By Eric Anderson
Inside Linebackers Coach
Bishop Chatard High School (IN)

As coaches, we all would like to maximize the quality of practice. If you can create an environment that has energy and efficiency, it will definitely transfer into good things on Friday night. We all attempt this. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t but we all strive for that perfect practice. I believe, as I’m sure many of you do too, that in order to even have a chance at creating this environment for your two deep depth chart (the guys that play), the competition they face must be formidable. Enter the Scout Team.

If you don’t have the opportunity to two platoon, then you definitely use a scout team.  Most teams use scout players in all phases of practice. If you want your offense, defense, and special teams to get the hands-on experience they need, then their competition must be able to effectively recreate their opponent. We want our players to be ready for anything on Friday night, so we must try to create that environment during the week. 

Buy in

When you want your players to buy in, the first step is to show them that you have bought in. So, if you are in charge of teaching the scout team, it is important that you are well versed in the scheme they need to know. Be able to answer questions about the scheme and provide them coaching direction as if you are the coordinator.  As a scout coach you should also bring a positive and competitive energy to the task.  Once they see you are excited about the opportunity to coach them, they will be eager to compete against the starters. Enthusiasm won’t solve everything, but it is a good place to start.

There are a few other things we do to try to create buy in. The most important being recognition. We have “Scout Players of the Week” every Thursday before we start our walk thru practice.  The Head Coach will announce these in front of the players. Some kids like the mention, but most of all it allows them to see that they are being evaluated. Every year a few guys that started on the scout team earn a chance to play on Friday Nights.  When players know they are getting a chance to “show what they got” you get a unique kind of energy.

Personnel

Scout Team starts with scout players. We want to face the best competition without putting our starting units at risk. Early in the season we as coaches collaborate to create what we call a “Scout Depth Chart.” I’ll use Scout Offense to explain this.

I first work with the D coordinator and D assistants to know who will be taking 1st and 2nd team reps that week of practice. Once we have that, we go to the Offensive Coaches with the leftover players to see who we can’t use for the sake of the team. The common players on this list include your kickers and O starters. Once you have your scout players you create a depth chart according to the opponent’s personnel.  We pay attention to skill, size, and position. The closer we can mimic our opponents, the better. We have a depth chart ready to go by Monday, but it is a rough draft. You will have to be ready to adjust because of injury, kids missing school, or even JV games, etc. We are fortunate to play a lot of our JV games on Saturdays, which allows a scout preparation period on Mondays. 

By Don Bartel
Head Football Coach, Defensive Coordinator, Linebackers/Running Backs Coach
Eastlake High School (WA)
Twitter: @CoachDBartel

At Eastlake, we spend a lot of time considering how we can make practices more efficient and effective.  Being teachers first, we always start with a good look at our staff (who we are, what we know, coaching style, coaching voice, etc.) and how we present material to our players (before practice, Hudl, meetings, practice, walk-throughs, etc.).  After laboring at this at multiple levels of football for years, I started to believe that there has got to be a better way of doing this.  Next, we needed to define exactly what “this” is. 

As a staunch believer in the idea that we do not coach football, we coach young men; we took that one step further in saying we do not coach young men the game of football, we use the game of football to coach young men on how to be competitors.  In fact, much of what we do now has to do with the following elements at the forefront: practice time, development of players/coaches, speed of practice, competition, and adversity.  With those key elements being considered, we have created a situation where we not only maximize the time we have to practice, we actually have players from all levels of the depth chart saying that they not only enjoy practice, but it is their favorite part of being an Eastlake Football player. 

Work Week Schedule

The first step in becoming more effective and efficient is to take a good honest look at what time you have to prepare your players.  Based on our review of our time, experience of our coaches, and the schedule we have in the fall, our basic week has taken this form:

Saturday: Coaches meet at 9:00 a.m., Players in to lift/run and meet with trainer 10:00a.m., Team and Position Meetings 11-12:00.

Sunday:  Teach tapes (O/D game plans) and individual position notes due on Hudl

Monday:  Lunch meetings, players lift, 2-Deep practice 3:30-4:30, JV Game 4:00

Tuesday:  Lunch meetings, practice 3:15-5:30 (Offensive emphasis)*

Wednesday:  Lunch meetings, practice 7:00-9:15 (Defensive emphasis)*

Thursday:  Lunch meetings, practice 3:00-4:30 (Helmets only O-D-SPT review/walk-through)

Friday:  Pre-game lift after school, Varsity Game 7:00

*Emphasis practice means we have a 60-40-20-minute split between three phases of game

This is included to give you a basic overview as I will highlight a few of the things we do in the paragraphs that follow:

• Saturday Meetings
• Teach Tapes
• Scout Books
• Lunch Meetings
• Coaching in our System
• Practice Procedures

SATURDAY MEETINGS

As a head coach, I have been meeting on Saturdays for quite some time.  We have decided to involve the players on this day as well; although, our meetings generally last until 3:00 or later that afternoon.  We bring the guys in to get their bodies back on track, find out who is dealing with injury, and put the game from the night before behind us.  We meet for 10-15 minutes as a group to highlight some great play, some issues, and some progress made.  Before we break off into position groups, I give them the focus of the upcoming week which typically is tied to the process, the growth, and the challenges of getting ourselves ready for the next challenge.  Position meetings last no longer than 20 minutes, and sometimes we will meet as an entire offense or defense as well.

As a staff, it is our job to get our game plan completely finished, plan what sessions we will need for practice each individual day, and get all materials ready to implement.  If we do this, Sunday can be a day for focus on our position groups, and it can serve as a day to do any additional work at home.  We also have Monday before and after practice to complete scout books and opponent plays based on tendencies and areas of concern for our defense.

SUNDAY WORKLOAD

TEACH TAPES

As a coordinator, it is my responsibility to create a video game plan/teach tape for our entire team.  I do this with two groups in mind:  our players who will watch this to prepare for the opponent’s offense, and those who will watch to be the opponent’s offense.  Both my offensive coordinator and I have Microsoft Surface Pro 2s that we use along with video screen capture software called “liteCam” (liteCam.net), OneNote from Microsoft, and Hudl to relay all information to our players each week.  We post those on Hudl each Sunday, so the players can review, message us with questions, and prepare themselves for Monday’s meeting.  Typically, the tapes are no longer than 10-15 minutes, contain only the essential information about the opponent and our game plan, and are designed to not only give them a resource that they can return to; but it also takes the place of the traditional Monday meeting we used to have that our entire JV team would miss each week.