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Robert Cary By: West Salem HS (OR) Originally Published Nike 2014 Coach of the Year Clinics Clinic Notes - by Earl Browning - www.NikeCoyFootball.net
I know it may sound egotistical to be talking about being a great assistant coach. I want to show you where I am headed with this lecture. OUTLINE • Introduction I know coaches want to hear about X's and O's, and I do hope to have time to cover that aspect at the end. I do not have all of the answers. but I can tell you what we do. I thought about another title for the lecture. "Thoughts on Improving as an Assistant Coach' may sound a little more down to earth. It is a tough subject to talk about. Some people think I may have the answers to being a great assistant coach. I have had experiences like many of you, and I am going to share my view with you. I would like a show of hands of how many coaches here are varsity assistant coaches? How many are JV assistant coaches? How many freshman assistant coaches do we have? Next, what about middle school coaches and youth league football coaches? How many head coaches are in here? Good! This is not going to change what I have planned to talk about. I do not want to get up here and brag about my coaching experiences. That may be a little unnecessary. I started out as a junior varsity high school coach. That was my first job. I have been a freshman high school coach, and a varsity high school coach. I have been a varsity coordinator, a varsity head coach, a graduate assistant. a college assistant coach, and a college coordinator for a few years. I think my experiences give me an insight to my position as an assistant coach. A theme that will come up later is this. "There is no job too small for all of us." We are in the game for the good of the team. We all want quality programs. I can recall one season where I had just come back into coaching in college. I was an assistant coach and one of my jobs was to make sure the head phones were ready for the head coach when he came on the sideline. That is a big deal in college coaching. Most coaches do a good job with this task. You may feel inferior when you are setting everything up, but I think it is an important thing to do for your head coach. A big part of our job as an assistant is to assist our head coach. When we go to clinics sometimes we are lucky and get what we want out of the clinic. Other times we can go to a clinic and we do not get a darn thing from the speakers. When I go to clinics the best part is when lectures make me think. That is what I want to do today. I want to make people think about different aspects of football. Everything I am going to show you today you already know. What I say may make you think about it in a different way. It may help you remember something you used to do, and hopefully my lecture will help you bring back those memories. My goal is for you to pick-up something you can use to improve as an assistant coach. Possibly this presentation could help us reflect on our coaching and that we can come up with new ideas on our own. I am also a teacher. I teach kids about math. I have an assignment for you today. It is a 30 seconds warm-up session for everyone. I want everyone to write down two or three aspects of being a good assistant coach. At the end of the lecture, if you want, we can share those points you have written down. What is the one thing an assistant coach has to do or has to be? I tried to do this but I could not get it down to only one thing a good assistant coach should do or should be. I came up with four points I will share with you. A GREAT ASSISTANT COACH Being a Great Assistant Coach" boils down to four things: After coming up with those four points I asked -What does it mean to be a good assistant coach?' There are varying degrees of enthusiasm for the game. Some coaches work from August to November and then they are through with football until the next season. That is when their greatest level of enthusiasm is present. There is nothing wrong with that type of coaching. Some coaches live football, and breathe it all year. When they go on vacation they take their football tablets and other football materials. They work on their playbook when they are at the beach. So there are varying degrees of being enthusiastic about the game. But to one degree to another, all good assistant coaches love the game of football. I have been hearing college coaches talking about getting to know the recruits better now. They are concerned with the value of the individual, and not the fact the athlete is a five star player that runs a 40 yard sprint in 4.5. I hear this all of the time. "Kids love football." For coaches, if we do not love the game, we will not be very good at coaching. It is the same with the kids when you are recruiting them for college. You cannot gain the knowledge of the game unless you have enthusiasm. It may be you are an expert in one small area of the game. We all are motivated. You have to be a motivator. You have to keep your motivation up. Look back at some of your favorite coaches when you were playing, and I guarantee you will describe those coaches as motivators. Those coaches got us through what we thought we could not do. They made us believe we could do the things necessary to be successful in football. Motivation is a big part of our job. We need to be good at it, and we have to constantly be aware of this fact. On the last of the four points, you must love to teach kids. You must love coaching the kids. There are different ways you can do this. I am not a lovey-dovey coach. Some coaches are, and they are great at it. I want to give you my descriptions of a Great Assistant Football Coach. GREAT ASSISTANT COACHES: Are there to assist the head coach in running a quality program. I started to remove the word GREAT, but I decided to leave it in the list. Today we are going to learn how to become Great Coaches. We should be better coaches when we leave here. Some of the points are obvious. The one point that sticks out for me is this. Our job as a good assistant coach is to support our head coach. That is very important to me. I may not have learned this. had I not been a head coach along the way. When you make things go better for the head coach. you are making things go better for the program. A head coach has a lot of different things to deal with. We all know that. He is on the field the same amount of time as you are. and he coaches a position. He has to deal with parents, fund raising, budgets. and all of those headaches. It can be tough on him. You are there to make his job easier. I have compiled a list of Assistant Coach Axioms. Here is the definition of Axioms. The first point is to be knowledgeable about your position. That is an obvious point. The assistant coach must be a great teacher. You must reach the kids somehow. We must make sure of one thing we do. We teach our players all the techniques. but we must teach them how to block a linebacker. or how to get in a stance, how to define the aiming point. The important thing we need to be conscious of is the WHY we do certain things in teaching the fundamentals. Why are you asking the players to do certain things in practice? It is important for the players to know why you are teaching the different techniques for the other positions. The reason for this is the fact the team will see some things they have not been prepared for. If we only teach them "Who, What, and "How", to do things and not teach them the "Why," what adjustments are they going to make? As an assistant coach it is important for us to see adjustments need to be made. If you teach the kids `Why," they should be able to see that changes need to be made. They will know the concept of the play and then can make good decisions at that moment when they are out on the field without the coaches. When the players get off the field the coach needs to get with the players involved and agree on a course of action for adjustments. Good assistant coaches speak their mind. In the meetings with the staff, you must speak up if you believe in something. It is your job to press your concerns. If you have an idea you need to let the staff know your views. You have to believe what you are for and you have to sell your ideas. At the same time, when you leave that meeting, regardless if your idea won or not, you have to support whatever decision was made in that staff meeting. The decision is the right decision and you must let it go. Those two ideas go hand and hand. When I was a head coach, on Thursday night I stayed at home. If the JV or Freshman Teams were playing I would go see their games. One game I went to see caught me by surprise. I looked out on the field and saw our players in our uniforms but I did not recognize any of the plays our team was running. I wanted to know what was going on. It is important for the assistant coaches to know the fact that you are training the players for the future. You must realize you must stick with the offense or defense the head coach wants the players to develop for the future. If you have a problem with this, go talk with your head coach. It does not hurt to run a double-reverse-pass once in a while. However, the games for the JV or Freshman Teams should resemble the games on Friday night. It is obvious it is important to be organized and dependable. One point that is important related to being organized is to be on time. There are two rules in coaching. First, the head coach is always right. Second, if the head coach is wrong, go back to rule number one. Great assistant coaches always have positive relationships with their players. They do not have to hug them up, but they have a good relationship with their players. They have a way to motivate their kids. They have a way to get feedback from the kids. They have ways to motivate their athletes in the classrooms. It is less true in high school than in college. The college coaches know all of their kids, but they do not deal with them on a day-to-day basis. Assistant coaches should know his players better than the head coach knows them. The great assistant coach is the "head coach" of their position. If you coach the varsity wide receivers, there is a responsibility that comes along with this title. Have a meeting with your group and go over the objectives for their position. Make sure they know they can come to you for help. Along the same lines, we need to let the players we work with know "when" they can come to see us. Five minutes before we go on the practice field, is not the time for a player to come to me and tell me they are having trouble with the counter-combo. They need to let me know ahead of time. I hope you are in a program where everyone has a job description and knows where they stand. You should have a list of the post-game jobs and your assignment during the game. Your responsibility for the off-season should be detailed. Some coaches work camps during the summer. and everyone has a job. Those are the things you need to embrace. You do not need to complain about the assignments you are given. You need to be an advocate for your players. This is true even in the staff meetings. You need to speak up when the players you coach are discussed in staff meetings. You need to stand up for your kids. This same loyalty should carry over in the classroom. When other faculty members talk to you in a negative way about one of your athletes, you need to stand up for them. You need to let the teachers know you like the kid, and you think that he is a fine student-athletic. If you have trouble with him in the classroom, just let me know and I will help you with that student." The great assistant coach makes his players feel special and important. You never know when you are going to need them. This is especially true for the offensive linemen. They are really important, and we need to let them know this. Having a positive relationship with the other coaches is important. I have been lucky in this endeavor. It is important because the staff spends a lot of time together. If you have issues, you need to fix them. If you do not correct the problems, it can be a miserable year. A truism is an established principle of law. It is a statement that needs no proof. because its truth is obvious. Some of these are good and some of them are not so good. ASSISTANT COACH AXIOMS • Be knowledgeable about your position. We have talked about being knowledgeable about you position. You cannot be a good coach without knowing about your position. Things are constantly changing so you must learn more about your position. With changes in offense, defense. and tempo. we have to continue to stay on top of the game. We are all doing that now by attending this clinic. We are learning about our position. You can learn something at this clinic that will help you in your position. It is an ongoing thing. You must be a great teacher and a great leader. We talked about teaching and the How, Why, and When aspects of teaching and coaching. Your kids are watching you in practice. Are you a palms up guy, or palms down guy? Are you a whiner? If you are a whiner your players will be whiners. They are going to react to what you do. We do not want to give them excuses by our actions. They are going to have your mentality and your tempo. We need to be mindful of this in working with kids. The next item should have been first on the list. Don't be a "griper." This can poison staff cohesiveness by constantly finding things to gripe about. Those coaches complain about what they have to do. or gripe about what they can't do. They complain about what some of the other staff members are doing. If you do not like it, it is "tough crap." Fix it in the off season. Don't try to get the other staff members on your side because you are unhappy with issues that pertain to you. That is poison. and it is no good. If you have an issue with someone, you need to talk about it and get it out of the way. The other point is to talk with the head coach about that individual. Don't be bitching, and nit-picking about the issue. We all know how good it feels to get a pat on the back. Praise your players when they do something good. Find positive things to say about them. This is one of the things I need to improve on. I forget all the good things my players accomplish. I try to work on this. and I get going and overlook some of the good things going on. I recognize this fact and I am going to do better on this issue in the near future. We need to praise kids that are not our best players. You may tell a young player that is the best stance I have ever seen from you. Good Job!" Find ways to compliment all of the players and not just the better athletes. Football is a tough sport. Not every kid can play football. You have to make that fourth string tackle feel good about coming to practice. Don't false praise because the players will see through that. Along the same lines, compliment other assistant coaches. As the offensive line coach after a game I go up to our running backs coach and tell him, "You did an awesome job tonight." Or in practice we may say to him, "Great job in the drill working on the running game." Assistant coaches need to hear this type of compliments. We know the head coach does not get many compliments. We need to serve and compliment the head coach more than we are aware of. He probably compliments you as an assistant a lot. You can tell the head coach. "Coach, you are doing a great job. I love the drills we did today.' it is as simple as that. We are all in the game together, along with the head coach. If I get a compliment that makes me feel good and motivates me, and it makes me want to do more. It goes the same way for the other coaches, including the head coach. I learned this when I was a head coach. I know how it feels to get a compliment as a head coach. This is an important aspect that is often overlooked by assistant coaches. This is a good axiom to end with this aspect of the lecture. "If I were the head coach, would I want "me" coaching for me? Are you the first coach off the practice field? Are you the last coach to show up for the meeting? If you can say, "As the head coach I would like me" to be an assistant coach for me, because I think I am doing a good job." it goes a long way. I am only 5'5" tall. I think you should hire a short offensive line coach. During pre-game warm ups we are down on one end of the field warming up. The other team is down in the other end zone warming up. They look at our end zone and make a comment about our size. "Son-of-a¬gun, look at the size of those offensive linemen down at the other end of the field. They are huge." They do not know how tall I am. All they see is a coach working with the offensive linemen at the other end of the field. So I am advising you to hire a short offensive line coach. (ha ha!) As an assistant coach we must consider our responsibility to be the "Head Coach" of the position we accept." If you are the head coach of the JV team or the freshman team, you must be concerned with all of the positions. We start the week with a meeting and you had a Ready Sheet prepared for what you were going to work on that week. What I like about that is when we left that meeting everyone knew the formations we were going to run and the plays we would run that week. Everyone knew that was the menu for the week. I did not want to look over at one of the other coaches in our individual drill time and see him working on a play that was not included in our package the staff came up with on Sunday at the meeting. It forces you as an assistant to stay focused on the task and to practice what the kids are going to be doing in a game that week. On Monday we did not want a coach working on a reach block if that block is not scheduled to be worked on until Wednesday. The list helps everyone to stay focused on the same page. We can take that Ready list and make a game plan out of it. I have seen some JV and freshman coaches walk out on the field and all they have is a list of plays. It may be because they do not know what a game plan looks like. In putting the game plan together the top part is the Ready list we worked on during the week. At times you cut things out of the Game Plan. This list gives you a menu to choose from. You have some down and distance situations which are your critical downs. When I coached in college we had a lot more situations on the Game Plan. At the high school level you should have a third down plan. It is tough when you coach freshman or JV's because you may not have been able to watch the game film of the opponent. It is nice if you have a buddy that can go film games for you. At one time when I called the plays I tried to call all of the formations we were going to use for that game, early in the game. I wanted to see how the defense was going to play us. We could take advantage of what the opponents were giving us from the different formations. The 2-point plays are important. As Coach Rich Rodriguez said last night if you are looking at your play sheet on the 2-point play you are in trouble. He is kind of right on this. The key point may be what you prepared for on Wednesday night. At least you will have rehearsed the situation in your mind and have a plan. This may help some of the younger coaches. The last point I want to make is something I worked up to help the head coach. In the pre-game the head coach has a lot of things to accomplish. You get the warm-ups going and then you have to go visit with the head coach of the opponents. Then the radio announcers come to you to get the starting lineup. Then the TV crew needs a list of starters. Next the PA announcer wants him to mark the starters. All of this distracts the head coach. So I came up with a list of starters on offense and defense for all of the media and it helps a great deal. I made the starters list up and made copies of them. When the media comes up to the head coach to get the starters, I handed them the sheet with the starter's names and numbers on the form. The media appreciated receiving the list. They did not have to figure it out and they did not have to disturb the head coach. If you want a copy of anything we do let me know. You can email me and I will send it to you. GAME NIGHT • Pre-game duties Hopefully you have these things outlined at the beginning of the season. The toughest thing for a coach is to not watch the game. Coaching from the press box can be difficult. You need to know what you are looking for before you go to the press box. One thing that helped me when had press box duties was to know the numbers of the front six defenders. Who is the Mike, who are the ends, and who are the interior linemen. If someone talks about number 53 in the game, I can tell them he was the 3-technique. We like to know our own tendencies when the game is going on. When we are on defense. I can look at the previous plays and get feedback to the offensive coordinator or the person calling the plays. An example may be as simple as this. "Coach, we have thrown the football on every first down." At times you can pick up on something that will help you later in the game. We do the same with the defense. We want to know what the defense did the first half, and what they are doing later in the game. Does the defense have a tendency that will show us what we need to do on offense? I assume you are grading your players on their game performance. You need to provide them with some type of feedback to give them a chance to see growth. It can be a tool to help you with making decisions in playing time for the next game. On the weekends you should be breaking down the films of your opponents. In your staff meetings you may want to discuss the grades and what they mean for the team. Most teams have staff meetings on the weekends. You can meet with all of the staff or just the offense, defense, or special teams. On the weekends you should be breaking down the films of your opponents. In your staff meetings you may want to discuss the grades and what they mean for the team. Most teams have staff meetings on the weekends. You can meet with all of the staff or just the offense. defense. or special teams. It is important for all of the staff to talk in the same vocabulary when it comes to the plays. drills. and other terminology. You should have a position composite and philosophy of the drills and organization and name of everything you use. We keep a drill completion record of the different drills we use and the amount of time we spend on those drills. I have a list of the Offensive Line Composite I use. If you are interested, drop me a note and I will send you the copy. If you are interested in any of the material I covered here today just send me a note via email and I will send you what we do. Coach Robert Cary - West Salem High School - cary_robert@salkeiz.kl2.or.us
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Robert Cary – How to be a Good Assistant Coach
