Third Down Offense

By: Cam Cameron - LSU

Originally Published - Nike 2014 Coach of the Year Clinics Football Manual
- by Earl Browning

I am thrilled to be here. This is my 30th year in coaching. As I look around this room I see a bunch of young guys and some veteran coaches as well. I think it speaks volumes for the high school coaches, their staffs, and this state for its dedication you have for football. I can remember going to clinics every week when I was a college coach. I have not been to as many the last few years because I was in the NFL coaching. However, I am looking forward to getting back into the clinic circuit now that I am back in college coaching.

I learned so much from attending football clinics. I just moved into my office at LSU and came across notes from clinics I attended 25 years ago when I was starting out as a young quarterback coach.

I was fortune enough the last five years when worked with the Baltimore Raven to know and coach Ray Lewis. I can tell you that anything you see and have thought about him is real. He is an unbelievable man and player. He is as inspiring a man as I have ever been around.

I want to share a few stories about Ray. and then I will move along into my lecture. John Harbaugh had just come in as the new head coach of the Ravens. What Ray did was one of the neatest things in terms of leadership that I have ever seen. John had not been a head football coach in the NFL. We won our first preseason game. I remember we all came together in the locker room. We were ready to break up when Ray Lewis stepped forward. He had a game ball in his hand. He told the team he wanted to present the ball to John Harbaugh on winning his first football game in the NFL. John reached out to take the ball. When he grabbed the ball, Ray did not let go of it. He looked John right in the eye and said, "Coach, lead us and we will follow you."

The statement Ray made to the team that day was that he was on board with the coaches and their program. We went on to the AFC championship game that year. It was a great opportunity that Ray did not let go by, to let the team know he was on board. He wanted the team to know he was on board with what the coaches were saying and what the team was all about. That was a huge thing and it was on the front end of our tenure in Baltimore.

The second story happened in the AFC championship game against the New England Patriots. We were down by three points with time running out. We drove the ball inside the ten-yard line and had a first and goal. We should have scored but had some bad things happen. On fourth down, we were going to kick the field goal to tie up the game and go into overtime. The kicker was on the sidelines warming up and did not come out. The scoreboard said it was third down but it was actually fourth down. Everyone knew it but the kicker. There was panic throughout the sidelines. He rushed on the field, missed the field goal, and New England won the game. We went from a possible Super Bowl trip to losing the game and going home.

As we headed to the locker room after the game, Ray Lewis stepped up and showed what a great leader of that team and in life that he was. When we got into the locker room, John, as many head coaches in that situation, did not know what to say. As we gathered in the main meeting room as a team, John looked at Ray and asked him if he had anything to say.

Ray had the team come together in the middle of the room, stacked hands, and touch one another. He told them that God had never made a mistake and we were right where we were supposed to be. He told them we were going to walk out of the locker room with our heads held high. He told them we were going out of the locker room with locked arms as one team. He told them to be proud of the season. He said, he did not know why things happened as they did, but we are where we are supposed to be. The team and coaches rallied together, got dressed, walked out of the locker room, and boarded the plane back to Baltimore. The next season we became world champions and won the Super Bowl.

There are two ways to react to a loss in the bowl game or the last regular season game. You can look at it as an opportunity to get ready for the next year or you can let the loss define you. Ray Lewis led the way into the next season and we won the Super Bowl.

I am going to share some things with you today and talk about third down. I am going to talk about how we practice third down. Before we get into that, I want to talk about statistics from last year. I do think statistics matter. We chart and evaluate everything we do. This was a special year for us on third down.

I moved to Louisiana 11 months ago. I have learned a lot about Louisiana in that time. I learn about Boudreaux and Thibodaux. If you come to the state of Louisiana, you will meet many people by the name of Boudreaux and Thibodaux. These names are classic Cajun names. They have a heavy French accent. One day Boudreaux and Thibodaux were talking about going to the LSU football game. The problem they had was the number of people that attended the game and the traffic problem getting to and from the stadium and where to park.

Thibodaux said there would be 100,000 people in the stadium and another 50,000 in the parking lot. Boudreaux said he already had the tickets and wanted to go. Thibodaux told him he had an idea about how to solve their problem. They would get a camel and ride it to the stadium. They would not have to get into the traffic and they could tie it up outside the stadium. After the game, they could ride the camel out and not get involved in the traffic jam. That was what they decided to do.

They went to the game, watched LSU play, and LSU won the game. They celebrated and were happy with the win. When they came outside to get back on their camel, there were three camels tied up outside the stadium. It seemed as if someone else had the same idea about riding into the stadium on a camel.

Boudreaux asked how they were going to get the right camel to ride out of the stadium. Thibodaux thought for a minute and finally said. "I got it!" He started with the first camel, and he walked around to the back, and lifted its tail. He said this is not the one. He did the same thing with the other two camels. Bordereaux asked him what he was doing. Thibodaux told him that on the way into the stadium he heard someone say, "Look at that camel with two ass-holes on it."

I want to talk to you about our thought process. You have to develop a certain mindset. Over the years, I was the guy that had a million thoughts about first and second down. However, the critical down for all of us is third down. As I traveled around and watched teams practice, I found at all levels of football the third down situation was the one thing that was under-practiced. We developed a philosophy at LSU about third down that worked well for us this year.

You must develop a third down mindset. Good players are a dime a dozen on first and second down. However, you must develop a mindset so that you can convert on third down plays.

At LSU, our goal is 50-percent conversion on third down. We set our goals by comparing statistics from the NCAA and SEC on every category that we think matters. We consider scoring, ball security, third down, yardage per catch, and many others. By doing that we find out what it takes to be in the top five of those categories.

The second thing I do is to get with the veteran players and set our goals for those categories. We came up with 50-percent on third down conversion. I did not know how good we were going to be this year, but we achieved that goal. We were 57-percent on third down conversion, which was up from 39-percent from the previous year. It is important for you to decide what you want to do with the third down situation.

In the SEC, we were first with 57-percent and the second place team had a 50-percent conversion rate. We did some good things on third down. but the mindset was the most important thing.

This year at LSU, we made an adjustment in the third and three yard situation. In previous years, we threw the ball too much in that situation. This year, in the third and three or less, we had a 94-percent (30/32) conversion rate. In third and three to six yards, we had a 51-percent (36/59) conversion rate. In the six to ten yard category we were 43-percent, and third and eleven-plus yards we were 30-percent. I did not know we were that good until midway through the season.

On third and three or less, we want to think run first. However, in games where the talent level is equal, you have to throw the ball a certain amount of times. Over the years, LSU has been about 55-percent run in that situation. If you throw the ball on third and short, you must make those catches.

We want to qualify everything we do. We chart every pass that we throw every day. If a player comes to LSU as a receiver or quarterback, over the course of his career, we chart every throw or catch he makes in practice. We have students do it for us. It does not cost us any money. However, you have to find them and they must be enthusiastic enough to do it. We look for students from our math department who are interested in statistics. It is important that we measure this every day.

The second part on these charts is that we post them every day. I was fortune enough to play basketball in college. I played for Bob Knight at Indiana. At our basketball practices, he had 12 managers and they recorded rebounds, assists, free throws, and everything involved with the statistic of the game. We had a huge board that he updated every day for the entire year. You knew exactly where you stood as to the major statistics of the game and the team. We got that feedback every day. That is what I tried to carry into our running and passing games at LSU.

One of the most important things we do is to make every play in practice look as if it were a game. There is a winner and loser after every snap at LSU. The offense won or the defense won. There is no such thing as just running a play. It does not matter the tempo of the practice, mentally it is going to be game-like. We want no scenario where we are not going to be full speed mentally. There are times where the practice is not as fast as the game. During a walk-through or a teaching period, the tempo may not be game-like, but the mindset is full speed.

In the passing game, the receivers must catch the ball. One year. when I was in Baltimore with the Ravens, we had a catching issue. We were the worst catching football team in the NFL. At the end of the season, we got together and tried to resolve the issue. We went back to the fundamentals of catching with our receivers. We worked on the way they saw the ball, hand placement, balls thrown above the waist, and balls thrown below the waist. We went through the process of how we taught people to catch and throw the ball.

We looked at the drills and decided the best way to put together those drills. This is what we do at LSU today. We do these drills and we chart the results of catches in these drills. I will show you a film clip of the drills in a minute.

In the drills, we wanted them to be competitive. We took five veteran players or upperclassmen and had a player draft. We put all our receivers on the field and we placed five numbers in a hat. The captains of each team drew numbers for their draft positions.

The players selected the receivers they wanted on their team. From this you got who the players thought had the best hands on the team. When it got down to the last five or six receivers, it got dicey. The last players chosen took it personally. But, at the end of the year, they were not the worst catching receivers on the team.

In fall camp, we threw 4,152 passes and caught 3.996. We have a category, which we call a freak catch. Freak catches are catches that the average receiver cannot make. We had 156 dropped balls. That gave us a 96-percent efficiency rating. Odell Beckham was the captain of one of those five teams. He caught 249 of the 256 passes thrown to him. In that total he had three freak catches, which he got double points for his team, and he had seven dropped passes. We chart this every day and put that on the board the next day. That gives the players immediate feedback of what they do in practice.

We have a catching circuit. We spend five minutes a day at this circuit. There are five stations and we spend one minute at each station. We do it every day.

Station one of our catching drills is what we refer to as a "high point" drill. (Diagram #1) It is a simple drill with two lines of players. One is the high point catch line and the other is a defender line. They run forward, shoulder to shoulder, toward the coach. The coach tosses the ball up and both players jump for the ball at its highest point. The defender does not try to knock the ball down or catch it. He is a distraction player. The offensive player times his jump and catches the ball at the highest point.

The coaching points are to catch the ball at the highest point in the jump. and to look the ball in as the receiver comes back to the ground. We teach being strong to the ball in everything, we do. We teach our quarterbacks to throw the ball and to hit the receiver in the face. This puts the ball in a position where the receiver can see it. That is the strongest position for the receiver to catch the ball. That allows the receiver to catch the ball with his thumbs together and moving back to the quarterback. We call that type of throw an A-throw.

In our practice, we grade every throw a quarterback makes. The grades for a completion is A. B. or C. If the ball is incomplete, it is a D-throw. An intercepted pass receives a grade of F. Any throw that allows the receiver to catch the ball and run with it without breaking stride is an A-throw. A throw which makes the receiver slow down or to make an adjustment to catch the ball is a B-throw. If the receiver goes to the ground to catch the ball, that is a C-throw. At the end of practice, we give the quarterback a GPA as to how he threw the football. A 4.0 is a perfect game. In these drills, we want to get as many balls caught as we can.

The next drill is a "gauntlet" drill. (Diagram #2) It is a distraction drill. We have six standup dummies set up. The receivers move down the line of dummies and catch five throws. They catch the ball at each opening. tuck the ball away, and drop the ball before moving to the next opening. There are five quarterbacks or managers throwing the balls. You can add distracters in front of the dummies if you chose. You can add many things to this drill.

After one minute, we are off to the next station, which is a low-ball drill. (Diagram #3) This is a pitch and catch type of drill except every thrown ball is at or below, the receiver's knees. The distance apart for the thrower and receiver is 5-7 yards. This drill forces the players to catch the ball with their little fingers together instead of the thumbs. It requires total concentration to catch a ball thrown below the knees. It is amazing how the receivers improve catching the ball when we do these drills every day.

We used these drills in Baltimore the year after we were the worst catching team in the NFL. The next season we led the league in catching percentages. We had the fewest dropped balls in the league. It does not matter how good or bad a receiver's hands are. If he does the drills, he will improve.

The next drill we do is a "high and low behind" drill. (Diagram #4) This is a possession type throw for the quarterback. It places the ball behind the receiver so that he has to open his hips, pivot to the outside, and catch the ball. The receiver opens his hips, looks the ball in. and tucks it away. When you run this drill, you must keep in mind that we run the pattern beyond the first down marker. If the receiver has to go down to catch the ball. he must be beyond the sticks.

You must do two things if you want to be great at throwing the ball in third down situation. The first thing is to have the ability to throw the ball two yards beyond every down and distance you can imagine. This year, we executed a third and 26 yards for the first down. We design plays so that if the receiver catches the ball he will have the first down. I have not seen anyone in college football that can consistently throw the ball short of the first down marker and make the first down. It can happen but it is not a basis for what we try to do. You must scheme the patterns beyond the sticks.

The second thing you must do is to set the protection scheme so the defense does not force the quarterback to throw the ball to a hot receiver. It happens all the time. With the hash marks as they are in college football, we get field pressures. If the protection scheme cannot pick up the blitzes, the quarterback has to dump the ball to a hot receiver. The defense rallies, makes the tackle, and you are short of the first down. That is especially true on third and ten situations. If you get good at converting third and ten, the defense will go to cover-0 and come after the quarterback. Make sure you have a protection scheme to handle six-man pressure in third and ten situations.

When the quarterback throws a ball to the receiver, we think the ball should talk to the receiver. if the quarterback delivers the ball in front of the receiver, the ball tells the receiver. there is no defender in front of him. The quarterback is not going to lead a receiver in to a knockout hit.

If the receiver is running across the field and the ball comes into his body, the ball tells him there is trouble ahead. That is the thought process behind the high or low behind throw. The defender may hit the receiver in the back. but we throw the ball away from the defender into a position so the receiver can protect the ball and himself. The ball has to tell the receiver where the defenders are around him.

The last drill in the circuit is the "sideline" drill. (Diagram #5) We teach our receiver to get two feet in bounds although the college rule is one foot. When we catch the ball going into the sidelines we get the first foot in bounds and drag the second foot. If we have to lie out to catch the ball, we drag both feet. We want to teach them to do it the hard way. It is also unnatural for a receiver to extend at the sidelines for the ball and drag one foot. I am not saying teaching one foot in bounds is a bad way to do it. This is what we teach and it works for us. The idea is, if they can get two feet in bounds, it is easier to get one foot in bounds.

All our receivers want to win. Every time the ball is in the air, there is a winner and a loser. This year Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry made a number of what we call freak catches. In practice, we practice making one-handed catches. We practice catching with two hands 99.9-percent of the time. However, there are times where you must catch the ball one-handed. We practice that as well. These great receivers make spectacular catches in games. but they prepare in practice every day to make those catches.

Our receivers this year were a unique group. They worked on catching the ball as much as kids play video games. Our receivers catch the football seven days a week year round. They catch the ball with one or two hands. They catch the ball over the shoulder and behind their backs. They catch the ball in every situation the game may present to them. On third down, if the receiver does not catch the ball, we have to punt the ball away.

When we play a game at Tiger Stadium, as I walk off the field after the game, the first thing I look at is the advanced report of the next game opponent. The first thing I look at is the third down situations. From that sheet, I know the front they play and the top five coverages they use. I want to get fresh in my mind the things that will carry over from this game and how many new things we are going to need for third-down plays in the next game.

We do not make a million adjustments on first or second down but third down is another world. If you are not successful on third down, you do not have another down. You must punt the ball. I know high school coaches are doing this type of scouting right now. I have two sons playing high school football and I see the things they bring home. I know Hudl allows you to do these types of things.

One important chart we use is the number of times our players are handling the ball. Sometimes it escapes coaches so that their best players are not handling the ball as much as they should. There is no guesswork for us. I have a chart that tells me exactly what our playmakers are doing. I know how many times Alfred Blue, Terrence Magee, Armand Williams, J.C. Copeland, Odell Beckham, Jarvis Landry, and the other players touch the ball. I get a sheet after each practice and every game.

We always chart the drops a receiver has. The stat is more about percentage than the actual number of dropped balls. Odell Beckham had the most dropped ball but at the same time, he had the second most catches.

In addition to the charts on the receivers, I get the quarterback charts. For example, our quarterback last year was Zack Mettenberger. For a particular week, he had 133 attempts. He completed 111 passes. He had no throw-a-ways and one interception. Of his incompletions, he had 10 dropped balls. His completion rate was 83-percent and his accuracy rate was 91-percent.

When I was at Michigan, I did a ten-year study on completion rates from practice to games. There is about a 13-17-percent drop in the completion rate from practice to games. If you throw 50-percent in practice, that number will drop in games. Our goal for complete rate is 70-percent in every game. In practice our completion rate has to be 87-percent or higher to achieve the goal of 70-percent for games. The ten-year study I did is accurate and it has held up over time.

Another thing I got from Bob Knight was the idea of officiating practice every day. We have an official come to practice and we officiate our practice sessions. We chart every penalty because that is a big part of every game.

The other big variable in a game situation is the game clock. The quarterback has to be under the clock every day in practice. The number one problem a quarterback has in the NFL is the clock. He has a tough time getting everything communicated in the time allotted to him. The clock strangles more young quarterbacks than anything. If you have a young quarterback, make sure you have a clock on the first day of practice to the day he graduates. Do not let him take a snap without a clock. If you do not have a visible clock, the coach has to be the clock.

If you have a young quarterback, he will come unglued when you put him on the clock in the initial snaps. The more he works with the clock, the more he becomes familiar to it. He will reach the point where 25 seconds will seem like a lifetime to him. I learned these things over 30 years of coaching. I wish I had done it the first 10 years I coached. I did not do my job of getting my players ready to play the game. We teach our players how to play the game and not how to practice. You must make the practice time the same as playing the game

We have to teach the quarterback about crowd noise. When Joe Flacco came to the Ravens, the biggest thing he had to deal with was the crowd noise. He did not have to deal with it at Delaware when he was there. In our practices, it is as if we were on the road in the SEC every day. With or without crowd noise, I expect the quarterback to have a loud and distinct cadence. When we played at Mississippi State, the noise was so loud, we could not hear. However, we did not panic because we work like that daily. Whatever your situation is, you must practice with those elements in play.

On third down, get your best players on the field. Do not have them on the sidelines standing next to you. We want the best eleven football players on the field on third down. I have done that everywhere I have been. I do not let the defense dictate to us who we put on the field. On third down plays, we are looking to score. I was with LaDainian Thomlinson for five years at San Diego. If you handed him the ball he was going to score. After him came Darren Sproles. It is not by accident that those two are some of the greatest scorers in the NFL. Every day in practice. they scored every time they carried the ball. It became a mentality of scoring. We put up a cone and tell them that is the end zone. We want them to score on every play in practice. Our players will run through the end zone unless we tell them to come back.

What we look for is a team that will set their defense on third down to defend the sticks. That is when we use the double move by the receiver and try to score. On third and five, the defense had better be ready to defend the slant and go or the stop and go pattern. In the stop and go patterns, the first move has to look exactly the same on each pattern. When a team starts to defend the slant is when you hit them with the slant and go. A team that defends the sticks will give you more touchdowns on third down than any other team.

Everyone in America runs the stick route in a third down situation. The stick route is a four to six yard out route. We try to isolate the Mike linebacker. We take our best receiver or tight end, align him inside, and isolate him on the linebacker. He comes off the line of scrimmage runs to the linebacker and sticks the out cut to the outside.

It does not matter whether you are a no-back, one-back, two-back, or three-back team, you must take your best players and get them into an area isolated on linebackers or lesser athletes. You do not have to do what we do. You do what you do best. If you do that, it will shock you to see how your success on third down will skyrocket.

When I get my advanced report of the next opponent, that report tells me whom the worst defender in the secondary is. It rates their secondary from the worst to the best defenders. When you scout teams, you cannot be caught up with whom the best players on their team are. I want to know who the worst players are. Offensively it is our job to see how long the opponent wants to keep the lesser athlete on the field. We will work against that defender all day if they leave him on the field. If the defense puts a defender on the field that does not belong out there, the only mistake the offense can make is not attacking him.

The problem you run into is the team that does not have a bad defender in the secondary. However, most teams play with at least one marginal defender in their secondary.

The Bill Walsh rule about receivers is a good rule. He said if you have good receivers, you want to spread them out across the field. If you do not have good receivers, put them in a bunch. We have great receivers but we also align in bunch formations. The reason we do that is to get the defense out of press coverage. This formation allows us to get one of our good receivers on a safety or linebacker. A safety is not a corner and does not cover as well as the corners.

Most defenses play the bunch with a zone-man concept. They assign three to four defenders against the bunch. One defender takes all patterns coming to the outside, one defender plays the receiver coming inside and the third defender plays over the top or depending on the concept, zones off on another receiver. We find out how they play the bunch and isolate our good receiver on the safety or linebacker.

If you have a young quarterback, the thing that makes head coaches and offensive coordinators nervous is the quarterback throwing the ball into the middle of the field. Many things can happen in the middle of the field. Instead of letting the quarterback read the defense, have the receivers grab and rub the defenders so you can throw the ball to who you want to throw it to. The receiver cannot simply run a route. They must run upon the defender, grab him, and get him out of the throwing lane. They have to occupy his coverage. They must get into the defender so that the defender focuses and gets his eyes on that receiver.

On first and second down, we run patterns and the quarterback reads the defense. On third down, we want to influence the coverage by getting into the defenders and rubbing or grabbing defenders to throw the ball where we want to throw it.

It is hard for the quarterbacks to see patterns that do not appear to be open. We want to throw the ball to receivers that appear to be covered. The secret is to throw the ball away from the defender. When we started spring practice, the quarterbacks would not throw the ball into those tight windows because they thought the receiver was covered. I want them to throw the ball to the receiver where he can catch the ball and the defender cannot get to it. It does not matter if the defensive back is on top of the receiver.

I told the quarterbacks in the first two weeks of spring practice that I did not care if they threw an interception on every down. That attitude has to do with the development of a quarterback. You cannot have a quarterback in the pocket that is afraid to throw the ball. The first two weeks of spring practice. I want the quarterback to let it rip. I want them throwing into tight windows. I want to see who can throw around a defender. I want to see who can make contested catches. I want to develop receivers to make contested catches and quarterback that can throw into tight windows.

That is what our defense needs. If we never throw the ball down field and always check the ball down, the defense does not learn how to play downfield. We are a vertical passing team. We are not a bubble screen type of passing team. We can do those things but we want to throw the ball down the field. If the quarterback waits for the receiver to get wide open. he will never throw the football.

After the first two weeks, we evaluate to see how our coaching has played out for us. The best opportunity for a quarterback to learn is by throwing an interception. That is how he can become great. Many players do not become great as a quarterback because they play scared. They are afraid to throw into coverage. They are afraid because no one lets them throw into coverage in practice.

The final two week of spring practice, we play as if it were a game. We want to play as if it were in the fourth quarter, on the road, and in the SEC. I want to see the quarterback throw the football in situations as if it were the national championship game. That way I can find out how he can translate the action and how he learns to be smart and aggressive. In the first two weeks, I want him to be very aggressive and we teach it that way. It helps develop him as a quarterback. The only way I know to teach a quarterback to play aggressive is to free him up in his throwing.

Obviously you cannot do that forever, but you have two weeks to find out what kind of decision maker he is. The quarterback will find out who can make contested catches. If the receiver can make that catch, the quarterback will sling the ball in there. If he cannot, he will look elsewhere.

In the development of the quarterback, we use the pump route in third down situations. We teach all the quick routes with a double move off them. The quarterback must learn to pump the receiver to force the defensive back deeper. On the double moves and pump routes, we expect the defense to grab and hold the receivers. We do the same thing in practice. The receivers expect it and learn how to counter those types of plays.

They did a ten-year study on teams in the NFL that were good on third down. They found that teams who were good on third down, had the fewest third and long situations. To be a good third down team you must be good on first and second down as well. That means you must eliminate penalties. Penalized teams are bad third down teams. One of the major goals for good third down teams is to eliminate negative plays. Zero yards gained or a throw-a-way pass are considered good plays. As long as you do not have negative plays or penalties on first or second down, that will automatically make you a better third down team.

Make sure you practice certain situations every day. We do short yardage every day. We were number one in the country in short yardage offense. Have a plan for all situations. You must have a plan for third down when the defense backs you up in your own end of the field. Practice third down in the red zone. We practice third and goal from the five-yard line going into the end zone. We practice fourth and goal from the five-yard line going into the end zone.

We have a fourth down play for the last play of the game. We have a fourth down play from our own one-yard line to the opponent's one-yard line. We have third down plays all the way down the field. If the situation is third and 15 yards to go from the 15-yard line and it is the last play of the game, I have a plan for one of three plays. I will call one of those three plays depending on the coverage the defense plays.

I want to give you a Wade Phillips idea. We did not do it this year because we had the yard markers on the practice field. When I was at San Diego, Wade Phillips had a yellow line painted on the practice field at the 32-yard line on each end of the field. That was the first down line. When we worked our third downs plays, we used the yellow line. If we had a third and eight, we placed the ball on the 22-yard line. If it was third and ten we put the ball at the 20-yard line. He did it for his defense because he wanted them to know where the yard to gain line was. However, we used it for our offensive third down practice.

If you do not have two people to handle the downs marker, you can paint the yellow line and adjust the spotting of the ball when you work third down plays. It helps the receivers and quarterback with the running of their routes. We want to get two yards beyond the first down marker in our third down situations.

If you are better than the team you are playing, be careful you do not outsmart yourself. That does not mean you are overconfident but there is a time to do something different and a time to do what you do well. When you play certain defenses that are a little different from what you see from week to week, make sure you give yourself a chance to be successful. if you do not need anything new. do not add it.

You are always welcome at LSU. We just signed the number one player in Mississippi. Devin Voorhies is from Wilkinson County High School in Woodville, Mississippi. He is a great player and we look forward to him coming to LSU. He is a hard worker and represents the state of Mississippi very well. You will be proud of the way he plays. There are some great programs in Mississippi. You do not have good programs if you do not have great high school coaching.

There is no person that has a greater influence on a player's life than his high school football coach. Times have changed but the players have not changed as much as their parents have. Remember the players need you. From junior high. to high school, to college, your players need you.

I cannot thank you enough. I hope you got one thing out of this lecture that can help you. We would love to see you in Baton Rouge.