5-Point System for Post-Game Evaluations

By Casey Miller
Offensive Coordinator
Cottonwood High School (UT)
Twitter: @cqmiller4

Coaches spend hours and hours of time each offseason doing installs, drills, footwork, conditioning, and many other countless activities with their players to prepare them for the season. These many activities are critical to the success of each and every player regardless of their position on the football field. When evaluating player performance in practices, scrimmages, or games, often players are only given grades based on a +/- system which more often than not, is mostly based on the result of the play, not based on more of the skills that coaches spend so much time working on with their players. Being able to give each player much more specific feedback on which things they are doing well, and more importantly the things they need to improve upon can give them the buy-in to focus on those skills during practice sessions the following week, which will lead to more focused players in practice. The number one thing that tends to be the driving force behind not having a more specific and detailed grading system is TIME.

The System:

Our grading system gives each player a score of 0 or 1 in 5 categories for each play. These scores are then turned into an overall grade for the play, an average score for each category for the entire game, as well as an overall grade for that player’s performance that week. Using an Excel spreadsheet, the coach grading that player just has to copy-paste the playlist from HUDL and start grading… the worksheet does the rest of the work for you. Since each position has slightly different things they focus on, each position has their own set of categories that get scored. For instance, a QB has both a pre-snap decision-making process and a post snap decision- making process for each play. He could do one well and not do the other one, so they need to be tracked separately. A running back may only have his read post snap, so giving him a grade for “pre-snap read” would be a waste of time. We feel as if we have created an objective way to grade all positions with great detail, give specific feedback to each player about their performance, and have tried to eliminate the often times result-based grading system that many coaches use. The 5 categories for each position in our grading system are:

Quarterbacks

1. Pre-snap
2. Post snap
3. Footwork
4. Mechanics
5. Finish

Runningbacks

1. Presnap
2. Assignment
3. Footwork
4. Mechanics
5. Finish

Wide Receivers

1. Pre-snap
2. Assignment
3. Footwork
4. Mechanics
5. Finish

Offensive Line

1. Pre-snap
2. Footwork
3. Head Placement
4. Hand Usage
5. Finish

Tight Ends

This is always the fun position… they are graded as OL on run plays, but WR on pass plays

Defensive Players

1. Alignment
2. Assignment
3. Technique
4. Reaction
5. Finish