think you're listening.

He said, "Hey, you know, we've been stuck in the gym for practice all week because it's too hot, but we come out from our practice and middle school's playing a football game." Yeah. I had a coach tell me the same thing. It might have been the middle school coach. He was like, "We're in the gym all week 'cause, 'cause it's too hot."

Yeah. But on, on game day it's the same as it was. It's like, well, it's game day. And it's like, well, we've been [00:06:00] in a gym all week 'cause it's too hot. Yeah. It's, it's comical. I understand the safety and- Well, we gotta play the game because it's a game ... and, you know, unfortunately just had a kid pass in Texas in South Texas th- just this last- Right

couple weeks or whatever. It's like we need the safety, we need it, I'm not even complaining really. No, it should be, it, it, it, yeah. It's just, it's comical that we ha- you know, it, it, the rules- The rules- ... the rules don't, they don't change ... the rules of heat change. Like, the most intense thing that you do, which to be fair, and this is not

I don't know anything about the coaches and things that happen. I, I know a couple years ago we had a, a player who passed in the same situat- you know, a, a, a, a ... And I know the coach and I know they were doing everything right. It sometimes I don't wanna say it just happens, but it's like you can do everything right and You know, this is, this is the unfortunate...

And it doesn't just happen in football. It's not a football thing. No. It's not a football problem. It happened to us in, at summer camp with a soldier, and he didn't pass, but he- [00:07:00] Right. He- He just fell out from the heat, and like, it's- Yeah. But- You can't control those people 24 hours a day, so. But, but, you know, not to like, you know, it's not like it just happens, but it's like you can do everything right.

However, we know of instances, people who have done it in the, the Division I college ranks, some of whom should never be allowed to coach a football team again, but apparently are just allowed to get six-figure, seven-figure salaries coaching, and they should be in jail. That's beside the point. Who absolutely ran their kids into the ground.

And so s- you know, the, the, the s- the sad thing is it's better to have this universal... And of course, some of those coaches are the ones who would tell their trainer to just shut the F up and, and if you say anything, you know. That happens, too, by the way. But it's better to have this universal rule so that the people who are too stupid to understand [00:08:00] That this is dumb have some sort of limitation, some sort of a pullback, like, you know, something holding them back.

For sure. You know, that's... We've all been pulled off the field when, if you coach long enough, you'll be pulled off the field when you're like, "What do we do?" And like the wet bulb says it's not okay and you're standing outside, like, "This is one of the best days we've had all year." A- and then, but then you also have the days where it's absolutely, and, you know, even in your very intelligent state, you might be thinking like, "We could still, we could still do this."

Yeah. And like it's good to have because we're competitors. And like, and you, you, you know, the sliding scale changes when you don't have a game for two weeks and they're like, "Well, you can't practice today." You're like, "Ah, we'll get it tomorrow. We'll go in the gym today." But it's like if you've been in the gym for, for three or four days and you get a day that's a little bit cooler, but it's still not okay, you're like, "We need to go!"

Like, so it's good to have it. It's, it's the right thing to do. It's good to have those limitations. It is silly that they [00:09:00] don't apply to the most, what should be the most intense day of the week sometimes. Again, ours do. We, i- in Virginia, we have had many, many games that were delayed until, you know, 8:00, 8:30 even.

It's, you know, it's easier to do that for a varsity game and honestly for a JV game on a Wednesday night. Sometimes there's like, you know, "It's a school night, we need to get this in." It's like, yeah, but it's like, well, you know, they'll shorten the quarters. They'll do, we'll do extra water breaks and things like that and try to make it...

but yeah, it's, I don't know. There's a lot to it. There's a lot to it. Some of it's comical, and some of it's right, and some of it's- Still, still- Trying, everybody's trying to do their best, I think ultim- well, a lot of people are trying to do their best, and part of their trying to do their best is trying to rein in the people who aren't.

Yeah, 100%. Who think they are, but honestly are just dangerous. Let's pay the bills, and then we'll get into the conversation. Lost [00:10:00] letters. Just opened it for pre-order today as of when we're recording this, so about 10 days ago when you hear this. Coach Simple Volume One is a collection of deep dives from...

That were all written in, a couple years ago and only mailed physical mailings to our JDFB premium coaching systems members. They have never been available in digital, they're not in PDF, they're not in anything. And they were lost. I mean, honestly, they weren't lost. I knew where they were. In fact, I've got stacks of the back order, you know, what over pr- overruns prints that I have in my closet here.

But they weren't available anywhere, because I want them in this print format. I want them to be exclusive. And so, but the thing is, they're good. And I'll just tell you, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you a few of the things that are in there. I have a 10-minute quick fix for bad tackling that you can use now, no matter what playbook you run.

You can, you can get this manual and you can find this 10-minute quick fix to fix your bad tackling, your missed tackles. [00:11:00] Six rules of special teams that can steal wins for you in the season. Five rules that you can follow right now to be the best assistant football coach you can be. And if you're a head coach, you can share those with your assistants, with your staff in the next meeting.

And I have one of those chapters in that lost letters manual that is a coaching principle that I learned, and I'm gonna get him on the podcast soon, I hope in a clinic where I watched Jerry Campbell ask a very large man to sit on his lap and- I learned something that day that changed the way that I look at coaching football and f- so all of those are in there.

They are all in that manual. You can find out about Jerry Campbell having that large man sit on his lap. You can find out about the six rules of special teams to steal wins. You can find out about the 10-minute quick fix for bad tackling, the five rules for being a good assistant coach. All of them are in Coach [00:12:00] Simple Volume One: The Lost Letters.

I've actually added an additional not lost, but new letter on the five things that our most successful coaches at JDFB do that actually comes from our 4-2-5 defense clinic that we did back in March in Boston, and I've turned that into an additional bonus chapter for that. You can get that by going to joedanielfootball.com/lost.

It is a physical print manual. There are still no PDFs. There are still no pass around the Internets of it. But it is a physical print manual that will be... it is in pre-order right now. We're waiting on the proof copies, but as soon as we get the proof copy and approve it, it'll be shipped probably in the next...

so by the time you hear this, it should be shipping. When you, you know, printing and shipping. They print it when you order it, and we ship it a few days later. They ship it a few days later our company that's handling all that. So, that is the loss Coach Simple Volume One: The Lost Letters, just deep dives on some of the most important topics in football.

And again, you can go to joedanielfootball.com/lost to get it. That's I'm [00:13:00] kind of excited to go I'm gonna order one I was gonna mail you one, but- I love it, yeah. But yeah, go ahead. But go ahead. I'm gonna tell Brady too. I can email Brady one. Gotcha. I'm gonna ... I can maybe text him. Text ... Thanks, Brady. I'm just gonna mail him one.

I will I will tell him as well. Athletic Speed Movement. It ... I know we're kind of getting into season here, in your first couple weeks of season. Some of you guys may be thinking, "Hey, it's too late to add something to our routine. We kind of already have the thing that we do." If you're listening for the first time, I'm here to tell you that there is an in-season version of Athletic Speed Movement.

If you decide, if you go get it, and decide that like, "Listen, I, this isn't for me right now. I don't ... I can't change our routine. Things are going well," that's fine. It's still absolutely okay to go get it, give it to your speed coordinator, whoever that's gonna be. Let them get comfortable with the material so that when you get off that little break after the season, whether it ends in late November, early December, whatever it is, they can get you right into Athletic Speed [00:14:00] Movement.

It's great to use at PE with the kids. So I know, hey, look, I, I've worked at schools where it was like all the assistant coaches were elementary PE. Let me tell you, the Athletic Speed Movement stuff works great to get those kids running, fix their form early. There's nothing wrong with going down and practicing that with PE kids.

Practice it wherever you want. Get used to seeing kids run terribly and watching them refine. You're just investing in your your team for a later date. But you can still get it now, guys, and you can use the in-season now and be as fast as you can be as you get into the playoffs. Or like I said, you can postpone it and, and just use it later after the season.

Anyway, athleticspeedmovement.com. Go there Sign up today. Let's jump into the conversation. So we are talking group passing drills, which is great. I, you know, it- it, football to me has almost become, especially right now, run the damn ball, right? But the fact of the matter is we do have to practice passing, and it's, for some coaches it's the only [00:15:00] thing they do, and some they treat it like special teams.

Like, ah, you know, that is a third of the ball, but we, we, we, we practice it very minimal. One time a week or whatever. So, I think it's good that you, you do go out and get better, at least as a coach think through how to do these things. How do we translate that last one we get into translating 7 on 7's gonna be a great piece of this conversation.

But Joe, let's just get into planning those group passing periods. So what are some things coaches need to consider as they start making out those practice plans to include their group passing time? And again, I wanna add in that this is both from the offensive and the defensive standpoint, how we are gonna look at some of these.

Some of these will be more, we'll adjust them more for a defensive. There's al- there's the old adage, coaching cliche, 7 on 7 is an offensive drill. That's not really true, but it does skew towards the offense when there's no pass rush. You know, they s- guys say 7 on 7 is, and obviously 7 on 7 is the most well-known passing, group passing drill.

And we should all be using it. But [00:16:00] you know- 7 on 7 as a tournament type of thing where the quarterback stands back there for four seconds and you run triple move routes is not the same as what we're trying to do in a pract- in a football practice when we're not trying to win a tournament or something.

So the first thing that we look at with, you know, scheduling your, your group passing and planning your group passing is, again, as we talk about as we have all season, and we started towards the end of last season talking about the 90-minute practice plan and I'm putting together I think already on YouTube we have a playlist that you can check out, JoeDanielfootball.com/youtube.

We have a practice plans playlist that you can look at where I've put all of the practice planning podcasts kind of together and put them in order of, not necessarily the order that they were published, but you know, the way that they make sense to, to work [00:17:00] through. And I'm doing some other things with those.

We have a four two five playlist as well. As you go through the process of planning the practice, we know that there is this progression, and so every practice we have a focus. And a lot of times, especially from the offensive side, but also on the defensive side, we'll have an offensive run and pass focus.

We'll have a defensive run and pass focus. So, you know, one of the things about that, one of the reasons to have two focuses is take your safeties. If your safety's focus is on you know- Rip outside when you, when you read outside run. Ball down, stay down, rip outside. So that's the focus right now is we're gonna rip outside.

Well, what's he doing for eight minutes, 12 minutes, however long it is of seven on, defensive 7 on 7 when he's out there? This has nothing to do with him, so he needs a passing focus to work on. So what's our pass focus? It's, it's getting the depth on our drop. It's you know, maybe it's just getting the key read and taking off and going.

When you see ball up, it's a ball up key read. It's, you [00:18:00] know, how the corners are... You know, the corners pass are, are, are more likely to be heavy pass focus. They usually don't have a run focus, right? They're just, you know... But it might, they might have a man and a zone focus. So, or it could be that they're, you know, the corners are working on getting off a stock, getting off a crack block or something like that, or reading a crack block, whatever it is.

So as we plan this and we plan this progression, and especially if you picked this podcast up because it fits what you do and you didn't listen to all the previous ones, it's important for us to talk about there's a focus in every practice and the, the progression of practice is always geared towards that focus.

And so we're going to know what our focus is, know the leverage that we're pulling, know what we're trying to do at each position group, and then we're going to build our indies around that. And so if we have a run and a pass focus, we should have some run indies and some pass indies or they're built together.

Like our umbrella drill for safeties, as an example, has run and pass elements to it. Our offensive [00:19:00] linemen will get r- most of their pass work not in indies but in the 7 on 7 period, which will be pass pro period for them. It may be individual pass pro work or it may be group pass pro work depending on where they're at.

A lot of times for them it'll be like indie one day, group the next, rather than just a progression through practice. They'll work, they'll work one-on-one pass rush or pass pro footwork on the offensive line, which we'll get into next week. They'll work that on, you know, Tuesday, and then on Wednesday they'll do group actual pass protection five-man pass protection drills.

One-on-one pass protection, but we do it five on five because nobody's standing around. And we'll, we'll just... Again, next week. And it's also, you know, in our, in our other JDFB premium coaching system stuff. So You need to progress through individual drills that work on the skills that they need to do the things that they are going to do in your group passing.

Now, I will say that [00:20:00] oftentimes our group passing is where, for example, the quarterbacks, they don't really have an indie, it's built into their warmup. Or the, the s- the, the group passing will actually function as kind of the indie sometimes because like you said, Daniel, we may be a much heavier run team.

Or on the defensive side, we have much more focus on stopping the run. You know, we're playing teams that are 70% run. We're still gonna have a s- a, a, a 7 on 7 where we're gonna work on the passing concepts that they use, but we're not gonna spend a ton of time on coverage drills. The corners will.

The free safety might work on a deep third monkey in the middle type of drill. You know, we may do the safeties may do cover one drills, but they very rarely do drills for cover three flat drops. Same with the linebackers. They rare- very, it's just built into 7 on 7, and for them it's compartmentalized as an indie.

You see ball up, you go to the hook, and like, [00:21:00] you know, that's the first part of it. So when we're planning these, you know, it's a little bit different than the run and the, and if you listen to the group run drills, everything is indie on the run defense. We go to pass, you know. If you're playing a t- a run heavy, a pass heavy team, you might do more of that.

You might work more defensive line pass rush drills and then go into a team pass period later 'cause obviously they won't be in 7 on 7. But Still needs to be a progression because I think what happens, and it even happens for me sometimes, is we do run indie, run indie, run indie, run indie especially, especially on the defensive side, especially like linebackers, for example.

They're doing guard read, in, out, out, and we don't even, we don't even read pass, right? We don't even read pass until they can prove that they can do if he fills follow, if he d- if he pulls follow, if he doesn't fill. And so there will be kind of a [00:22:00] jarring, "Okay, now it's pass time," and it's like we haven't talked about pass all day with the linebackers.

And so we have to talk to them and say like, "This is your indie time. Ball up, get to the hook." And we have to talk to the defensive coordinator and say, "Listen, we haven't done any of this crap because the team that we're playing is a 70% run team, and if we stop the run and they beat us on the pass, we are gonna walk across that field and we are gonna, we are gonna shake that quarterback's hand and say, 'You know what?

I thought you were the worst quarterback that I have seen on film all year, and I don't know what you did, but you got it together this week and you beat us. Congratuli-'" Don't say that to him, but- You know. We gotta stop the run. I, I, I go back to all the time with our coaches we're talking about we gotta run split field, and I'm like, "How many teams throw the ball?"

"Two of them." "Okay, tell me about them." "One of them's so good that it would take a miracle for us to beat them, and the other one's absolutely terrible. We ran cover three, they threw the ball 70 times, we had 19 picks last season." Why do you need to [00:23:00] be split field? 'Cause we got two teams to throw the ball.

Yeah, but you're not gonna n- that's not gonna win either one of those games. S- you, you know, it's like, it it's, it's always like mostly we need to stop the run. The vast majority of the time nobody's gonna throw the ball on us if we can't stop them running, realistically. If they could get nine yards a pop, they're not throwing.

That's, that's 80% of your schedule. It's like the only reason they're gonna throw is because they get bored, and it's the dumbest thing that they can do because all of a sudden they can't throw and they throw a pick and the drive is over. Back in it, boys. Yeah, so build the progression in, but a lot of times in this, in these you will be having your your, your indie time sometimes for like linebackers especially.

Obviously, your receivers are gonna work their routes. Your quarterbacks are gonna work all their throwing mechanics and things that we talked about back in episode two on quarterback drills. I had to [00:24:00] check to make sure. We're getting those up by the way. Those quarterback documents should be up by the time you hear this.

You should be able to go to QB Drills, JoeDanielfootball.com/qbdrills the page for that episode two and download Coach Mountjoy's PDFs. We got delayed on that for some reason. We lost track of it. Some- was I forget who it was, but one coach finally emailed and said, "Where, when, where are those drills?"

I was like- "I'm waiting." ... "Dang it." Sometimes guys if they're not there, tell me. It's like this isn't a machine. This is a very small company. You know, let me know. I try. I do my best. We'll get them up. They should be up by now. Yeah, JoeDanielfootball.com/qbdrills, no spaces. But all those things, you know, a lot of those times we're working that in like a pre-practice with the quarterback or pulling the quarterbacks and letting them work that in, in some different segments and s- you know, special teams.

You know, he's not a, he's not on our kickoff team. He can go work that kind of stuff. But you have to be a little creative with the passing indie if you're a run-heavy team or if you're defending run-heavy teams. But you know, you try to have the progression, and then you [00:25:00] get into your 7 on 7, your...

We'll talk a little bit about some of the different ways that we do this in group passing. But we do want to have a progression in the overall practice, and then as we're gonna talk about in a minute, there's a progression to the group drills as well Yeah, the one thing on defense that I, I just wanted to kind of mention and, and it doesn't matter really who you're facing honestly, but what I like to do is have my defensive passing Indy before my run Indy.

And, and for one reason and one reason only, my guys who have to make a read and make a decision, I need them thinking about the run. So when we get into group or team or whatever, mainly when we get to team, I want their mind, the last thing they had is the run. I, it- if you've ever been to a drag race, I'm, I'm just gonna use an analogy here in the most awkward place possible, but if you've ever been to a drag race drag cars [00:26:00] sometimes they go past the line that they stage on and they have to back up to get back on the staging line, but they always roll past it backwards again and get their transmissions back in drive and get everything ready to go forwards again.

You don't ever want the last thing you did to be reverse in a drag race. Same thing here. I don't want the last thing that my safeties did or my outside backers, God forbid, the last thing they did was turn and run to the flats without a read just, just because it's the, what they do in passing drills. I don't ever want that as we're getting into team period.

So I don't care if it, even if it's pregame and you're going through... The last thing I want, I want that dragster in, in drive and I want it staged on the line ready to go forward and, and that's how I think about those Indy drills. When you start putting those things together and you think about how to put your practice plan together I try not to ever end r- right before team on passing stuff.

Now offensively it might be the opposite because I might you know, to get... And, and obviously it can't be because we're doing them both at the same time generally, right? Usually, yeah. All the school stuff. [00:27:00] And so you just gotta figure out who, obviously offense is not as worried, but that kind of depends on who you, what you want out of your quarterback, what you want out of your receivers.

If you're trying to get him just sling the ball a little bit, like we're big RPO, right? We love the RPO. Quarterbacks tend to be one way or the other. They wanna pull it and sling it every time no matter what the read is, or they're too scared to pull it and throw the ball no matter what the read is.

And so you kinda have to figure out how you're gonna coach them. But, so, you know, kind of put that where you want it. But defensively I like things to be ready to stop the run. We, we like to have a plan and, and, and I stole all this from Cameron, to be honest with you, but we do the... And, and guys emailed me and asked about this, the the, the pretend two platoon situation where you've got one platoon numbers and then you're gonna rotate some guys out and they're on different schedules essentially.

You've got a, a primary offense and a primary defense, but we know they're playing both sides. They're starting both sides but they, they switch out Indy and whatnot. And so what that allows to do is everybody gets work all the time. So your, your primary offense group, they start on seven on seven, [00:28:00] and then your primary defensive group is already on defense, right?

'Cause you're basically always getting best on best work when you're in that Indy period. And then they're just gonna flip anyway, so it's, it's not too much of a concern there when you start trying to plan that out. Your guys are gonna get rotated enough. Now, if you are truly gonna go one platoon style, like what's very natural in football, the common thing, and you're going against a scout team that obviously is a bunch of non-starters, you need to be thinking about how you're gonna do that and actually give yourselves looks either say, either side of the ball, right?

I mean, if, if... This may be what I'm saying is essentially, Joe, is figure out a way to get good on good. If I'm gonna go out there and let my star receivers run all over some freshman DBs who can't backpedal yet, we're gonna look really, really good, but you're not gonna get nearly as much out of those drills.

So consider that when you're, when you're going, "How can I think about getting best on best here? Is it half field and like that-" "... the right side starting receivers are playing defense right now? Is [00:29:00] it... What are we gonna do?" So just have a plan to get good on good. I, the half field thing's fine. If you wanna go, you know, ones on ones, and then on the other side is your, your second group of defenders and your second group of, of offense, just give your kids a chance to actually get good development and get some good on good.

So that's, that's kind of where my mentality is when we start planning these group passing periods. Yeah, I think I'll stop there. Let's jump to the second piece here, and that's building progression into your group passing. How are you progressing it, Joe? Kind of what... I wanna know where you start early in the season and then kind of what's your mentality of gaining, when do you progress, and then how even in your...

I know we're, you meant practice schedule, like how do you progress it from stretches to team, but I kinda wanna hear both kinda what you're looking at there. So there's a few things, you know, from an offensive standpoint and a defensive standpoint of group passing. So talk about a couple of the offensive things that I like to do and, and a defensive thing that I like to do that [00:30:00] each have their kind of purpose.

The first one is just our routes on air. So you're talking about now it's just quarterbacks and receivers, maybe running backs, Hs and Ys. Hs, Ys, quarterbacks, receivers. This is our pre-game warmup for the offensive for, for, for skill guys. So it is, we have our... You know, because we are mirrored route concepts, we have the, a line of inside receivers and a line of outside receivers to both sides.

We have our four, and I've talked about this in the past I think the Quarterback Drills podcast. We have four quarterbacks there. If you don't have four quarterbacks, you can have a coach, you can have your JV guy, you can have whoever throwing. But everybody's gonna catch a ball on every play. And the you know, so the two quarterbacks on the left, two receivers on the left.

Whichever receiver is going to end up inside is going to get thrown by the inside receiver, inside quarterback, and the one that's gonna be outside is gonna get thrown by the outside quarterback. So if we're running all hitch, then the inside quarterback throws the hitch by the slot and the, or the H or Y and the outside quarterback throws the hitch by [00:31:00] the X or Z, the outside receiver.

If we were running a slant shoot or slant flat the inside receiver is going to be the slant route. Even though he's lined up outside, when the ball is thrown, he's going to be breaking inside. So basically inside breaking routes. The inside quarterback throws that one and the outside quarterback throws the flat route.

So this allows us to get a lot of reps of just throwing routes on air and you know, the, the drawback is you might throw some route, you might have your varsity starter throwing some routes to your, you know, JV kid who is too slow to run those routes, and it's timing issues and stuff. But it, it hasn't been a major problem.

You know, we just... And w- you know, it's fun to see how many times you can, you know, if all four of them catch the ball. It's like, you know, how long can we go without dropping the ball? And you'll, you can tag, you can, you can add on some conditioning rewards and things like that to, to it or some sort of reward at the end.

Make it a competition period even though it's just routes [00:32:00] on air. But there's no defense in that. But basically it lets you let everybody, again, four balls in the air have extra balls, you know, have eight balls so that you don't have the, that freshman receiver drops the fade ball- ... and you gotta wait for him to bring it all the way back.

Hurry up. Have coaches out there collecting balls. We always try to have centers as much as possible snapping. Even if it's not the actual center, have somebody flipping a ball. If you play a lot of pistol or gun, have somebody so they're getting a, a snap for the primary guys. You might have, might not have four available, and obviously we want our actual centers doing their O Indy stuff- Right

If we can, but sometimes we'll rotate them. So that one, and that's a Coach Mountjoy drill. That's just a really good pre-game drill. It's a great off-season drill. It's a great pre 7 on 7 drill, you know, pre-game 7 on 7 drill to get everybody loose, running routes. Everybody can run the routes.

Everybody, you know, even if you're not a primary receiver, just watch the guy in front of you run it, do what he did try to catch it. So that's, that's one that's just a routes on air type of thing. That's an offensive drill. The one that I really like, again, Coach Mountjoy [00:33:00] drill, I call it curl drill, but you can apply it to any concept.

And curl drill is simply having the, And again, this is an offensive drill where we build from, you know, kind of like the run pods, right? Where we offensive linemen go from blocking one-on-one or bird walking to blocking a two-on-two combo. And it's really working the quarterback read and the routes for the receivers.

And so it starts with curl drill where we will you know, run it to the play side and the, the call side, and the, you got a linebacker and a, a overhang safety or an outside linebacker. So inside linebacker and outside linebacker, or a hook curl and a flat player We don't include the corner because we expect the corner, we're running this against cover three, we expect the corner to be over top.

So this is a curl drill against cover three curl against cover three drill, right? Two defenders, three receivers, the running back, the number two receiver who, who can be you know, an H or a [00:34:00] Y, it can be a, a Z in a trick formation, however you wanna run it an inside slot receiver, whoever it is, and then your outside receiver that is running the curl route.

So the inside guy is gonna run the hook, he's gonna run right at the linebacker's feet and turn, set up five yards, turn to the quarterback. He also has a check release, so you can add in the element of check release to this rather than just blocking or rather than just, you know, running the route.

And so the, Second guy runs the shoot route, which is a two yards or two steps at a 45 degree angle and then basically flat. We run that as fa- we wanna get as, as wide as we can, as fast as we can to clear the curl window. And then your outside guys run the curl. We run a nine-step curl. We run seven big.

Al- almost all of our five-step drop route concepts have in the pistol power offense system have seven seven step stem and then two little. So seven big steps, full sprint, and then two little breakdown, eyes back to the quarterback and come back to the quarterback. Get that separation from the corner if he decides to play down tight over top.

And so [00:35:00] what the quarterback is doing is he's looking first he reads inside out on an inside breaking route. He always reads inside out, and so he's learning to read from the linebacker. If that linebacker drops, he'll throw. If that linebacker flies out, he'll throw the hook. Now, the hook doesn't get thrown that much and he doesn't get a clean release to get there fast enough a lot, so we will work this from a three by one sometimes where the, the Y or the H is gonna be running that hook.

He can get there a little bit faster. And we'll, we'll shoot route the R to the backside. He'll check and then shoot route. Gets us a little faster hook. We don't throw the hook that much because it's just hard to get the R there. And also the linebacker tends not to fly out, right? High school linebackers are often, as we talked about, very run focused.

We only see a few teams that really fly out of there and we'd rather run a draw than throw the hook route. So you know, he reads that and we can tell him to sit, but we can work it in the drill. We can tell the linebacker to sit, and if he sits, then we go to the next thing. Or [00:36:00] we can tell him, "When you see the snap, you fly out.

You see, as soon as you see ball up, you fly out to the hook." Very rarely are we gonna do that and we're gonna throw that. Really what it becomes is occasionally we'll do that, but what we really wanna see is the read on the overhang, the flat defender. If he sinks, the flat is open. If he jumps the flat, the curl is open.

And so in that way, it is essentially a three on two drill. Somebody's going to be open, and that's what we're teaching the quarterback about our mirrored concepts. Somebody is going to be open, and if the corner jumps the curl, if they jump all of them then curl wheel is gonna be open and we're gonna come right back with it.

So if they jump all of them, throw it away and know that we're about to throw a curl wheel for a touchdown. You know, pull it down and run it or throw it away or whatever if they jump all of them, they ta- if they really take it away. But even if the corner [00:37:00] decides to sit on the curl, if the curl is separating by coming back, you should still be, still be able to hit the curl if that guy if the, the flat clears the flat window through the curl window.

So again, that's the curl drill. Curl's one of our best routes, one of the things we love to throw the most. We do that with a lot of things though. We ran a stick concept where we had a a go, a stick, and a shoot. And that one, you know, we would just run that drill over and over again, and same thing with a read, and we wor- we'd run that.

Put a ball fake in on it if we wanted to. So you can take that and you can apply that to really any half field concept. And you can add in a trigger to the backside, but I don't like to add in backside receivers and stuff. I'd rather have two... I'd rather take those backside receivers and the backup quarterback and run the same drill with two different pods if we have enough players so that everybody is getting work and nobody's standing around waiting for their rep.

You know, while the, while they're catch- getting the ball, running back, getting the line back up, [00:38:00] we're running it over here to the left, and then we're running it over here to the right, and we're running, you know, back and forth. We're getting more and more reps. That's what we wanna see with that one.

So those are two progression offensive drills that we like to use. One is just the, the, the the routes on air. We'll just go through all the route concepts. So we'll say... And this helps players to learn the names too. We'll say 60 and, you know, early on we say, "All right, 60, you've got the hitch, you've got the seam."

But eventually we want them to hear 60 and what happens eventually is you know, the line goes, "All right, we got a hitch." So they start, they start to communicate to each other and then they start to know it, 60 is... And that way you get more receivers knowing. So there's, there's more value to that and also everyone learning those calls.

You know, we, we use 60 as hitch seam. 62- or 60, 61 is hitch seam. 62, 63 is slant flat. 50, 51 is smash hitch and a corner route. You know, so all of those things we, we start to [00:39:00] build those in. And they start to learn the words on them, we get those passes and then we start to work the specific concepts.

Curl drill is the main one that we do that with because we like to throw a lot of curl. But you could do it with anything. You put the, the the defenders that, you know, if, if smash, you do the exact same thing with smash and put the corner out there and if the corner sinks, throw the hitch and if the corner sits on the hitch, throw the, throw the corner route.

And you know, it's, you know, it's just a one... It's, it's more compact. We're just reading this one side. But and he can even pick the side that he likes because that's a cover two beater and he can look at, You know, this corner's farther off, so I'm just gonna throw the hitch. See a hitch, take a hitch.

Tony DiMaio, we got him on the podcast. See a hitch, take a hitch. Throw it. See a hitch, throw a hitch, I think was his ... what he said. But so yeah, you can expand it to, to cover any passing concept that you use. And I'm sure it works with all the Goofy Route concepts that you guys do, but, you know, whatever.

All the Goofy... Thanks, Coach. That's- You're welcome ... shows real confidence in my, No, wait, l- look- Well, it's not just you. It's all the Goofy people with your five [00:40:00] mans, routes, running rec, everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. And, and, and you're right. There, there are drills to do that. You know, one way...

Obviously we install full passing concepts, but it's no... It truly the, the more... That's another thing, the longer I'm at this, the more I realize we're doing the same crap. Yep. Right? It's just you tag vertical out on one side, like a fly route, and then you tag- ... drag curl on the backside. You've made Y cross.

Congratulations. I just do it with less words, but less ability to change things sometimes, right? Yeah. And so it, it, it- The one that gets... just real quick, the one that gets in trouble is the numbers guys, the, the Coryell, the you know, the nine routes and all that sort of stuff. Oh, okay. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the coaches who understand it take those numbers and package them into concepts.

And the coaches who are just like, "We've got numbers," they're like, "We're gonna run a nine two seven six." And it's like, I don't know if that's a concept or not, I have no idea. But it's like they- they'll just throw numbers out there, and it's like there's no thought process to the concept. It's like, "I want that guy to run a hitch, and that [00:41:00] guy to run a seam."

And then you end up with like three guys in the same spot on the field, and it's like- Right ... "That was a cool concept." Yeah. But yes, all of us are just running passing concepts. There's universal passing concepts. There's twists and takes on them. There's tags that you can use. It's all... I, I joke about the Goofy stuff because I love people who tell me, like, "Your route concepts won't work," and it's like- I-

tell me you're passing routes if you're gonna run it. That's the problem. That's the problem- Yeah. Right ... is that they all work. That's, that's the issue. Right. Once you think the other one doesn't work, you're, you're, you're gonna have a problem. It's no different than, you know, four two five won't work. We gotta run a four four to stop the run.

Yeah, exactly. Same thing. So we, we kinda progress our p- practices, like, day by day. You know, early on our indie's gonna look like everybody else's. Yes, you're gonna practice some routes. Yes, you're going to... You know, quarterback's gotta throw nine balls. He has to, right? He's gotta throw them, receivers gotta see them.

So kinda like routes on air, what you're talking about, Coach. Then we're gonna get into 7 on 7. Like I said earlier, we- we're two platooning it, even with slower numbers. And I think I said slower, I meant lower- You did ... [00:42:00] numbers. And, and so you're getting that good on good. They can be slower, too.

They can be slower numbers. You're getting that good on good all the time, and so we have to do a lot of half field type stuff. Yeah. But that's what our 7 on 7 looks like. Our backup quarterbacks, our third string quarterbacks are coming out and throwing. I don't like to run full route on 7 on 7 simply because- there's one football, and one defender and one wide receiver's gonna get a really good look, and everyone else is just kind of y- they get to where they get complacent.

Especially because we want to throw the front side of our concepts so the quarterbacks are really focused on it and those backside guys never get the ball. So th- I've found if you split it up, one, your defenders always truly have... If they're o- if they're running a, if, if they're doing their job, they're doing a r- a, a snap, a down, the ball's coming in their direction somewhere, right?

It may go to a different receiver, but it's definitely coming somewhere. And then we go to what we call air drill. An air drill for us is, It is basically an up-tempoed [00:43:00] full passing concept. So f- you know, the whole field's going at the same time. You can call it 7 on 7, but there's no defense.

It's all on air. But what we're really looking is quarterback, even if we have to give him a fake read or tell him a route's off, you know, off limits or whatever, "I need you to throw this. I wanna see you throw that backside route," whatever it is. But we're practicing our hand signals, so we're not talking to them.

We're on the sidelines like game... And this is early, right? So they're getting that game time reps early on. They're getting hand signals. If we got one words, which if y'all don't, if y'all don't know the one word, it's basically something you put in a NASCAR package or say NASCAR one, we just use a word that says that.

But it tells the p- pass protection, it tells the formation, it tells the c- the route concept, everything all in one word. Any tags that we're gonna add either to the base plays or the one word, so if we wanna run Y cross, but we want to in switch the routes on the front side, we can do that. Works our formations, our automatic plays, so if we have any pre-motion that's, that's automatically planned that week, we're getting [00:44:00] all that in and with tempo.

So we're making the kids think, we're making them look over, get a signal. It get some game-ish reps where I'm not actually worried about beating a defender right now. We're going into team later, and you're gonna do that anyway. But we found this is like that concrete from indie to 7 on 7 to good, let's see it fast right now.

Obviously, this is only offensive drill. And then we get into team where there's a little more to it. So I think it's a really good bridge between 7 on 7 and team, where we know in 7 on 7 the defenders are just playing the pass, and in team we know they we're gonna run, play the run real hard, and so we want our receivers to have those routes in between.

I don't know, it's a good bridge for us. So that's kinda how we building that. And then we go into team and do the same stuff. Defensively the build I like to use and, and this is because I, I'm still a tag guy, so even on defense, if you're a Cody Alexander guy, you... I, I love the way he packages his safeties in tags, and he calls them spokes, so completely stealing from Cody Alexander talking through his, [00:45:00] but I love it and it's, it's a great way to practice it.

But instead of installing like cover three buzz on top of your base cover three, you just tag it. You tag that front side safety or that boundary safety to buzz down, and now it just talks to those two. So the corner and the safety are gonna s- they don't alignment switch spots, but by assignment, and it's just a tag.

So I just call my cover three, call it banana, whatever you wanna call it, and now I'm tagging banana buzz. And so I don't have to worry about everybody else wondering what this new thing is. I just tag it. Same thing if you're wanting to put them in the post and cover, you know, maybe you are split field and you're wanting one guy, "Hey, this week we really need to be in the post more than anything."

Tag him in the post. Rail, you know, there's just all sorts of, of, Things that you can tag a safety. Something I learned at Wyandotte and then the more I look back, and that was year one and I was very confused. We didn't do very good 'cause we were trying to run like 25 variations of cover three. I don't know, it really was probably 10 out of the 4-3 defense, and it just didn't [00:46:00] pair very well.

And I, and I found the coach knew what he wanted to do, he just didn't have the assistant coaches to really pull it off. And I was one of the, I was the problem, not necessarily what he was doing. But something I learned back then was just like, where you call a cover two, you want that maybe it's a boundary corner to sit in the flat.

Well, instead of having another call, you can tag that too. So now we just tag our free safety to that side to switch it, and switch means you're gonna stay on top, you're not rolling down. You're gonna roll over the top, and the corner stays in the flat. So it's, once again, you get in that tagging world and you can make a bunch of these progressions without adding a whole bunch of defenses.

Joe, I think you said at one time, like, an offensive line coach gave a, a clinic and he said, "Oh, we got 35 pass protections," or whatever, right? But no he didn't. He had like three and then he was just left him to the right and he did some tags. It's kind of the same thing. You carry a lot of def- It's, I, I, I remember watching a coach give a clinic talk, same thing with coverage, and he was like, "We have 27 coverages."

And I'm like, "You just have variations of three and two and one." Yeah. Tags. There's, there's not that many. [00:47:00] There's not that many different coverages. And it's like cool, you have 27 variations but you know, if we go into, like if we start calling, you know, three chips, you know, it was like we have three trips checks and then like, you know, okay, we run a two read where the like you said, the, we run a two read where the corner stays over top when they get the flat route, and we have a two read where he jumps the flat route.

We just tag the... The only difference is w- you know, like so our blue check, instead of calling blue, we just call flat. Right. What's flat? It's blue, but with the corner jumping the flat. That's the tag. You know, that's, that's the kind of stuff, We tag it. I don't know why it's called money. I think we got a few picks the first time we ran it.

But if we want the overhang safeties to not go flying to the flats, we want them to go more curl to flat. Yeah. We want them to stay tight or we tag to money, and that's just a simple tag. Like you said, it's just these are, these are easy to... we had our dime package where we tagged like five different things on a cover three and eventually created a c- they were catch, guys would have all these different names for catch technique and all this stuff, and we would call it [00:48:00] dime. They all had like snake names, dime fox, dime like, so it was, it was a roll three, and we'd go dime fox, the free safety's rolling down, dime snake, the strong safety's rolling down, but it's just rolling to cover three from a two high look.

But if we called dime dime crocodile was a, was a Tampa two I can't remember what the name was. We've tal- we've talked about it on a podcast in the past. We did a dime coverage podcast, I think. But where we would catch technique with the corners, and we'd just tag it, and somebody else would roll and replace, and it's just built in.

Yeah. So yeah, and, and you know, the tag system is very useful and it's, it's a good way to make game plan adjustments without we're gonna install a whole new coverage. 100%. We do something very similar with, especially for the defense, and especially I've done this a lot more with the split field concepts, is where we get into a game week, we wanna work split field coverage but we don't, you know, we don't wanna have a lot of, you know, we don't wanna, again, we don't wanna run these routes where everybody goes and r- does their thing and half the field's doing nothing.

And so we split field it [00:49:00] where, look, the things that we have to stop this week, we got two route concepts that really, especially like we got two route concepts that really matter in split field coverage. Like all hitch is not a route concept that we need to focus on with our split field coverage, right?

They're running hitches, we've got guys over top of the hitches, they're there. Four verts is just so natural in split field coverage that it's like, it's four verts. We don't, we need to see it, we need to run it, but if they're two by two and run four verts against cover four or quarters, it's a vertical.

We got you. Cover it. Thank you. Like, but it's okay, they run a post out, they run a post wheel, they run, you know, they run quarters beaters. We are, my favorite quarters beater is off of our deep r- deep out concept. Yeah. Where we will it's not, it's not off our deep route. It's off of our poco concept, where we run a 59 X in, where we will run the and then it's a burst concept too that we run later, but we will run the slot receiver down the field, and we will bring an in route or a dig route or we're gonna call it by the outside receiver.

He carries the safety away. A lot of times those corners are playing outside leverage. We carry the, the [00:50:00] linebacker away with a, a, a shoot or a, a- Flair Flair and you know, he just fits right in there. We, we threw for a lot of yards off of that against the quarters team. But I don't wanna spend, you know...

Y- y- you know, if I wanna see that from a, from a defensive standpoint if I'm a split field quarters team, and you can do this with any coverage I wanted to just see this side of the field, we do split field 7 on 7 or half field 7 on 7. And I think that's a really effective way to run 7 on 7.

It's more of a drill type concept. It's almost in the curl drill type of thing because we're focused on, you know, one route concept, two. Early in the week, like you said, early in the week we're just running that one concept and getting down, okay, here's when we pass off for a switch, verts switch.

Here's when we don't pass it, that kind of thing. So, that's where we wanna start to look at the passing off and the, and the route concepts and everything and how do we collision, how do we read it. And then later in the week we might be working two or three route concepts and just rotating them.

But what it allows us to do is those scout guys get to come back. We [00:51:00] go and we run it over here while a coach tells those scout guys for the right side, "This is the next route concept we're gonna run," and the left side comes back and we say, "Watch the right side. This is what you guys are gonna do," and they go out and they run it.

And, you know, we run it for a while, and we can run it with, like, our better receivers to the right, and then we flip them and now they're attacking that side or however we wanna do it. Or we can flip the strength so we can... You know, if we don't have enough players and we got our starters out there, or if we wanna run our starters on the right side with our, you know, our guys that are also starting receivers are now running the routes and so we can get a little bit better look I love that Hatfield 7 on 7 concept and the way that we use that.

You mentioned spokes, and I don't know if Cody Alexander got this, but I always like to mention this for coaches who don't know. The first time that I heard spokes in terms of defense is Bear Bryant's book, which is now in the public domain. So for anybody who doesn't know, you should go check it out because it's amazing how little has changed.

How much has changed, but how little has changed. I've always thought about taking this book and [00:52:00] doing something with it 'cause it's public domain now. But if you go to the Gutenberg Project, I think it's guttenberg.org you can download that book for free. And just download the PDF. I, I know you can download every, probably every book I've ever written is probably out there for free, you jerks.

And I try to, try to get, get it removed, but you know, sometimes you just run outta energy. And the guys that download it for free aren't doing anything with it, and they're losers anyway, so don't... Who cares? Ah. But that one is free, free, as in free. You can download it for free, and it's Bear Bryant's I forget what it's called, but it's on the Gutenberg Project.

It's one of the few coach- Is it Building a Championship Football Team? What's that? Is it Building a Championship Football Team? It was 1961, something like that. It's old, yeah. It's from, like, A&M. It's not even Alabama. Or something like that. It's early in his career, but it's very good stuff. I- it's one of the...

I, I, I have a lot of older coaching manuals, and I enjoy them, and I enjoy seeing how to apply those ideas to more modern day. But that was a really good manual- Yeah. 1960 ... to check out. Wow. I've entertained and I may do something with it one [00:53:00] day because it is public domain, where I can actually do a little...

Long adventure the other, the other progressive stuff, guys, and it don't, don't overcomplicate this, and that's something I, I cannot overstate enough. It doesn't matter what level you're at. Quit overcomplicating football. Work from your base alignments. Work from your, if you wanna call them sim, sim alignments, where you've got guys that are crowding the line or your mug looks or start disguising.

Like, these are great progressions to work on defense, and it helps you on offense 'cause it helps those guys understand where's that defender now and where is he likely gonna end up. Yes, you're gonna game plan them, and you might find out, look, they're gonna line everywhere. Maybe they're a, a freaking eat the captain or whatever defense, right?

And they're just gonna line 11 dudes walking around on the field, but they always end up in cover three or they always end up in cover two. So your receivers can kinda get an understanding of that. But that is the true progression you need to work on. You need to originally be where you need to be and do what you need to do, and then you need to get into [00:54:00] that just look like what it ain't.

Right? Got to, yeah. You gotta start getting there. Look like what it ain't. One of the big things that guys miss is in your 7 on 7 always running cover three, cover... Like, our coaches are cover three, cover one, and never doing seven. You need 7 on 7 blitz periods. It's often it's too hard to mix in to, to remember it, but you need 7 on 7 blitz periods where we just say we're running our three under three deeps today or we're running our zero.

I don't, zero I'm not as concerned about because it's zero. But you know, it's man. But you know, your three under three deep stuff where the drops change and, and the width of the drops or if you're matching it, obviously it changes. The other one that I wanna mention was how we run 7 on 7 full field 7 on 7.

Still run a lot of it. Wristband your scout team. God dang it, wristband the scout team. The worst thing in 7 on 7, which is already not as physical as your run stuff [00:55:00] is to spend 15 minutes in the huddle for the next routes. Wristband your scout team. Find a way. You only need to be working three or four passing concepts.

Put them on a wristband, give them, give it, you know, take those four routes, plug them into eight different spaces on a standard wristband and just don't worry about the defense figuring it out. Tell the defense not to listen or, or they can run by and you can whisper it to them or whatever. You know, everybody come in and we go orange seven and they run back out.

That's fine. But if they come in there and you hold the card up, oh my God, we're killing the flow of practice. We go to a 7 on 7, we get six routes in 10 minutes. What the hell are we doing? The- I- The amount that you can just make it your own offense and just be similar- Just- ... it, it, even in team, like when you're going and you're a scout offensive guy and, and like- Yeah

you're trying to hold up a card, it drives me nuts. It drives me insane. [00:56:00] Just tag it, guys. Just- Talk to the card ... expand your own system and run your system. And then from the from the offensive standpoint because we don't wristband. Now I could wristband the entire offense for it, but I don't care.

Here's the thing. When I do full field 7 on 7, guess what? My receivers are my DBs, a lot of them. There's like one DB out there in 7 on 7 who's an actual like starter, and there's four guys who are not We don't care if they know what route is being run because they should be open. Does everybody understand?

They should be open if your concepts are right, if you have good concepts. If they're in cover three and I'm running a cover three beater, it beats cover three. So I don't care. And also they're not good enough to stop me without knowing the [00:57:00] play. So I will just say pro two. We run the play, they- we run the play, they go out, the ball gets caught, it's down.

We put the ball down and I say pro two. Pro two's the formation. Okay? So they go there, go to the line in pro two and I say 62. Now it's a slant flat Quarterback says, "62, 62. Ready, set, go." Now, your freshman corner did not process all of that. What I wanna know is can my varsity receiver process that?

Because guess what? In a no huddle situation, like you said, if we, if we want a signal, if we want a one word... So our one word is, you know, here's the formation and the one word is 62. Now I could tag that. I could say 62 62 and go, or 62 wheel, 62, you know, whatever 62 corner. I can work the tags off of it.

I can tag motions on. If I wanna do motions and stuff I can do that, but a lot of times seven on seven we're not doing that. We'll [00:58:00] work the motions in team. Seven on seven, you know, we'll just be there. We don't pass a lot from motions. We have certain passes that we do from motions. That would be a whole different segment.

Most of our motion, most of our passing is two by two. Now, we may shift, we may motion over and line up and run it, but we don't do passing while on the move stuff, I guess is what I mean to say. So our one word is just 62 or 56. So we go to the line of scrimmage and we say pro two, 56. Now, my X receiver needs to be able to process 56 means curl.

Seven big, two little, set, go. He can process in the time he hears 56. He should... 56 to my X receiver should just mean seven big, two little, eyes back to the quarterback. That's the wor- That's what those numbers mean to him. Okay? To my freshman receiver across from him, 56 means blah, especially now I'm on the wrong side of the ball.

Like, and even if he does figure it out, my varsity receiver better be able to still [00:59:00] catch the ball before he can drive back on it. Yeah. Okay? And if he starts to jump it, I'll say 56 and then I'll... I'll... You can't see it if you're not looking, but we have a signal for wheel. We'll just tag the wheel onto it.

Wheel it and we'll go, we'll go beat him with that, and then he'll stop doing that. And we'll laugh at him and say, "Be a good..." And we will encourage... And by the way, you have guys who can process it, the guys who c- who are on your defense who can process it that fast, they can also process this: "Be a good teammate."

You're not here to jump the curl route. You're here to play like their guy who didn't hear that is gonna play. That's what we wanna see in 7 on 7, 'cause we know that the corner is not gonna jump the curl route if he does we're... So we will just, we will no huddle, no huddle your 7 on 7, both sides.

Obviously defense it's easy. Three, one. If you're calling blitzes, call your blitzes. But on the offensive side, wristband the [01:00:00] scout. You don't want to yell it out to your varsity defense. They should be able to process and jump routes and make your s- backup quarterback or whoever feel really bad about himself.

At all if at all possible, try to avoid having a coach relive his glory days But if you gotta do it, I get it. I- Just again- Joe, I threw some bombs at practice today, bro. What are we talking about? I know, I know, I know, but coach, coaches- Be a good teammate. Don't sit back there and try to light up your defense, okay?

Be a good teammate. You know, just I seen guys back there. They get- they're getting back. It's 1987 all over again back there. It's like, "Bro, what are we doing?" I'm coming in pre-safety, okay? That's all I'm saying. I got wheels still. No, I know. I love the coaches that go... Yeah, I know. I know, I know. As much as possible-

try to avoid that. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Be fast in your 7 on 7 as much as possible. And then the, the last thing for this, I know we gotta wrap up, make sure all this carries into a team pass [01:01:00] segment. And Daniel, like you said, we don't wanna go I like to go 7 on 7, then run, then, then team, because we're going to have more running.

We will build in, if we do go 7 on 7 to team, then we're going to go straight into, I talked about in the last, we do seven play blocks that we script. Yeah. And so if I go from 7 on 7 straight into team, I am going to run those you know, a pass block first and then work from there. Do work your play actions in 7 on 7 some.

That gets neglected a lot as far as the offensive side. Again, work your blitzes some in the defensive side. And I will do this a lot too, just talking about from a, from a practice organization standpoint, get your lineman off the field and do your 7 on 7 at the end of practice. It also allows you to have, you know, run your team, throw some of your passes especially if you're, you know, if you're gonna run 30 plays and only six of them are gonna be passes that lets you have that kind of correction period at the end for the passing concepts.

7 on 7 basically becomes a correction period [01:02:00] for you. Send the lineman in. Let them go watch film with their offensive line coach who's sick of being out in the heat too, and or go to the, or- Yeah ... or send the lineman to the weight room or whatever it is. If you've got a small weight room and, you know, this lets you get the lineman in the weight room, get their lift done while you do 7 on 7, and then by the time they're done and you do 7 on 7 and conditioning, and they'll be done with their lifting, and then you can get the next group in.

Be creative in your practice planning and, and 7 on 7's one that you can kind of move around with, with that because it doesn't involve the lineman. Yep. I like it. I think we checked all the boxes, man. We, we talked enough about how to get 7 on 7 on the field. I don't, I don't think we have to cover that piece tonight unless you just have anything to add to it, but, Never wanna talk more 7 on 7.

That's what I'm talking about

Yep. That's it. Okay, good. So tonight we talked about group passing drills, planning your group passing periods, building progressions into group passing, and we've sprinkled a bunch of the translating 7 on 7 to the field- ... in there. Biggest thing you gotta know is, like, [01:03:00] if you're on offense, understand those guys are playing run first.

You're gonna get an edge. And if you're on defense, guys, I know there's no run, but you better not get used to that, having that edge. Last week's episode, we talked about how to defend the spread option. Great defensive episode on option play, 'cause it's ... Love to always go back and talk about those. And then next week we're off to offensive line drills, which is the mack daddy of them all.

Very bad. I know. I know. Let's go. Maybe that's how we open the desk pod- Timothy Sam. I know. Open it, yeah. Yeah. Oh, shit. Shot a hole. Anyway, what's your level up, Joe? It is, you know what we talked about before is that lost letters. You know, guys, I've been doing this for 17 years. Closing in on 18, by the way.

The first things that I ever wrote, blog posts, were written at the end of 2008, I believe. Or at least working on it. So for, you know, 17 plus years, I've written a lot of stuff. I've recorded a lot of stuff. There's 50 episodes, I think, of the Gridiron Chat podcast that will never be heard again that, that I [01:04:00] published in 2009.

That was my very first podcast. I don't even know if the first few episodes of this podcast are available. They might be, they might not be. Crazy ... a- and I mean, Nate and I did it at, when I was sitting at my kitchen table with a l- a Linux laptop that was an old laptop and like a heads- a, a Logitech headset.

Sound quality is terrible. Nate thankfully was a little more like tech-oriented than me. It probably sounds much better. It's, so as the Chief picks in, so obviously you can see the videos and stuff there. He's puts a little more into the tech side. So, you know, it's a little bit like there's also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, probably a thousand or more blog posts that I wrote in the past that aren't published anywhere now.

They just... I'm not necessarily-- They're not all bad obviously, but they don't fit in with what we do now is, you know. I've looked back and tried to like repurpose them and do something with [01:05:00] them, and it's just like, "Nah, this doesn't really fit." There's, there's entire years of the the chalkboard forum from before we moved the site that I've, I've got it, and I would love to, to use it 'cause there's some great conversation on there.

Yeah. We've done so much, so many things, so many videos and things that, that, you know, that were really, really good and I just, I don't know what to do with all of this stuff. One of those was a newsletter that we did that, that I wrote in basically 2024 for JDFB Premium Coaching Systems clients, where I could do a deep dive and do the thing that I, one of the things that I really like doing of writing.

And I wrote these newsletters. It would take all month to write them, and then I would send them to the printer, and the printer would print them. There were no PDFs. They were printed, and they were mailed only to JDFB Premium Coaching System subscribers in that month. So you had to be a subscriber that month to get that [01:06:00] newsletter.

They were deep dives. They were, They are. You know, on a specific topic, ask a Coach Simple. You know, I mentioned some of the things we talked about. You know, there's a, there's like a m- just... The ASCA one has just this, like, super in-depth breakdown of the strong tackle, and it was just like what...

Sometimes they start a stream of conscious and they have to edit them later. They've always got to focus what's important for coaches to learn about and know about and, and, and apply. And they're sometimes a little higher level, but not super-duper high level because they were written for guys who had already heard the podcast or heard Coach Simple, you know, that kind of stuff.

They knew, they knew those words, ASCA. They knew those words. This was just a, a deeper dive application of them and, you know, get f- thought going. And, you know, honestly, paper got super expensive. Postage kept going up. Yeah. And it wasn't, you know, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. And so these kind of went, you know, if, if you had them, you had them.[01:07:00]

And I never did any digits, and I'd have coaches would email me and say, "Hey, I misplaced this issue. I lost this issue. Can I get it?" I'm like, "We don't have back issues." "You know, I don't have any, I don't have anything to sell. I don't have anything to give you. I don't have any..." It's been two years, just took them all.

Checked them out, read them, they're still good. Formatted them. Wrote an additional one on the five things that our most successful coaches do that's never been published anywhere before. And we had this put into a very nice manual that you can order now at joedanielfootball.com/lost. It is called Coach Simple Volume One.

I am interested in, in doing this again, so that is why it's volume one. Coach Simple Volume One: The Lost Letters. Because they have not been seen in two years, and if you were not, if you were not somebody who was on at that time, you didn't get them. [01:08:00] And if you happen ... I, I said I was gonna mail one to Brady, and here's why.

I s- a lot of the back issues that I have are things that got returned to sender, and it would take, guys, it would take months for these to come back. I was still getting them, like, like this year, I'm getting things that were mailed in 2024 and would get returned to sender 18 months later. And I have about six issues that were mailed to Brady, 'cause I don't know what's wrong with his address, but they wouldn't take it.

Ah. So, so, so- How funny ... you know, I, they're there, and it was like, And I just, it was one that I remembered. It was, I didn't even know who Brady was at the time, right? Right. But, you know, I know, I, like, I would keep seeing his name come up, and I'm like, "God, this guy, like, something's wrong with his address.

I'm gonna have to try to fix his address or whatever." 'Cause there's nothing wrong with his address. It just wouldn't go through, so that's why I was gonna mail him. So yeah. Little Oklahoma, baby. Yeah, it's the Oklahoma post office. So, you know, that's what they are. They are very deep dives on very important topics.

Special teams, one of the things that we never talk about. It's [01:09:00] probably the most in-depth breakdown and look at special teams and my rules of special teams, my philosophy of special teams. There's not, there's not a single diagram in any of these. It is thought. It is process. It is... They are all step-by-step instruction.

They are all thought process. They are all application. They are not... When I say there's no diagrams, that doesn't mean this is all theory and coach born. These are all applicable, step-by-step, do this with your program right now, do this with your position right now. But I, I weave in stories and I weave in thought process and I weave in all of those things.

I'm very proud of the writing that I did for that and it always bothered me that they were essentially lost, and so I'm very excited that we packaged them together. And you can go to joedanielfootball.com/lost to order that manual now Just wanna let you know you're missing 16 episodes of the Football Coaching Podcast on Spotify.

And the very first one that's posted is the Offseason Part Two, so- ... missing the offseason- Sucks for you guys who want the first part of your offseason from 2012. [01:10:00] '12. That's right. Which is wild. I got- I know I do have those, by the way. They do exist. My, my level up is, is a little bit different this week.

So, you know, as I've, my seven years I've always put together... From year one, I started stealing ideas, and I, I took your course over football philosophy and, like, kind of what is your philosophy and building out all this, right? So I s- I've always been a big picture guy making a big plan to someday take over as a head coach.

Which, you know, obviously didn't go so hot this first time, but whatever. One of the things I picked up along the way was how to do your helmet stickers. Like, what does that look like, right? What's the plan? How do you do it? So when I was at Stillwell, which is my third year in the business, I was the statistician because another thing I've learned is a lot of guys don't like doing stats, which is weird to me.

Like, you get to celebrate what your kids are doing. Anyway, I took over as the stat guy, offense and defense. I created an entire score chart that [01:11:00] gave certain points to different stats so our kids were ranked for us. Y- who cares defensive player of the game, it's easy. Who had the most points, right? Like, I don't have to worry is it gonna offend someone or whatnot.

I can publish the data and show you why that person was the defensive player of the game But a part of that was a helmet sticker pro- program that stayed cumulative throughout the year. So like my running backs get stickers for every 100 yards. I don't care if it was a 100-yard game, when they break 100...

If they go 99 and they go one yard next week, they get a sticker for breaking 100 yards. Offensive linemen get the same ones for yardage and touchdowns, and anyway. But I created all this years ago, and I've never really been in the place to... We used it that year some, but I was still kind of fine-tuning it, and I've continued to fine-tune it, and I'm finally getting to use it this year with our six-year-olds because coach was like, "Hey, we wanna give them stickers."

But guys, a lot of the... And, and look, I can only speak for my team. I honestly don't know what the rest of the teams look like coaching-wise, but I think one other coach on staff has some experience, and I [01:12:00] think it was l- last year might've been his first. I, I can't remember. Coach, if- Sure. It's Nathan. I don't, I don't know if you listen to this or not.

If I may be misrepresenting it entirely, but I w- two of them are brand new, and I think his was just last year at the same level or a level below. But they don't have... They didn't even know they were supposed to have this kind of stuff, right? Why would you, if you've never coached, have a helmet sticker plan or a practice script, script or schedule- Yeah

or, or understanding what dr- how to make a drill out. Like, so I, I kinda get to cheat and mentor a little bit and all that here. But the helmet sticker thing showed up. I got to break it out. I'm keeping stats on it again. So we are like 557 yards rushing on two games, and we've given up, I think, a total of 39 or 38 or something yards, period, on defense.

Like, it's fun to go back to stats and track tackles and pancakes, and it's just really a lot of fun, and having that available has been really cool. So it's one of those things, like, I'm not [01:13:00] lucky that I did that. It's just prepar- what is it? Prep- luck is preparation plus opportunity or something. Like, it's not lucky I had it laying around.

I just did the prep a long time ago, and it gets to show up But that's more of a level up because, guys, it's never too early to start putting your package together 'cause you don't know when an opportunity's gonna show up. It might just be practice planning. Coach is like, "Hey, this year I want you to do all the practice planning."

Cool, be good with stinking Google Sheets or, or Excel and right, and be able to- That's half the battle, yeah. ... color things and darken things and type and group and, like, you, you kinda got it won. But if, if you've never looked at it and a coach gets you that, you might be overwhelmed and kind of fumble the bag there when you could have shown, "Hey, I'm, I can be the next level guy for you.

I could be a coordinator someday," whatever. Like, there's nothing wrong with going out, having your own plan, your own program, your own system even, waiting in the, in the wings in case you get that, that opportunity, that shot. So, it's just one of those weird things that showed up. I got to use it. I was glad I did it all them years ago, but it, it's kind of [01:14:00] fun.

And now the kids are loaded up with stickers and they love it, but they make sense. We may go get shut out this week and nobody gets stickers. So it's not just like, "Here's 10 stickers for everyone." I, you gotta earn them still. So it's been pretty cool. Anyway, all right, let's pay the bills one more time.

Get out of here, Joe. I think I just paid the bills. Good. Folks JoeDanielfootball.com/lost. You're welcome. Get that manual. Guys, if you listen to this podcast, you need that manual. Love it. It's just, it's, it's the next level. Like, especially if you listen to this podcast and you're like, "I don't want...

You know, I've got my own system, I've got my own run game, I've got my own defense. I don't need JDFB premium coaching systems," but you want, but you like all the stuff that is in this podcast, this is kind of the next level of that. Yeah. This is going deeper with it. And again, if you're new to the podcast, it's still gonna work for you 'cause you're gonna catch up.

'Cause you, you should be binging all of these and, and ruining your [01:15:00] wife's- ... vacations by making her listen to these, On your long road trips, as many of you have done. Don't lie, I know so many of you have done it. Your wives hate me, and that's okay. They hate Daniel too. If I wasn't on here, I would listen to it, but I can't hear myself talk for that long.

I can't. I, I think I made my wife do it one year. And the other one is the Joe Rogan podcast, and they cuss a lot, so I'd have to be like, "Kids, put on a movie. We're, we're in daddy movie now." Oh, yeah. So anyway. All right, sweet. Sales, opening, closing, anything special this, this coming up? We have a, a manual called Joe Daniel Football Coach Simple Volume One: The Lost Letters that is available at joedanielfootball.com/lost.

Jesus. You can grab that right now. Oh, man. It's in pre-order as of the time of this recording, but like I said, by the time that this episode is out, we should be sending them for printing. As soon as you order, as soon as we- Yeah ... process the order and get it ready, you'll get a notification, and then as soon as it ships, you'll get a notification as well.

But yes, get that manual. It's, it's- Excellent ... it's cool. Social, social media-wise, I'm @CoachChamboOK on Twitter/X. You can email me at [01:16:00] chamberlainfootballconsulting@gmail.com. Guys, you can really email me about anything. I've got a lot of questions about that two platoon stuff, how I organize things.

Everything I do isn't the same as Joe's, especially if you're a guy that's already paying for Joe's system and, and you're like, I'm just... You're like me, you can't quit learning and just looking at other ways. Like, I, I love talking ball to you, so I'll get back to you. Email me, chamberlainfootballconsulting@gmail.com.

Joe, where are you at, sir? Joe@joedanielfootball.com. You can email if you have questions about the systems, if you have a question about the manual anything, you can email me there. Obviously right now we have our, our, for JDFB Premium Coaching Systems members, I am on every single Monday night for the Chalk Talk Q&A calls.

I did, you know, will mention we say I'm, I'm on the, I'm on the chalkboard. I'm still lurking the chalkboard, but that's the community and that's where I want. So if you're a JDFB member, jump in the community and help other coaches answer questions. I just found that whenever I jumped in and answered a question, it was like conversation over.

Joe answered it, that's it, dead. And only a few people, Daniel among them, would actually come in with a [01:17:00] different idea because it was like, "Well, this is Joe Daniel Football." So come in with your different ideas. That's the community. That's the place to share is on the chalkboard for all of our members.

You can catch me on the Chalk Talk Q&A calls every Monday night during the season. And as I send out, you can text me. I, I, to our members, I sent my number out. You can text me and I will... If it's a football emergency. I still don't work weekends. That's right. But I'll get back to you on Monday morning.

If this is your first time listening to the podcast, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. You can find us on your favorite podcatcher. If you've been listening for a while, please do leave us a review, especially on those big ones, the Apple and the Spotifys, where a lot of, most people listen.

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


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