[00:00:00] Welcome back, coaches. This is the Football Coaching Podcast. I am Daniel Chamberlain, co-host here with Joe Daniel, as always. What's up, coach? Dude, I am fresh off the practice field because I'm getting to practice one day a week this year, and it is absolutely the best time of my life. I... God, I miss it so much.

I'm doing the, like, the youth thing, right? So I get that practice time, but there's a little difference in- Sure I coach O-line for them and we just call it sumo drill, block the guy in front of you, versus coaching DBs to do, like, DB stuff. Right. So much better. Yep. I missed it. Get to actually say things and get responses.

Yes. Like they know what you're saying. Yeah. And when I say, "Is this offense? What do you do on offense?" "I tackle." "No, the other one." Yep. I get the right answer at least when I ask them what they do. Power minute here. We're talking defending junk offenses today. We're gonna talk about defense is [00:01:00] a system, establishing easy rules for your players and containers for any offensive wrinkle.

Last week we covered safety drills, so if you're looking for some safety stuff, information, jump back in time one week and go grab that one. Next week we're off to scout team offense, which will be a great one, 'cause there's a lot of guys right now that are trying to do that. Stop printing out cards and showing cards, by God.

Anyway, do what you gotta do. But yep, we're to cover the many ways to do scout team offense next week. Coaches, we are into district play now. Unless you are in Georgia where they had their state championship last week. Number one- No, they keep playing. They play like a 28-week schedule. Oh, that's what it is.

They start early and just keep going. Like NFL schedule. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Preseason, like, that, that whole feeling is gone, right? Every- we have film. Look, there are film thieves out there, so if you think you're hiding anything at this point- No ... you are wrong. You are not hiding anything. Everything you've put on the film is, somebody has it.

Yep. Speaking of this is how shady coaching film is Our opponent [00:02:00] for this coming up week, so the one we play Friday, so obviously last Friday when this was re- when this comes out accidentally sent us film two weeks ago, and it was our own film. They accidentally sent us the film that had gotten stolen and sent to them with no comment, like, "Oh, crap."

And our end zone was in there, and you know how that is, man. Your end zone- Yeah, you try to... Yeah ... that's, that's coveted, dude. Like, you don't spread that around. But we had accidentally- Yeah ... I guess, sent it and then it got shared very quickly. So, yeah, your film's out there, boys. You think they ain't got it, they got it.

Yep. Anyway now obviously it's just execution, adjustments, finding a way to win on Friday night. Like, keep, keep answering questions and that's kinda what we're into. So if this podcast helps you along the way doing any of that, answering questions changing personnel, adding a wrinkle, sticking to the basics, whatever it is, please do send it out to another coach that's kinda, that, you know, kind of doing that weekly push with you.

Let's pay the bills here, Joe, and we'll get into it. Yeah, so we're gonna be talking today [00:03:00] about junk offenses and defending junk offenses, and a big part of this is gonna be built around you need a system. So we are in the middle of the year but if you are realizing, or maybe you're listening to this later, or if you're getting ready to play a junk offense and decided to grab this one for the first time you need a system and there are things that you can do right now to, if your, if your playbook has gotten out of whack, gotten out of hand there are things that you can do right now to tighten up your system and you need to do it.

And so a good place to start is with the Ultimate Defensive System Guide, the complete guide to building your ultimate defensive system. In that guide you're gonna see tips and techniques on building that system, what goes into, what is a system, what needs to go into your system things about installing your system that you may see maybe you made a mistake and you can kinda back up and go back through it.

You can always repair you can't fix everything, but you can always, first of all, you can always strip some pages out and you can always go back and [00:04:00] work with your guys. So download the Ultimate Defensive System Guide. You can get that by going to JoeDanielfootball.com/system. I love it. Go be a JDFB Platinum Member, do some game film analysis.

That's my challenge to you this week. Also, if you're looking for a way to steal film, email me and let's talk about it. I'm a film connoisseur, one might say. I'll teach you the basics. Or you can pay me to do it, I don't know. We'll figure something out. There's, there's always, every staff has to have that one guy who has, like, the network of coaches that he c- goes around and- Oh, the network coaches is out, man.

The ... No, it's all, it's all out there. Oh, y- It's all live. Everybody's live. N- no one anymore is like, "You will come to the games and pay us $5 entry." It's like, "No, stay at home and watch the game." COVID did bad things for football. Well, you can do that too, yeah. No, we- ... we, we get all the film from everybody, and yeah.

The- the best is when you get the coach who doesn't want to exchange film in 2026, and it's like, [00:05:00] "Buddy, we're getting your film." Yeah. First of all, there's somebody else that you didn't exchange with. You know, you didn't exchange with anybody else, so they're all like, "Oh, that guy? Yeah, here's everything I got."

There's just a Google Drive of your data. Yeah. Right? Like- Yeah ... that's just how- There's broken... Yeah, not only that. Like, it's even worse because then I get it from somebody broken down. Like, now I just got more time, like- Yeah, for sure ... yeah. Love it. Love it. They're, they're on the phone telling me ... You know, the, the worst thing is when you go to somebody else to get the film, they're telling you everything that, the stuff that you don't get from film, the, the cadence and you know, all that stuff that you don't see, a- a- and, you know, the, the signals and whatever else, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I've, I reached out to a mutual opponent this past spring when I pretended I was a head coach for a little while, and he was like, "Hey, here's the film. 15 was the best guy on the field. We couldn't stop him. They quit throwing it to him, so we won. If they would've just kept giving it to that guy, I had no answers."

And like, you're like, "Okay, cool. Well, appreciate [00:06:00] that." So it's good. How much fun is it seeing that in game film analysis, though, when you see somebody do something? Again, when we'll be breaking down one of our teams, you know, if it's one of our teams on offense, we're, when we're looking at it, it's frustrating, but how often do we see somebody run a play and you're like, "Oh, God, they can't stop that," and then never see it again- Yeah

and it's just like- "Okay, never mind." "Okay, thanks. Appreciate it." Yeah. My favorite in game film analysis is when you're ... We'll move on. I swear to God, guys, we won't talk this all day. But I'm breaking it down, I'm like, "Ah, this guy bit on that," or, you know, and I'm like, "I wouldn't, I wouldn't..." The surprise comes back- Oh, I just love that one

and three plays later it's like, "There it is." I haven't even watched ahead yet. I, I quit watching ahead. I just- I had one, I had one this week that was the chase pursuit where the, the kids all broke into the Pr- I'm sorry to the coach who sent it 'cause it, they did a good job, but the kids all broke into the old school pursuit drill- instead of the backside defensive lineman running the chase path. [00:07:00] And I was like, you know, just seeing that, just seeing that, you know, I don't, don't know if it happens or whatever, but that's when that quarterback... 'Cause it was on a sprint out actually by the quarterback, and then, you know, that's where they cut all the way, the coach's nightmare, where they cut all the way back across the field and, and turn it into a 40-yard gain where you're in 700 yards to get there Yeah

second half it happened, and I was like Yeah. Yeah. Guys, here, here's the deal- We can get to that one soon enough ... if you think, if you think you're special because you have cover three corners that can't cover, they can't, they still get beat deep. If you think you're special because your free safety bites on stuff he shouldn't, or your D-line refuses to squeeze down blocks, or your linebackers won't read a pulling guard, you think that you have it bad, I assure you, everyone is the same.

We're all fighting it. We're all working on the same thing. I mean- And it's, you know, it's funny because, and we will get into the episode, but it's funny because we, we, you know, you and I sit here and we kinda joke about it because we've [00:08:00] seen a lot of, we've watched a lot of these films this year and in years past.

And yeah, a lot of our coaches are coming in, and they're, you know, they're, they're going like, "Ah, we teach this stuff, and they're just not doing it." And it's like, no, I know. Like, you can tell the difference between it's been taught and it hasn't been taught. Like, I can tell you're teaching it. You just gotta, like, don't move on.

Like- Right ... you, you know, don't move on. But yeah, I mean, we, we watch it every single, you know, e- every single week, and we see teams that are really developing fast, and we see teams that are, that are, you know, taking longer to develop. And you know, very rarely do we get a team who just, like, nails it and, and like

Like, the teams that I've had who nailed it was, like, Khan. And, you know, Khan Chase and Bill Weiss, and guess what? They also do game film analysis now because- Right. You have to hire those guys. Be- because those were two guys who had teams that had really lesser t- you know, some lesser talent [00:09:00] and nailed it, and it's not easy.

It's, it's not easy to do at all. Let's let's get into it here, Joe. So we are talking about facing junk offenses, and if, if, if some of you guys are like, "I've heard of junk defenses but not junk offenses," I- we get it, man. But in, in game film analysis, obviously sometimes we get middle school teams, right, and junior high and JV.

Like, we, we get every level. We get, you- and I was watching some, I can't remember if that was the middle school team or actually maybe a varsity, and I saw outside zone to the right, and I'm talking you're in 12P, and everybody's reaching right. And they hand the ball off to the running back going the other way to nobody.

To no blockers, to five defenders or whatever. Like, it's what? And you see these things. So there are people out there who don't, they refuse to buy into a system. You're listening to this, you've at least probably gone to JoeDanielfootball.com and looked at what's available if, if you're not already a member.

There are people out there that refuse. All they're doing is just [00:10:00] taking a handed-down thing and pretending they know what they're doing. So we do get these, these offenses, and I know Joe's gonna have more details on what these junk offenses look like, but there's some chaos out there. And they get hard to even almost game plan for because you're like- I'm reading outside zone and we're all, we're all running hill lines and we're scraping over his backers and w- and then all of a sudden here comes what out of the backfield?

Like, how do you, how do you game plan a broken thing, right? So you see a lot of weird stuff. Anyway so let's just, let's, let's talk to that, Joe, kind of de- defining what this junk offenses is and then, and then talking about defense being a system.


Defining a Junk Offense
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I would define a junk offense in general as an offense that, you know, in thinking about this, an offense that doesn't have an identity.

Now there are cases where the identity of the offense may [00:11:00] be junk on purpose. And what I mean by that is teams that I would in, in a way I would take, I would look at a team like to an extent maybe a Bixby where it's not as easy to just say obviously they had a very clear identity but you've got so many things to prepare for that this can also apply to from your standpoint it's defending junk even though they're not running junk.

Right. Where you just have to defend so much. But really what we're thinking about is and really with the, the, at least the couple, the few games that I saw, you don't have to defend that much. You just have to get lined up right. And then, you know, they're pretty good at it. But, Really, we, it's, it's the teams that it's like what's the identity of this team?

Like, I, I don't know. You know,


Offenses With No Identity
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their run game is [00:12:00] sloppy. Their, you know, their, their run game even at the varsity level sometimes their run game looks like they're just blocking Ts meaning that everybody's gotta block somebody rule. Block the guy over top of you, block the guy ahead of you, block the T, whatever like that is.

Their, their schemes don't make sense. They don't mesh together. They're in spread one play, they're in double wing the next. A lot of times we see teams that are you know, just as an example, they're lined up in a formation that I remember a team years ago that was lined up in a wishbone but they were daggone sure not a wishbone off- option offense, right?

They were just... They were in a wishbone but their offense made no sense. They're running power. They're running this or that. You know, everything that we've talked about to this point the wing T, you know. They've series based and we go, "Okay, that is the..." And by the way, there can be junk wing Ts be- because they'll pull from nine different series and not really execute any of them well.

But it doesn't happen as often. Usually we can go, "Okay, that's Buck series. That's [00:13:00] Belly." You know, we can identify the plays and say, "This is a wing T. They're gonna be gap scheme. They're gonna be, you know, down, down, kick out, wrap," and we can get a very good feel for it. You know, if we're talking about an air raid we know there's gonna be short passing game.

We know what the concepts are gonna be. We're talking about a double wing. We're talking about a, a, a flexbone option. All of those we can sit down and we can say, "This is, this is what we expect to see. This is the identity." They're gonna be somewhere in the ballpark of that identity and and, you know, we kinda have a, a roadmap.

So you can, you can go to JDFB and you can go in and you can either find a, a manual on defending a Pro I offense. You, you... That's an older manual but you can find it. It's got some things that are out of date but, you know, we've got lots and lots of Chalk Talk Q and A's on adjusting to flexbone. And look, we've got Chalk Talk Q and A's all over about adjusting to the beast formation and adjusting to unbalanced single wing and adjusting to a lot [00:14:00] of things that are non-conventional but they have a they have a identity.

This is who they are. They've, they've gotten a playbook. These come from often, and obviously I'm not talking about the Bixbys or anything like that, I'm talking about now the, the, the junk junk. They often come from, quite frankly, they come from arrogant coaches who decide that they are either going to create or invent their offense instead of learning from anybody else.

They run what they remember, they run what they think they know about football. They try to, They try to just win on athletes. I've seen a lot of the junk stuff from the teams that are doing the heavy recruiting and if they didn't have the players, it's junk. A lot of times the passing concepts are either very, very convoluted [00:15:00] or very, very simple.

The passing concepts will range from, you know, you guys running routes all over the place to you know, just running a go, running a, running a go and running a hitch and like, you know, or a, a post. Like I remember one team that the primary passing concept that they ran, we played against their pri- their, their number one passing concept was post wheel.

And it's like post wheel isn't a, a passing concept. Post wheel is an object receiver, right? That's, it's not if, it's not a passing concept . Right. It's a pa- post out is a vertical stretch concept. Post wheel is an object receiver for teams that are jumping me out, right? And s- so, you know, post out is, is vertical stretch.

It's a cover zero beat or whatever you want it to be. So that's where this comes in, and they are, they are set up in a way that it's very difficult to prepare for them because there's no [00:16:00] identity, because they might run 12, 15 different formations, because they might run, And, and like I said, so that's where...

And I, I'll include myself in that too. I boatload formations and looks and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, that's, that's the junk side of it. But of course, when we're talking about what I wanna run, what I run or what you know, a Bixby or somebody like that runs, the core of ours is the blocking scheme is always there.

Very few blocking schemes. The... You know, we talk about whether it's tags or whatever we don't have a lot of passing schemes. We have a lot of tags that can go in there. These have no, there's no... Everything is designed for, like, one shot deal, right? There's just a bunch of things that are designed for one shot deals.

Usually they're mad about the execution. The, the execution is not very good because they're doing 500 different things, and they're mad at the players because they don't understand football, don't wanna win, won't go study the playbook when the playbook is [00:17:00] unstudyable. Or they're, you know, they just don't understand football.

That's, that's the, that's the mentality of the coach if it's not working. If it is working, it's working because of the superior talent usually. So, that's what we're talking about when we talk about the junk offense. Just no clear identity, lots of formations. And so, you know, it gets very difficult because when we look at things and we go, "Okay, top three runs, top three passes," and it's like, I don't know.

Like, what's their top three formations? I don't know. They had 15 passes in one, ran it all once, right? Like- Yeah. And it's like, it's, it can be very difficult. Now, a lot of times they'll have very simple, kinda like what you mentioned, the blocking scheme will always be the same thing, but the backfield will be, like, you know, different.

We'll see more of that, as you said, we'll see more of that at the youth level. But the, you know, the, we still see it at the varsity level as well. So that's what we wanna talk about this week is, is, you know, [00:18:00] what is a junk offense? That's, that's the definition. And then the solution for that is just very simply,


Why You Need a Defensive System
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the number one solution is you have got to have a system, and as long as you have a good system And not a flavor of the week, and that's kind of where they fall.

They, you know, we, we, we hear about flavor of the week defense all the time. But, you know, the flavor of the week on offense is installing the new play, that we're gonna install a new play every week. We install a new, new play, new offense, new formation, doing something new. The playbook is extremely bloated.

A lot of times they'll s- they'll, they'll, you'll, you'll s- run into things like where if a play beat you last week, they're gonna install it because they think that, like, you're not gonna work on that or something. I don't know. So, you know, those are the things that the, that you're dealing with here.

And the thing [00:19:00] is, if you have a system, you should be excited to play these teams because you are going to execute at a high level. Now, if the ones that are just crazy talented, it just kind of sucks because it pisses you off because you get beat by a team that's so poorly coached, but has just, you know...

Talent can, can hide a lot of shortcomings. Yeah. And maybe not even hide them. It's very obvious that they're poorly coached to, to a trained eye. But yeah, I mean, that's what we're talking about here, and if you have a system, all of the adjustments and all of the tweaks and all of the things should be built in at the base level.

So you shouldn't go out there and be kind of like, confused. But then there are things that we can do to make it even better for us. So I, you know, Bixby, no one, no one here is saying that theirs is a junk offense, first of all. No, no, no, no. But it is a great description of pulling your freaking hair out when you turn [00:20:00] on the film because how am I going to...

Look, Cameron Palmer's a good friend of mine now, and that's why I'm at Bristow helping them guys is because I love Cameron Palmer. And he skull dragged me my whole year when I was at Owasso as the freshman DC and he was the freshman OC at Bixby. Because you turn on film and, and you're right, it's like every team kind of has it at a base.

They, you know, look, we're gonna get 50% this, 20% this, and then a, a smattering of other things, and we'll put it in containers and boxes and we'll- Mm. And that first year I, I was just like, I don't... I turned on film and I was more confu- and it's like, I don't know. I they're in two tight, they're in one tight, they're in five wide, they're in quads, they're in like what the- Yeah

motions all over the place. Right? And honestly- And for them, at the heart of it is, is blocking schemes. At the heart of it is the- And that's the way that we do it. Yes. But, but yeah. The, the gap scheme generally, the, the zone stuff is in there [00:21:00] too, but yeah. Like, and- Yeah, our offenses are, are relatively similar in, in that respect, just better run.

For sure. They're just better run But that is a great, a great feeling to look back. We actually just watched film the other day of him absolutely destroying the defen- and, and, you know, like you only get what you get. And those kids are bred and born in their stuff, and we were not that year.

So But the system is something you have to create to, to handle it. And I heard something when I was younger, and at the time I didn't believe it, I'll be honest with you, 'cause that's how we work as humans, right? I never believe the, the thing that someone gives me the answer. And they said, "If they're simple, beat them with complexity."

"And if they're complex, beat them with simplicity." Yep. And that really has kind of the, the, the longer I've been in coaching, it's, it's really described a lot of what I've found you have to do. If you go out and find a team that runs 38 formations... I was trying to remember, [00:22:00] I wanna say in our non...

Now, this was at Bristow. In our non-conference, I think we showed 65 or 68 formations. Now, obviously we don't have 60 formations in our offense, but we had tags and auto shifts and like, you know. And, and if you have 10 tags that change a formation and you apply it to your five formations- ... you're very quickly at 50 formations for the defense to break down.

So that's what I mean is we showed 68 looks, I think is what... I'd have to go back to the math. Mm. But it was pretty damn close. And we were... Like that was exciting to me because I know in the core of what we do, which is the Bixby offense, but our kids are just like, "Cool, that's just GT. That's fun." Yeah. Right? I don't, I don't care what you tell them skinny guys to do. And so, you know, when you face these teams that are super complex, you gotta start putting them in buckets and containers. I know that's our third part and I'm probably gonna trounce all over our lines here tonight. Sure. Yeah. But that's part of what your system needs to be, right?


Umbrella Run Fits Handle Any Scheme
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You start talking about having a defensive system, there's, there, [00:23:00] there's pieces, the cores. The fundamentals is like the 4-2-5 or the three, the Joe Daniel football defense, right? You've gotta have the umbrella run fits. That solves 90% of your problems right there. I can kinda go stop any run. Can they load up three tight ends on the ball one side?

Absolutely they can. How do you handle that? Regular. What is a one tight, now a two tight, a three tight check, and now here we are. We're just playing ball, right? It doesn't get too complex. You start just putting things in the system. I call that like a condensed check, and that's what I talk through a lot of j- game film analysis.


Trips and Bunch Formation Checks
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Stop putting corners out there guarding grass. Stop putting corners on the edge like they're a linebacker, and- ... and right, so you have these little checks. Joe and our stuff, it's a trips check. Having trips checks is not, it's not universal. And I, I honestly, I didn't know how people handled trips.

But that's a great way to go, it doesn't matter. Like we're gonna call this blitz or we're gonna call this coverage, and trips generally breaks it, so we just have a trips check. That's fine. I'm gonna always know I fall into my three or four trips [00:24:00] checks format or defenses that stop anything they really want to do.

Bunch checks, right? My system, your system, handles bunch the same no matter where it is. If it's out on the bottom of the numbers and they bunch, we treat it the same as if it's three tight ends bunch right next to the tackle. Because- That's just a bunch check. We just do what we do. So this is when we start talking about your system needs to handle these things.

It doesn't mean that every formation I have in alignment, it means these core, core I think is really the best word, the core pieces of that, of that formation, of that play set, we handle a certain way. Squeezing down blocks answers all your gap scheme woes if you just go squeeze down blocks. I don't care if you're squeezing it for a guard or the third tight end, right?

We handle them the same. So when... as we talk through this, you're thinking about, "Well, okay, I have a system." Does it answer everything [00:25:00] without you knowing what everything is? Yep. Right? Does it... Do you have containers that cover 90% of football? And then, and then we'll get to some other stuff. We talked about option a few weeks ago, how your run fits.

The umbrella run system just handles option. It already does it for you. Zone scheme, fine, it's there. Gap scheme, it's fine. The wing T, the flex bone, it doesn't matter. It's all covered by this very simple core principle of the JDFB football systems, which is your umbrella run fit. So that's what having a defense to handle a junk offense is.

I can turn on film and watch it, but I really don't need to. Even if I didn't get film review, when they line up, if they're so fast that I can't get strength calls, then they're not that complex. You're talking your flex bones and stuff now, where we're just gonna line up and play on our base stuff, and if they come out and show a bunch of stuff and it's complex, it takes some time to get it set up, your [00:26:00] guys are gonna be like, "Oh, okay, that's a bunch.

That's fine. Oh, over here I, I have a wing. It's a condensed edge. That's a check. I'm good there." We got trips this time or quads, which we treat the same as trips, or five. I don't, I don't know what you call that. We treat it basically the same as trips, right? We're gonna be able to match up. So all those things that a guy can throw at you as an OC, you, you have answers.

Are... You're gonna have to figure out the m- the minutia throughout the game if you didn't have film, but that's why we have film, right? You can figure out the small minutia and, and solve with other tags or whatever, but your system should cover that too. If I need to squeeze a defensive end, if I need to, you know, gap exchange, if I need to do these things to win a ballgame, the system carries that as well.

Yeah, and it's, it's having the basic checks and having them assigned is, is the number one. And obviously you mentioned the umbrella run fits, like that core of the run fits system is there and matches everything.


Double Wing and Heavy Check Adjustments
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We talk a lot about double wing. I love the double wing [00:27:00] offense. Two times in one season, the first time being when we went to a scrimmage and we're told that Riverheads runs a wing T, and we got there and Riverheads run, runs a state championship that year double wing.

And, and they're not the same. And so we, you know, we... N- now they still beat us pretty good. It was a scrimmage. It was the, it was the last part of the scrimmage. I think it th- it was a jamboree, and we sat some guys, and they s- they handled us really well and, and, you know. But we were able to line up and play and not get embarrassed and quite honestly with some backups and, and some guys who were out of position at that point.

Because even though we didn't have our double wing defense in, we already knew what we were going to do with double wing, but we didn't need to install that. We didn't think we needed to install that until Lunenburg, who was the double wing team that had been on our schedule for, you know, well, a decade, but not when I was there.

And so [00:28:00] the, it still wor- you know, the base 4-2-5 and then the goal line still worked fine. You know, still fit it And then the, the second part of that is later in the season, I've talked before about the game that we had where we showed up and played the first quarter and the lights went out, and we had to come back weeks later- Weeks later.

What- ... weeks later and come back on a Monday. The, the Monday before we play the team that we're gonna, we're gonna be playing. They haven't lost a district game in 10 years. We're gonna be 9 and 0, and we knew. Well, we, we were up 21-nothing at the end of the first quarter when the lights went out, so it wasn't like we were going up there you know, concerned, but the weeks later, guess what they did?

They installed the double wing offense. Now luckily by then we had our double wing check, or double wing charger bolt front that we teach in the 425 defense system in, and we were able to adapt to it, but not in the first series. We didn't know we were gonna be seeing that, so it was like we had to, we had to [00:29:00] get you know, to, to basically halftime to make that adjustment.

Though I think we were able to make it a little sooner than that, but we had to get... And, you know, we're 27 kids, so it's not like we can get the defense over here and talk about it. Right. They gotta go play ball. Yeah. They gotta... They're, they're out there. They're out there on offense and, and our offense was sputtering because it's a Monday and we're up 21-nothing, and it's just hard to get everybody off of a bus ride that's an hour and a half to play a game at 4:30 and get them fired up, you know?

So we're kind of sputtering out there. The defense is holding on and, and quarterback was having a, not having a great day that day 'cause it just... I don't even think he was warmed up. I don't even know. And so the good thing is we were able to... And they were not a double wing before that. They were a...

I don't even remember what they were. I think it was a spread of some sort. But whatever it was, or like a pro... It might be, might've been like a one back, kind of like us. But it wasn't double wing But, you know, just being able to adjust to it and go, "Okay, the base adjustment is heavy check." The will backer just sees a, the will backer just sees a tight end on [00:30:00] his side, and he makes a heavy check.

And so when, when we talk about things, these things, the Mike backer is the guy responsible for checking for who is the center of the five fat guys, and that's how you adjust to unbalance. So if somebody shows up and runs unbalance out of nowhere, you go, "Okay, they're unbalanced one man over." Boom, we do it perfectly fine.

And then the will backer, all his job is to look and see if I have a tight end on my side. If I have a tight end on my side, no matter what's going on, I just make a heavy check. Heavy, heavy, heavy. We slide out to a two high and a six high, okay? Boom, that's done. You know, we have adjustments for if I need to slide.

We don't do this as much. We've actually been doing it more in the last couple, last couple weeks. We've been seeing more things that fit it, but you know, we can slide linebackers. It used to be called an overshifted tight end. TCU used it for when they had an offset I. Well, we stopped doing it that much.

They had an offset I to a tight end. We haven't done it that much because we haven't seen an offset I to a tight end, but now we're seeing in, in about a decade. But now we're seeing some different things, beast formation being one of them, where slide makes sense. It doesn't make sense to slide the defensive [00:31:00] line because the line itself is still intact, not unbalanced.

But the backfield is unbalanced, and so you have to adjust to some of that. We have our trips checks. We have, we have our checks for you know, in the 4-3 system, we have to have a check for tray. We don't have to have that in the 4-2-5, but in the, in the 4-3, we have to have a check for tray formation which is a tight end, trips with a tight end.

Not the nub tight end backside, that's trips closed, but trips tray trips. So we just call it tray. There's tray open and tray closed, and there's tray, tray closed would be double tight with trips to one side. Right. So you know, all of those things, the overhangs are obviously looking for slot receivers, but we also teach the corners and the overhangs to look at the split.

Obviously, you know, things like when you're talking about


Read the Quarterback Not the End Man
---

reading the end man on the line of scrimmage in your defense, and not yours, I'm talking about a lot of people that are listening who are still trying to read the end man on the line of scrimmage, and then one week he's a tackle, and one week he's a tight end, and the next week there's three tight ends over [00:32:00] there, and the next week it's a wing.

Like, which one? Read the quarterback. Why? Because the quarterback always is the guy who executes the offense the best, and he's always there. And we don't ever have to worry about that changing. So all of these things that are built in to the defense, not just from the, from the run fits, but with the alignment adjustments are built in, and they are easy for our players to learn.

They're stuff that, it's stuff that they learn week one. That's, that's really, really important for us to have as a base Then with our junk offenses, we, because the base is there and we can line up,


Adding Automatics for Specific Looks
---

we can then pick out a couple of things that you do that we can do something special to. So we can say, "Okay, this particular piece of your junk offense is something that has been successful for you, and you tend to run this more than other stuff, [00:33:00] and we can have a special automatic to it."

You don't wanna go overboard with automatics but you want to just put each one of these things into a, a container essentially. And you wanna have your, your automatics for the things that you really need. The, the best one that, that I can remember is we had an offense that had a really, really dynamic player, and most of the offense was and should have been built around getting the ball to him, and he was a receiver.

And we were able to identify probably about three or four different specific things, wasn't the entire offense, but there were three or four specific things that they had done repeatedly through multiple games and say, "Okay, when they do this, we know who they're trying to get the ball to, and we can make this automatic check."

But the thing is, each one of those checks [00:34:00] really affected one or two players. So the mistake now is, so again, the will backer's looking for the t- looking for the tight end. Okay, that's his normal thing. And then we can add in one thing where if they see this, we give it a name, and a couple of guys have a job to do on that particular alignment.

So for us, you know, I remember that one of them was that the Mike backer, Sam backer, whatever he was called would basically slide out and, and go to attack a bubble. We were like, "We see this look, it's a bubble," and our Mike linebacker, like A gap defender, right, is going to slide out and attack the bubble because they haven't done anything else.

And if they do anything else, it's probably gonna be sloppy because they don't n- you know, it's gonna be something they just put in. But that was the only one that affected him. And then there was one look where [00:35:00] the backside corner, the, the, the, the you know, kind of single receiver corner had to do something different, and there was one where the free safety had to do something different.

There was one where the strong safety had to do something different, and usually in support with someone else, so it was like their adjustment. They see this formation, that's the only formation they're looking for, and they're like, "Ah, that's me." And then they have like one other guy that they turn to and go, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, this is the one where you do the thing."

And like they're excited because this is their thing, and they remember it. And so


Assigning Checks to Individual Players
---

as we start to establish these rules you can, you can now start to add in one extra rule for this week for each player. What, what the mistake is, is when, and I remember this, and actually this is funny because I saw this kid Friday night.

Okay? Friday night I went to a game. My old school was playing the school in the district that I live at, live in now, that my son will potentially go to. Yeah. It's a long way off, though. So I went to the [00:36:00] game. The athletic director's still one of my very good friends, and was joking because I haven't been there in a long time and I, and I was joking with my wife and I was like, "I think I've been gone from this school..."

It's also an away game. It's pretty far. You know, I'd expect a lot of travel. But I was like, "I think I've been gone from this school long enough that I'm not gonna run into anybody." And she's like, "Unless you run into one of your players who has a kid playing now." And I was like That's possible. That's possible.

And sure enough, now his kid wasn't playing, but sure enough, there I see one of my linebackers that I coached, and he was a four-year starter, three years I was there. But, and with his kids who are all older than my kid, He was incredibly intelligent. He was an incredibly talented linebacker, 6'2", 220.

I mean, like just the, just the prototype. I mean, the... If you could build a linebacker in a lab, this is what you're building. [00:37:00] Very, very smart, dedicated, gr- I mean, just anything you could ever hope for, this was, this was him. And one week we had a team that had... was a junk offense, and they had maybe five or six formations that we were like, "When they get in this, we can do this

We gave all of the checks to him- Right ... because he was the smartest kid on the field. And we turned the best football player on the field into a completely ineffective player- ... for about a half before we killed all of the adjustments and just said, "Just play. Just play the base. Don't make any of these checks anymore."

Because even, even the smartest kid who understood the game was overloaded and he was no longer playing instinctive, he was playing [00:38:00] guessing football. Right. Trying to guess the play. Yeah. Right. And so when you do this, again, the really important thing is as much as possible is built into your system, don't overthink it too much where you need a check for every single thing that they do, but generally with junk, you can look at, like, like you said, they're gonna have 900 formations.

You can't do anything with all of them, but usually there's something that you can get. Now, this is where it kind of ends with, with something like a Bixby where there's not... There's, I mean, the reality is you just have to, you know, they do 900 different things and it's GT. And, like, that doesn't help you.

But with these, with a lot of these junk offenses, it's like I can see the split of a receiver and go, "All right, that's post wheel." I can see the the formation and go, "Every time they get in this formation, they want to run this." And so I can find a handful of things where I can call it out and maybe make a little adjustment or maybe make a little tweak, or maybe not even little, maybe it's something that's [00:39:00] just like we're straight up gonna double team one guy or we're gonna jump something.

I remember one team had a formation, I wouldn't have called them a d- a junk. It was a little junky. It was a little junky, but not junk. They had a trips formation that they lined up in, and it was like there was a wing back or something like that, and every time they ran it, it was sprint out, and the wing back stayed in for protection.

So we left the corner and the safety over top of the other two and blitzed the strong safety into the s- And, and I think I remember we got one batted pass, one sack- All they had to, all, all, all they would've had to do was release the wing back and we're screwed. But they don't have that. That's not in the package, right?

And you take that risk- Right ... 'cause they might see that, and they will see that on film, and I guarantee you next week there's the thing where the wing back leaks out into the flat, right? Leaks out behind him. But that's the kind of stuff that you can do and you can take a little risk with it. Just, you know, [00:40:00] just you have to, it has to be...

And again, that one as a specific, it was only one guy. It was the strong safety. Everybody else is running basically check roll. It wasn't the actually it wasn't the coordinator. I don't remember what they call the things, but they're running basically like a check roll or something like that, right? Or man or something.

And it's just one guy who goes, "Oh, I'm blitzing," and everybody else is just running their, their trips check. But you know, that's it. So that's, that's the thought process behind it. But I think the big thing that I, that I want to focus on is you've gotta have the base, and then, and then you can build out some checks and adjustments, but you assign them to individual people who can then communicate to one or two others if needed.

But the thing that gets you in trouble is you have, if you're gonna have an automatic that involves a drastic check, one. You get one. Right. That's like we had one that [00:41:00] y- this team lined up in a power I, and they did it a fair amount. They were a spread, but they would come out in a power I a fair amount.

And for that we had a check to load the box, right? And that involved multiple guys. You get one. But anything else that they did, you know, anything else was just like, if, if it was something else that was junky, we had like a little one person check, two person check. One person's in charge of it. Owner, they, they get ownership of it.

This is the u- we would, I mean, we would name them too. We would name them like, you know, "This is the Devonte check," and it's like they go, yeah. Now if Devonte gets hurt, that check's not getting made, so j- it's the, I, I love kind of how you talk. So I'm a big guy on giving safeties, essentially making them the general on the field, right?

Like, I want And that comes from my dream to be a two high safety defensive coordinator and both safeties are calling what [00:42:00] their side's doing coverage-wise based on some stuff. So that way we don't have to guess. There's nothing, like, there's three ways to call plays, right? You, you can, as soon as the ball hits the ground, the whistle blows, you're calling your next defense.

You might, might see what personnel comes in, maybe. But most of these guys are just like, "Nope, that's it. We're playing base," or, "We're blitzing this guy," or, right, because th- down in distance or situation or whatever. And then there's the see the personnel package, and this is generally at your bigger schools because there's personnel packages, and then I'm looking at my sheet to see what they run with those guys on the field, and I might even wait until I see a formation to give the exact call.

Like, we'll get a, maybe a base alignment and then we're gonna make a call after we kinda see which side of the ball they go on. And then there's the I'm not calling anything 'cause I'm not gonna guess. Why would I guess? And so I just let my safeties call it. And they go, "Oh, I've got twins, so we're gonna read two over here, silver," or whatever your, your things [00:43:00] are.

And on the backside, "Oh, we're, we're in a pro set over here." Fine. We're gonna hammer down here, so we're playing cover one because, or cover zero I guess, because the safety's gonna line on the get in the box and he's gonna be right on top of the tight end, and the corner, you're on an island. Okay?

'Cause that's... Why would I guess and try to make that up on the fly when I can just let you tell me what you're gonna line up in? So that's kind of the, the, the three ways I see making defensive play calls. And giving these rules to your players is great, but I love that you talked about overloading a kid.

You took a freak athlete who understood some ball and can put himself in a position and maybe align one or two other guys to, like, get in a great place to succeed. But now you're asking him to be a defensive coordinator on the field, and that's not fair to him. He doesn't get paid that money, right?

Like, and of course he's gonna start second-guessing himself and by God, that's our job as an offense is to make a, a linebacker not trust it. He can go over and tell his coach, "You're wrong." Like, if I can get him to say that, I win the game even if we don't win. But now you got one kid [00:44:00] that's dealing with that, and he's dealing with, you know, he can't get a good read, and he's dealing with their pass set sucks and so everything looks like a run, and so you gotta make sure these rules make sense, right?

And, and and like I, I, once again, I just really love talking about don't overload a player, 'cause we are bad about that as coaches is we either don't delegate anything and we're micromanagers, or we want to delegate the house, right? Like, I'm- Right ... I'm just gonna show up on Friday night and stand over there and look great 'cause coach got me into some sweet swag and, and I'm gonna let the kids kind of on the field do their thing.

But- yeah, you, you, you do, and, and I kinda talked about it earlier too. You just gotta take those junk offenses, compartmentalize them as much as you can. We're, we're getting into containers here, is our last piece, in fact, where we're gonna talk about containers. So I guess I'll just kinda start there.


Containers for Offensive Formations
---

The piece is, is containers for any offensive wrinkle, and that's where Like we dealt something with this last week a nasty split, right? So, a tight end, instead of being next to the tackle, he's a full man away, and then there's like an H-back standing in that gap a [00:45:00] yard and a half deep.

That's a thing you gotta have a plan for, because for starters, I just told my defensive end to be in a six, but Coach, he's way over there. So now the six is a, a 12 or whatever the heck that would be. Right? He's in a 10, he's in a 10 tech now, which doesn't exist, if y'all are wondering. And then there's this weird gap inside him, and he's not playing anything, and they're just running GT away from it 'cause he's 12 yards from the football.

So it was one of tho- that's a weird wrinkle. You don't see it all the time, not a lot of guys use- utilize it. Different motions and shifts. These are things that you better, you better consider ahead of time. Like, how are we going to get an answer on the fly to this, especially if it's something they've not shown on film.

You talk about a junk offense, the biggest part of ... And then this is where definition-wise of junk defense is I don't know what you're gonna show me, 'cause you've shown so much crap, or everyone does. Like you talk about Kenny, you know, his system. He gets junk defenses because people abandon what they do and just show up and whatever the heck on film might have [00:46:00] looked a little bit successful.

So you might get that out of this offense too. Like, oh, well, you know, last week we were two- Yep ... by two spread, and then this week we saw that last w- you, you struggled to stop you know, the wishbone option, so we're gonna show you that. The wishbone option, yeah. And like, you don't have a chance to s- to work against that, because you have no idea it's in their repertoire.

So- Yeah ... you know, that's where the containers from phase- And it's really not, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's where you gotta have containers. How do we handle... And I like to think of it, Joe, in these bigger phases of football. How do we handle a spread to throw team? Doesn't have to be air raid, it doesn't have to be, you know, the run and shoot.

How do we handle when they have athletes on the outside and the quarterback can get it there? How do we han- And, and, and that's, that's got a base set of things that we can kinda go to. Almost the, the kitchen menu on the back of your play call sheet, maybe that's a whole section of it. How do we stop [00:47:00] a spread to run team?

Option teams. Read option versus, well, I guess they're all read option, but I'm talking zone read. Like spread- ... option type stuff versus traditional I'm gonna read your three tech and make him wrong, or veer and I'm gonna read your five, or, you know, midline. RPO teams is a whole nother thing.

Maybe, you know, they didn't show us any RPO, but how do you handle RPO teams? Is it in phase, out of phase, or in the fit, out of the fit? Is it patient by everybody? You know, w- so you build out these containers and it's like a little toolbox, or a drawer in your big toolbox, if that's what you wanna think of it as, as an analogy.

"Coach, they're throwing RPOs. They didn't show that in four games of film we have." Cool, open the, open the drawer that has RPO answers in it and, and let's get to that. So you can start building out these containers for really any offensive wrinkle. That doesn't make you a flavor-of-the-week defense. That makes you a defensive system that can [00:48:00] handle pretty much any crap that the offense wants to throw out there.

Yeah, and that's really, you know, what we talk about containers and just going from a, I run into guys who try to look at every... We've joked about it before. We had an opponent that we had so much film on and we had a young assistant who was doing the, the scouting for the pass defense and was like, "Here's the 41 pass concepts they run."

We're like, "They don't have 41 pass concept. There aren't 41 pass concepts." They have tags, they have tw- you know, things like that. So we have to compartmentalize those things. So that's one. You know, we don't defend, just for example, we don't defend fade and hit. We don't def- like so for us 60 and 60 is 60 up, right?

Like, so hitch seam and four verts. They don't really get their own containers because the, you know, [00:49:00] the, the seam is the seam and that's being handled, and then the hitch and the, and the go route are being handled by the corner and there's not a different way of defending the hitch and the, the go route.

It's just that's his, that's his normal, right? That's his normal seven yards off, slow pedal, ball out. So you can... All of those things kind of fall into the same category. Now we're gonna have to have different drills for, but we don't need a different defense for it. When we look at, um the, the containers, there are certain things that we just know and that's what we wanna kind of try to build around.

You mentioned a bunch formation. So anytime that somebody brings up the bunch formation, the first thing that we say is bunch is a toss formation, tight bun- we're talking tight bunch. Okay, tight bunch is a toss formation. Yeah, we have our way to align to it that we like the best. Some coaches, you know, I like to be in a 3-4, I like to line up the, the Sam backer up on the point.

[00:50:00] I like to slant away from it. If they start to really favor that way, then we'll slant to it and bring the Will backer off of the edge as well and want to be in a cover three, but that's perfectly fine. We check roll it, all that stuff is fine. The the you know, bunches of toss formation.

So we know we've gotta have that safety to the outside edge. We know that we've gotta have that five by five safety there. We know that we've gotta have somebody over top and somebody inside somebody over top outside, somebody over top inside, somebody five by five in the flat to be able to force it.

Yes, we like to get that guy over top of the point man, but those are the rules that have to happen. 'Cause even if the point man is able to free release, we have everything covered in that one inside, one outside o- one outside in the flat, one over top outside, and one over top inside. We'll be able to handle all those routes, and then you have your backer in the, in the hook area.

So, you know, that's, that covers the passing concept that can come out a bunch. That covers the that covers the, the primary run plays that can come out a bunch, and we feel like we're in a good, we're in good shape. We don't have to overplay it and give up the counter and that kind of stuff. [00:51:00] So it's compartmentalized that when we see bunch, we have an answer for it, but we pr- primarily we look at it and we go, "That's a toss formation."

You know, the nasty split is another one and, and not just nasty splits, but any time that we get wide splits, you have your adjustments. You know, if he goes to four feet, we're, from an outside shade and he goes to four feet, I'm gonna be a head up, and if he goes to five feet, I'm gonna be an inside shade.

And if he goes any further than that, I'm just leaving him and I'm going back down inside because now he's just out there. A long ways from the football boys. He's a long way out there at that point. But you know, depending on the, the nasty split is it a, you know, is it a, you know, there's a difference between-- Nasty split for me has always been like a five-yard split.

Anything inside of that is how we're gonna play that. But we have different ways depending on, you know, what we see. Tight end wing, you know, tight end wing we don't do anything special to but a lot of people compartmentalize tight, tight end wing and do all sorts of fancy stuff to it. We will if we know you can't throw or something like that, but ultimately the, the alley is between the tight end and the wing, and we just have [00:52:00] to be able to play it.

Twins formations with a tight split, twins formations with a wide split. What are they trying to do with those things? You know, a- anything that we, you know, sniffer back, what are we w- but what, what I see a lot of coaches doing is they look at things that don't matter. Sniffer back being one. You know, what do we do with sniffer back?

Well, he's just a back in the backfield. He's, he's just a back in the backfield right now. So, you know, maybe you slide to him because he's an over-shifted tight end if he's on the tight end side, but that's about it. You can't do anything else, because if you do any more than that, you open up counter. Now if they can't do any- It's coming with- If they can't do anything else, then that's something we compartmentalize based on game plan.

That, okay, all they've ever done when they did this was this, and we're just gonna go ahead and sell out to it. I see a lot of coaches over you know, we talk about containers, and they, they create containers out of the wrong things. Pistol under, pistol and under center and gun, and treating those as different formations.

Now there are different plays that you can run out of those, and they might be [00:53:00] tendencies, but you have to f- you have to look at them. I've talked before, obviously in, in, in 2017, we were 90% run from under center, and the only exception to that was basically power pass and, and a naked boot. A s- stretch pass naked boot.

And we were 100% pass out of gun until week 10. Yeah, I do remember you talking about that. And shoot, it might've been week 12 that we changed it, 'cause I think we played them twice, and the second time was where we... Their, their backers were bailing out so fast the first time that we were like, "All right, we're gonna run draw."

And we ran a, we ran a, a basically a kind of a dart draw off of it. So obviously that's a tendency, and that's when that alignment matters. But if the tendency's not that strong, and we're gonna talk about 70%, 80%, you know, 70% at least. If the tendency's not that strong, it's just an alignment. [00:54:00] And pistol can't tell me...

Like I hear people say, "Well, they run a pistol offense." No, they don't. Right. It's not a thing. It's not, it's, that's not a thing. Okay? The pistol's just a quarterback alignment, it's not an offense. Now, it may indicate something, but we can't, we can't determine what that is. We can't determine what gun is.

They may be jet read, they may be power read, they may be zone read. They may be, be spread to pass and they're gonna only run a, a run inside zone. They may be out there and they're just passing out of it all the time. It doesn't indicate anything to us by itself. Bunch toss is a to- a, a, excuse me, tight bunch is a toss formation.

That's the best thing you can do out of it. And other than that, and some passing concepts, it ain't that good a formation. So if they're not gonna toss out of it, I don't give a crap that they're in it. So when I treat it, I treat it as toss. I, that's where I start with it. Stack formations. It's like if they [00:55:00] stack the receivers out there, there's let me give one that's really...

Quads diamond. Yeah. Right? You mentioned it before. Quads diamond. Well, here's the thing about quads diamond. The back receiver is so far off the ball that it's very difficult for him to run anything of consequence other than a screen And there's only so many zones. So when you have quads, those guys are all basically gonna end up in your zone, so you cover it, like you said, just like trips.

So quads diamond I'm treating as trips, but with three blockers if you run a screen to the back receiver. And so I am concerned about the back receiver, and I will attack the back receiver unlike what I might normally do. I, like, normally I would... But, like, quads diamond has an indication, it has a thing, it has a, you know, what's it good at?

Back receiver. Everything else is just trips with a s- with a receiver taking a really long time to get out of there to be the fourth guy. So those are things that we can kinda compartmentalize [00:56:00] those things and have an indication of if they throw it at us or if we see it on film. And, you know, really there might be somebody out there who's listening to this and going, "Well, I'm a, I'm a quads diamond expert and I have 28 different things that we can do out of quads diamond," and we will roast you if you do that.

Agree. I don't know what they are and I don't know if that's actually a thing, but I know that every junk offense I've ever seen run quads diamond, I just told you what happens. It's, it's, it's screen. Yeah, it's screen. It's screen, and then the vertical- Right? So when we look at these things- ... when you light on the screen.

Yeah, when we look at these things and, and from a, from a context of junk,

that's what it is. And by the way, it's not, it's, it's not that, it's not that quads diamond throwing a screen to that guy is a bad play. It's not that running toss to a bunch. I love running toss to a bunch. It's not that that's a bad play. It's that when I see somebody who's just got this crap in there, this is the thing that I care about, and I compartmentalize our adjustment specifically to stop that [00:57:00] thing when we see it.

I don't worry about anything, anything else that can come out of it. So that's, that's when we talk about compartmentalizing and containers we want to be, you know, be alert for... A- and it goes to, to motions too. It's like jet swee- take jet sweep. What, what can a jet motion guy do? Well, he can run a sweep He can run a flat route.

He can maybe run a wheel

So my pass coverage is fine. I already have somebody who defends flat routes. I already have somebody who's gonna be over top for the wheel. I just need to make sure that my overhang safety is there for the jet sweep. So when you start sliding linebackers and rotating safeties for the jet sweep, you are just opening up the stuff that- [00:58:00] They really wanna get to.

Right. Because really that's all that the jet sweep can, can do to you if you play disciplined. The beauty of the jet sweep is a lot of teams don't play disciplined. So you know, that's, that's where compartmentalize the jet sweep motion. What's the jet sweep motion? It's jet sweep. What does that mean to the Mike Backer?

Nothing. Nothing. Because he's not responsible for stopping jet sweep. You know, not initially. You know, he's got to lead- But GT backwards behind it, absolutely that contain. The GT behind it with the guard pulls, yeah, absolutely. That's, and so that's where we compartmentalize these things and say like, again, here's the thing that doesn't matter to you.

What does bunch formation mean to the will linebacker? Nothing. Because he's looking for counter, right? That's, that's where he doesn't need to know that. My guys that are gonna be aligned to the bunch to defend the toss and to press the bunch, the point man matters to them. To the will linebacker who's away from the bunch, to the defensive end who's away from the bunch, does he need to hear like, [00:59:00] "It's bunch"?

No. Who cares? Squeeze the down block, dude. If they run counter, you'll be there. Like, that's it. So that, that's where we, we need to know what these things mean. Tight split by a, a you know, number two receiver is in a tight split, so we got a, we got a 16-yard wide split by number one, and we got a five-yard wide split by number two.

Like, who does this matter to? Well, it matters to the corner and the safety because this is a s- this is a slant flat, right? The, the outside guy needs enough room to run a slant route, the inside guy needs enough room to run his flat route. And, and that's what they need to know from that. And everybody else doesn't care.

But they need to communicate that. They need to recognize that.

Well, Joe, I think that's it, man. I think we checked all the boxes. I think this is just a chance to talk about a bunch of different formations and what they mean. And then that's really what it is though. That's, that's- And adjustments. I mean, that's basically what it comes down to ... that's the beauty of it is- A [01:00:00] lot of times in the junk they're just getting into things that are advantageous to run the play That's why I track formations the way that I do.

I still cannot give you all... Look, go get this freaking book, okay? We don't push a lot of stuff on this podcast, especially not when they're not giving us money. We gotta have that. Breaking Down Your Offensive Opponent by Cody Alexander will teach you to see formations differently. You separate the vertical threats from the backfield.

I do. And my God, you, it will, it's awe inspiring. I actually wanna do a clinic and put it on Joe Daniel Football, so I gotta figure out how we do that. And and just talk about... But anyway, the point is you start breaking down everybody that way, and then even when you get the team who does three things and does them well, you're like, "Oh yeah, we got answers for that."

And like I said, you can work in the minutia and you can get into a few extra ways, right? You can put your echoes in there and you can put your, you know, you c- there's things, stunts and... But man, like, you start [01:01:00] seeing all of ball th- this way. You'll start just putting it into containers. Like, how do, guys, how do we handle jet sweep?

I don't care if it's the jet sweep kings there's only so much stuff they can do out of it if you play disciplined football, so anyway. Okay, so for the rest of you guys that are, that are just, I know the season really is about to get interesting for you all. You're getting into your play- unless you're playoff points.

Listen, if you're in Virginia, I can't help you, okay? It's not my fault that- You're not the only ones, I don't think. No, you're not. I heard someone in the Midwest, and I can't remember who it was, it was somebody talking to me about the podcast- Indiana or Illinois, they might. No, Illinois- Somewhere in there is playoff points.

Illinois is in the, nine-game regular season. Everybody makes the playoffs for the 10th game type of thing, I think. Yeah. Minnesota, I think too. Oh, yeah. Missouri does like nine regular season games and everyone's 10th game is playoffs. Yeah. That's super strange stuff. Anyway. For sure. Yeah. You kind of know who you are now, but so does everybody else on your schedule.

They know your weaknesses. They know your strengths as you do. So it's a great time. Protect your base, protect your base, protect your base. Get the things in that help you [01:02:00] do what you do well even better. If you want to know about that, contact Cameron Palmer. He will help you so much with protecting your base.

Yeah. And then get better at doing what you do without losing who you are. If this conversation today has helped you with anything, whether it's a junk offense or an offense that's really good and you're like, "You're right, I just need to compartmentalize their stuff and have answers," great. Make a menu.

Make a toolbox that you crack open when you face that team or that group of teams or that type of offense that helps you be successful. More than anything, guys, good luck on Friday night. Go get you another W. Tonight we talked about defending junk offenses. We talked about your defense being a system, establishing easy rules for your players and for more than just one, hopefully, and containers for any offensive wrinkle.

Last week we talked safety drills and next week we're on to scout team offense. So for all the emails we get, "How do you call scout team offense?" or, "What are you trying to do with your..." That's the one for you. We're doing it for you. Let's do some level up, Joe. What do you got?[01:03:00]

I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna just go with finishing listening to The Hobbit. Yeah. 20 hours or so. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's funny because I, I think I've started it once or twice, but when you, when you turn it on and it, you know, it opens with the, you know, their whatever it is, "There once was a hole and inside lived a hobbit" thing, and it's like this is such a like, it's like the line that started it all type of thing.

I've... And by the way, I've only seen like the very beginning of the most recent Hobbit movie. Obviously I've seen the cartoon many times, which is excellent. But I never... A- and I watched the, the, the Lord of the Rings trilogy many, many, many times. And The Hobbit I've just, I've just never had like, I've never, I've never...

I have a hard time with movies because I know I'm gonna like it, and I know I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna [01:04:00] watch it for the three hours or whatever it is, but it's hard to invest that time. But it was great. I mean, I enjoyed it. It was really interesting because I know that, like, when he was writing it, that Tolkien didn't know, like, where the story was going.

He was just, like, he started out with, like, Hole and Hobbit, and was like, "Okay, what's the next thing?" And like, I think he had, like, the very first part, had an idea of, like, the first, the very first part, and then was just kinda like, "Well, here's what they would do next," and, like, goes through this... I mean, it really is a, you know, a, a, a master class in, like, storytelling.

But also, some of it is kind of interesting, where it's like there's this event, and then it's like, and then they were just kinda walking for, like, three months and nothing really happened. Don't, don't worry about it. And then we get to the next [01:05:00] event. And so, yeah, it was, it was a lot of... It wa- it was very enjoyable.

I haven't seen The Hobbit cartoon in so long, but I could picture so many of the things that were in the cartoon, 'cause yes, you know, when you're a kid, like, there wasn't that much for us to watch. I think it came out in 1978 and, you know, so I'm a kid in, like, in the early '80s, and, like, it's just the thing that came on HBO or whatever.

It came on TV all the time. They didn't make that much, they didn't make as much stuff then. So, and we might've had the VHS too, when we got a VCR eventually. So, very good, very cool, highly recommended. I don't know. I've started, but never read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And it is, it is an undertaking I imagine that I will eventually either listen or read.

But I'm gonna get back to some shorter, easier-to-read dorky stuff. You know- Get The Martian. Getting back- Listen to The Martian. I wanna g- I, I, I, I've had that multiple times. Right now I'm, I'm finishing up the, [01:06:00] the super nerdy stuff. I'm in the Dragonlance Dungeons & Dragons world with, with the Time of Twins or whatever it is.

They traveled back in time to kill- Fistandantilus Mm ... for those of you who, for you three listeners who have read a Dungeons & Dragons novel, I, I do enjoy Dragonlance, 'cause it's just simple, stupid. Simple, stupid, easy reads. I I jumped into the Wheel of Time series once, and I would have to re-listen to it all to even know what's going on, because- Oh, yeah

but I, I loved the first book, and then I got into the second one and I lo- like, I just, I life changed or whatever. That's Robert Jordan, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. God, it's so good. I have to go back and listen to it. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't, I can't s- I don't have the time of day to sit around and look at a book.

Oh, yeah. We're reading The Martian. Like, The Martian's one of my all time... First of all, Andy Weir, what a dude. What a freaking [01:07:00] dude. But Project Hail Mary, my favorite book all time, but The Martian's really close. And I like the movie, I love the book. Anyway, but it's, it's- Yeah, I watched some of the movie.

I didn't finish it, but I was, I mean, I, I saw enough of it to like- Oh, it's, it's super good too. But it's narrated by Wil Wheaton, so- Interesting ... who was Wesley Crusher, of course, in Star Trek, and then- Yes, and then played Wil Wheaton on- And then played himself on Big Bang Theory. Okay. So it connect... And we call our son Sheldon all the time, 'cause that's- Yeah

exactly how he acts. Anyway. Yeah. It's a great, great read, but yeah. I, I, I love The Hobbit. I've, I don't know that I've read... I can't remember if I've ever finished those books. I've tried both trilogies. Well, The Hobbit's not a trilogy, it's a collection. Oh, yeah, Hobbit's just one. I've tried it, and I can't remember if I've completed it or not.

But the movie is a trilogy for The Hobbit even, and it is so good. Is it a trilogy? Okay, I'll have to... That's really gonna be a time investment. It is, and it, it's slow sometimes because they took one book and made it three movies. Yeah. You know? To [01:08:00] match the Lord of the Rings. Right, they wanted the prequel trilogy, and like- Still fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic ... I'm sure it's very good. Yeah. The dragon's not killing people quite as long as I want him to be, but you know, he's just a dragon. Oh, they just... Yeah, I, it, in the book, you know, you hear so much about Smaug, and the book is a journey to get the treasure that Smaug has that's the dwarves' treasure.

But- The Smaug shows up in the last, you know, in the audiobook it's like the last two hours. Yeah. And you know, it's, it, it's not, it's not about dragons and he's the only dragon. He's the old dragon and there's no other dragons around. The book doesn't have dragons flying around. And so, which is interesting because it's like this world...

And one of the things that I love about the Lord of the Rings trilogy is I love I mean like my favorite [01:09:00] scene or whatever is the big battle. I think it's at the end of the second movie when they're in the stronghold and, and all of the orcs are coming, and then the trees come and, like, save the day.

Like, that's my favorite. It's all the weird- Yeah ... goblins and orcs and all that kind of stuff. That's the cool thing to me, and then the trees and, like, all that are, like, living trees and all that stuff. I love that stuff. And, The ents. The march of the ents. Yeah, yeah, the ents. And then, like... And I love the dragons.

There's, there's some stuff, like the, the parts with the dragons and the, the Nazgûls and all that kind of stuff. Like, all that stuff I think is super cool. It's my favorite thing in Star Wars too, is the weird aliens, and I, I've always just wanted there to be more of them. It's what I loved about... One of the things I loved about the Star Wars expanded universe that was the, this now the legends canon before Disney bought it, was, like, people were allowed to play in their own sandboxes, and there would be all sorts of, like, weird characters.

And then they would be in a... You know, they would be described in this book, and then you could go [01:10:00] to Wookiepedia- Wookiee ... which would, which would have, you know, pictures of them from the comic books and, you know, fan art and stuff like that, of like what a, this weird alien looked like, and it's like now I can picture it.

And I, that, you know, just some of that stuff is super cool, and like the dragons and stuff and, and- Yeah ... that's the fun stuff. I like the... I mean, in Dungeons and Dragons I really liked the, the Drizzt serie- I can't remember the name of it, but Drizzt Do- Do'Urden was, like, the, the main guy, and it's like they, same kind of thing.

It's all the weird characters and stuff. I love it. I mean, that's, that's, you know, that, that's the best part about reading is you get to use your imagination. Yeah. I love it. My I have a two-part level up, and it's the... Well, I did. Maybe I forgot what the other one was. Hmm. I should have wrote it down.

Anyway, the coolest thing that we've done is it is, you know, middle of September, well, almost the end of September now, and youth deer hunting [01:11:00] opens in middle of October. Okay. And Beckett turned eight this year. Not that there's an age limit on it, but this is the first year he has seemed mature enough to, one, get time behind a gun, and two, I can...

If he aimed and pointed and shot at something, I trust that he actually aimed and pointed at it before he pulled the trigger and understands the consequences, and he's excited to get to go. And so we bought him... Last year, I bought him a .22, and he honestly doesn't shoot it very much. I don't love that rifle.

I went overboard and, and got him something too big of a, a stock and everything, but it was super... It was all carbon, super lightweight so that he would not complain to me about the weight of his gun. That's, I didn't want that, and I probably should've just went and got a 10/22 and, and just let him put time in on it when he was comfortable.

Instead, I went too far. So this year, I got him a 243 went [01:12:00] Ruger American, which any of you guys that shoot guns know that, like, that's... I'm nor- I'm a Tikka guy, so I was real pissed that Tikka doesn't have a youth model or an adjustable stock without going spending another $500 on a stock that I can adjust, if not more.

And so the Ruger American series, they got the American, the Predator, and the Ranch, which are just different barrel lengths and different colors, but I went with a standard 20-inch and, and I think it's gonna give him a gun, one, he can use forever, two, he can give it, you know, his, his kids can shoot it.

But when he ha- when he gets behind, he's not gonna be afraid of it. I started at eight years old with a 7mm mag, and if you don't know, that's like the size of your hand. It's a huge round. And because I just wanted to impress my dad, I went... I've suffered through the pain so that I could go hunting because, by God, I was in it from when I was real young, and that's just not Beckett.

So if a gun's gonna whip his tail- Yeah ... I, I don't think he's gonna do it. He just doesn't... He's not like I was. I would've done anything to see my dad smile, and Beckett is like, [01:13:00] "If I don't like it, I ain't gonna do it, buddy," which is a whole new parenthood thing. But anyway, so now he's got his deer rifle, so this fall he will be able to go out in the woods and there's plenty of deer on the property, so we'll, you know, even if it's a...

He might get a monster buck because honestly, it's at that time that the big ones are moving around for us or you know, it might be a doe. I don't know. We'll, we'll, we'll make the call when they kinda start coming out, but I, I am excited about that first morning he's out in camouflage and sitting in the blind with me and, and we get to go do some hunting.

So, pretty exciting stuff. That's cool. I did have another one. I don't remember what the hell it was. Yeah. Yeah, I'm probably gonna have to find... You know, we fish a lot and I've, I, I do want my son to, to at least get a chance to try more hunting, but I just don't hunt. Like, and my dad taught me, and I just never took to it, mainly because, you know, it was two hours to go hunt, and we had practice on Saturday.

Yeah. And so that was just, it was just [01:14:00] not in the cards for me. And I just, you know, I'd squirrel hunt and stuff like that. I got super into, like, turkey calling, but I never really got out doing it, and I would like for him... And I've got, I've got cousins and stuff that he can go with and everything.

And, and I've always wanted to get back into it, but, you know, it just never s- it hasn't happened. So hopefully he'll, he'll... If not, we'll get plenty of fishing in, so. Yeah. I am happy that it's fall, 'cause now the f- the- Yeah ... 'cause I- It's not so freaking hot ... fishing during summer is sh- bass fishing in the summer is just hard.

Breathing in the summer is stupid. Yeah. I don't know what we're talking about. Well, you know, the funny thing with, with bass fishing is everybody talks about, like, you know, you go out and you find offshore structure. And I'm like, "Buddy, I'm on a bank." Yeah, there's no offshore. Bank. Ain't no offshore structure.

There's no offshore, and I don't know what... Yeah. I, I would waste my time for half of, you know, most of August. We have- Yeah ... boats and none of them have electronic, like, true, like, you know- Yeah ... a Garman or a- The, the four fishing spot- ... a Hummingbird or whatever. Like, we [01:15:00] don't have- ... or other stuff. Like, yeah

money for that crap. So I have to learn... No, I just quit. I just quit, 'cause it's like I can go out on the boat, and I have went 15 days in a row and not caught a fish. Here's the deal. I was catching one or two fish every time I went. Not always a bass. Sometimes a striper, which is a bass, but- sometimes crappie, whatever. I bought the Bubba, 'cause I watched a YouTube video. God dang. I watched a pro and he had a Bubba Fish W- Scale, right? And it, man, it'll c- it'll keep, like, all your fish that day and give you a total weight, or you can do tournament mode and it'll tell you which one to replace based on the flo-...

Boy, I pulled that, got that thing. I have not caught a fish since. Not one time have I been able to put a fish on it and weigh it. I have no i-... It may not even work. I don't know. I can't tell you. They're gonna be like, "Oh, the warranty's over," or whatever. Like, it never even got wet. I buy the cheapest scale I can.

I was upset because I had a $10 mini, electronic mini scale, but it had the grip on it. 'Cause most of the cheap ones just have the, the hook, like, you, you know- ... it's great for checking the weight of your luggage. But, [01:16:00] you know, I, I hate, I hate ripping that thing through a bass, like- Right ... I feel like.

The grip's nice. Maybe I don't wanna put you back in. Like, I just wanna, I just wanna grip his lip for a minute and weigh him and get him back. And yeah, I, I buy the cheap ones. And I've, I've got... The one I have right now is just a big Amazon, orange Amazon thing that I just don't, I don't like it. I caught a bass, and I don't like it, and I caught a bass and I weighed it on there and it was 3.99, and I was about to chuck that thing in the water.

I'm about to pull on the tail. It ain't 3.99, it's four. It's every bit of four. Don't you lie to me. My scale's too precise.

I, I think it's lying. I think the bass was clearly four plus. I thought he was maybe five. He was... He yeeted that dude. All right, man, let's check it down and get out of here. 3.99. Yeah, pay the bills. Scott, what sales are opening or closing? This will be, man, the last... when this comes out, we are in the la- it actually comes out October 1st.

October 1st. [01:17:00] TBD, so I'll tell you next week. But go get the Ultimate Defensive System if you haven't gotten it. Go, go to JoeDanielfootball.com/system. It's a short, it's a 25-page guide. It's free. Put your, put your email address in, we'll send it to you. And it's just gonna... If you, if you're not sure about your defensive system, if your defensive system's a little shaky, it just might have some reminders for you.

If you're in season right now, it might just have some reminders for you to look at and go, "Oh, man, we, we missed that one." So it is worth your time to jump over there to get the ultimate, the guide to building your ultimate defensive system. Love it. Social media, I'm @CoachChamboOK on Twitter/X by the way, I just downgraded my...

I was, apparently I paid $20 a month for a while, and then it went to 40 and I just never noticed, and it has been robbing me for maybe two years. So I downgraded to the $8 a month package. There's ads. You guys have been putting up with ads this whole time? Like- Oh, yeah ... I'm just scrolling and I'm like, "Oh, this video is fun."

And I click it, it goes to a website. I'm like, [01:18:00] "Dang it." So now apparently if you don't give them half your salary a month, you have to look at ads. So I feel for you guys. I'm back as a, a peasant now, a commoner. Anyway, go over to Twitter. I'm still there. Email me at chamberlainfootballconsulting@gmail.com.

I like talking ball or shooting or whatever, so hit me up. Joe, where are you at, sir? You can email joe@joedanielfootball.com, and of course you can find all of my articles and all the podcasts at joedanielfootball.com. And of course JDFB. If you're a JDFB member, we're on every single Monday night, the Chalk Talk Q&A calls.

New members, you have a 20-minute one-on-one coach call with me as part of your onboarding package, and then we have our chalkboard community forum as well. So that's where I do most of my football coaching, answering questions stuff, is those various places. Go there and I'll answer them too. See- I remember my Level Up.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna use it now. It's too late. Everybody already turned it off. If this is your first time listening to the Football Coaching [01:19:00] Podcast, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. You can find us on your favorite podcatcher. Spotify and Apple Podcast are our big two, but anywhere you're at.

If you're listening and you've been listening for a while, please do leave us a review. We like reviews. Apparently there's like a new thing to have big review counts. I don't know what that's about. Anyway, thank you for listening to this episode of the Football Coaching Podcast, and remember, coach simple, play fast, win.