Ideally, coaches want their defensive players to be smart, fast, and physical.
I was hired in February, 2013 by first year Head Coach, Joshua Eargle. We were Graduate Assistants together in 2006 at Southern Mississippi and kept in touch over the years. Our first season at ETBU was filled with ups and downs. We started off 2 – 0 for the first time in school history. Defensively, we gave up 34 points in the first game and 10 points in the second game. By the end of week three, we had lost both of our starting defensive ends to ACL injuries and three starters on offense to ACL tears as well.
Changing a culture is tough, especially when you lose starters to injuries and have to play a bunch of young guys. We finished the season giving up 43 points a game. We did not tackle, cover, blitz, create turnovers, or communicate with each other well at all. I learned a valuable lesson from the 2013 season: The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) works. We tried to do too much from a scheme standpoint to make up for losing key players and never really got better at doing anything well.
Off the field, we set the bar high academically for our players. Our first week on the job, we found out we had 16 players with a cumulative GPA under 2.0 after the fall 2012 semester and a Team Cumulative GPA of 2.52. We worked with our academic success team on campus and put a plan together to improve this situation. After a lot of work in year one, we now have four players under a 2.0 cumulative GPA and a team Cumulative GPA of 2.68 after the spring 2014 semester.
Our players are putting in the work in the classroom and in the weight room. They have bought into what we are preaching and they want to be successful. Now it is our job to make them feel successful on the field. Going into our spring practices, our staff decided to simplify things so our young players can become better instead of trying to run every call in our playbook. We felt really good about where we ended up after our final Spring practice and the direction we are headed going into the 2014 season.
VISION FOR WHAT WE WANT TO BE DEFENSIVELY
When I returned to Southern Miss in 2010, Larry Fedora was the head coach. He had a vision for what he wanted his team to look like and that vision was: Smart, Fast, and Physical. He had it painted on the wall in the team meeting room, preached it every day at practice, and it was the last thing he said to the team before they left the locker room before kickoff. I took that vision and have applied it to our defense because it represents what we are trying to create at ETBU.
Being a Smart football player comes from knowing your job within the scheme, understanding why your job has to be done a certain way, and being a quick thinker. Installing our defense with the KISS principle in mind helps us create a smart player. Although we want players with high ACT scores and GPA’s on our team, being book smart does not mean being football smart. Some of us are book smart and some are street smart. I’m looking for players that are football smart.
Being a Fast football player has nothing to do with running the 40-yard dash. We are always looking for players who can run 4.5 but it is not a requirement to play fast. I would much rather have a player who runs a 4.7 or 4.8 but knows exactly what to do, knows what the opponent is going to do based off of film study, and anticipates what play is coming. This type of player will make more plays than an athlete who runs a 4.5 but doesn’t know where he is going or what he is doing.
Having a group of Physical football players is an important trait for having a successful defense. If your players are struggling with this, show them a rugby video. Those guys are out there sacrificing their bodies with no pads. We have $500 worth of equipment on so let’s use it.
8 DAILY AREAS OF EMPHASIS
We sat down as a staff and discussed important characteristics of a successful defense. These focus areas are stressed daily in pre-practice walk through, individual drills, group work, and team periods. Hopefully, going into year two, as a unit, we will be better at each of these.
1. Knowing / Doing YOUR Job Within the Defense – Defensive schemes are like a puzzle. Every player represents a certain piece and fits in a certain area to create a perfect picture. Players have to know their jobs, both where and why they fit in certain places for each call. I was in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers secondary meeting room in 2010 and saw a sign that said: “The three most dangerous words in football are I GOT IT.” In order for a player to GET IT, he better be able to learn it, explain it, draw it on the board, and ultimately execute it on the field.
2. Being Great Tacklers – FootballScoop conducted a study of 30,000 snaps over the course of the 2013 season. After breaking one tackle, your average gain is 8.2 yards after the catch. Breaking two tackles resulted in an average gain of 13.6 yards after a catch, three broken tackles equaled nearly 20 YAC (19.8), and four resulted in 21.6 YAC. Those numbers tell me we better emphasize tackling and practice it daily. We do tackle circuits once a week as a unit and each position coach works on it daily in individual drills.
3. Running to the Football – This is a MUST for a defense to have any chance at being successful. It makes up for individual mistakes and can create a wolfpack mentality about hunting down a ball carrier.
4. Disguise – We try and be as two-high as we possibly can. I believe teams that are able to successfully disguise their defense have players who understand the calls and know what is trying to get accomplished. Ultimately, they have to understand why we want to show certain things in certain ways to get the most out of the defensive call. Defensively, we want to show our opponents’ one thing and execute another call so we are the team attacking.
5. Create Turnovers – We did a study over last summer dealing with winning records and defenses that created turnovers. We found that over 80% of defenses who created 30 or more turnovers had winning records in Division III football. For a program that has not had a winning record since 2003, we found that information to be very beneficial. We set our goal at 30 and after our first season, we only caused 17 turnovers and ended up 3 – 7. This will still be our goal this fall. We stress turnovers at practice daily, during meetings, and in film sessions. We practice a team turnover circuit once a week. We also consider every ball on the ground as an opportunity for a turnover so we make our defense pick up all footballs on the ground. This is from realistic fumbles to incomplete passes in order to emphasize the importance of wanting the football.
6. Communication – I hate coaching defenses that do not talk. With offenses today with so many formations and plays, a defense has to be on the same page. We better communicate our call, our formation check, and any tips an offense might have given. This communication also equals confidence. Players who know what is going on and know their teammates know what is going on have a better chance of stopping an offense.
7. Relentless Effort – We are looking for players who take pride in not letting their teammates beat them to the ball consistently. Effort has a lot to do with a players’ heart and has little to do with talent. Players who are fully invested in the process, who go hard daily at the little things, who are willing to sacrifice for the team, will give great effort. A video I like to show is “Ray Lewis – Effort”. It is only one minute long but the message is clear about the importance of effort.
8. Work Together in Good / Bad Times - In my 14 years of coaching, I know I’ve learned at least one thing - you are either in a storm, coming out of a storm, or about to get into a storm. Throughout my career I have experienced many positive moments: making it to the South State Championship game my very first season, seeing young men grow up and mature both on and off field, big wins vs. higher ranked teams, late night talks with coaches after games while washing uniforms, and beating a team on their home field when we had lost to them for ten consecutive years and made the playoffs.
I have also experienced some negative moments: ninth graders killed in car accidents, going 0 – 10 my second season, coaches dealing with cancer, coaches dealing with sick children, players getting shot after a big win and one ending up paralyzed, season ending injuries, and giving up an average of 43 points a game. Our teams go through highs and lows during a game, sometimes even within a quarter. In order for us to be successful, we, as a defense, have to be a unit headed in the same direction, working toward the same goal.
DEFENSIVE NICKNAME
We chose to call our defense Gap Soldiers. This name came from the book of Nehemiah in the Bible. Nehemiah had a wall built around Jerusalem to protect the city and God’s people. Different armies would come and attack the wall and break holes in it. When those armies broke through the wall, a soldier would run into the gap and fill the hole. He would fight to protect his family as the wall was being rebuilt behind him. Once he entered the gap, he had two choices: 1) defeat the enemy or 2) sacrifice his life for the protection of the community.
Each player on defense is assigned a gap within each call. Now I don’t want a player dying to protect their gap but I do want the same mindset of the biblical Gap Soldier. That is, step into the assigned gap, close it off from the enemy, and defeat whoever tries to enter it. We chose this name based on working together, sacrificing everyone’s body, and ultimately doing what it takes for the team to succeed.
About the Author: Keith Pigott enters his second season this fall as defensive coordinator at East Texas Baptist University. He previously was on the staff at Southern Mississippi. Pigott also coached at five different Mississippi high schools – Brookhaven, North Forrest, Stone County, Bay, and Centreville Academy. He has three degrees – including a doctorate – from Southern Mississippi.