3 Ways to Grade Offensive Linemen

By Justin Iske - @justiniske

Offensive Line Coach

Fort Hays State University

Editor's Notes: Justin Iske begins his fourth season on the coaching staff at Fort Hays State in 2014. Iske coaches the FHSU offensive line and serves as the team’s strength coach. In Iske’s first three seasons at FHSU, he has coached seven All-MIAA selections on the offensive line, led by two-time second team selection Hawk Rouse in 2011 and 2012 and second-team selection Mario Abundez in 2013. The Tiger offensive line helped produce an average of over 2,000 rushing and 2,000 passing yards per year in Iske's three seasons. Iske came to FHSU after two seasons at Northwestern Oklahoma State University where he was the offensive coordinator, special teams coordinator and offensive line coach. His 2010 team won the conference championship and led the conference in rushing offense, sacks allowed and kickoff returns.

Introduction

In working on a number of different staffs and under several different head coaches, we have been exposed to numerous ways to grade game and/or practice film. The purpose of this article is to explain three different ways that we have used, and to focus on the one that we feel is the most effective at improving your players’ performance.

PLUS / MINUS

A lot of what we can accomplish as coaches is determined by our schedule. If you are a team that watches film the day after a game, there is not a whole lot of time to dissect your game film before you meet with your players the next day. When in a time crunch, the plus/minus system of grading is effective. The coach simply watches each play and assigns a plus (you did your job) or a minus (you didn’t do your job). At the end of the game, you take the number of plusses divided by the number of plays and that is the player’s grade.

Example: 55 Plusses / 70 Plays = 78.5%

This advantage of this system is that the coach can get their film graded very quickly. The drawback is that it is hard for the player to know what to do in order to improve based on his grade.