YOU’VE PACKED up the tackling dummies, sent the helmets out for reconditioning and begged for more dollars for your weightroom. Now that you have time to think, how can you use this time to reap dividends come August?
We posed this question to Gil Brooks, head coach at perennial football power St. Joseph’s Prep of Philadelphia. For Brooks, a full-time attorney, a well-planned and productive off-season is absolutely critical to being ready in August. To take advantage of this time, he meets with his staff weekly throughout the off-season.
The first thing Brooks does is write a letter to each returning player. “I explain where we see him at this time and what he needs to do in the off-season to make our team better and reach his goals,” he says. “Some players need this reinforcement.”
Brooks delays the season’s “post-mortem” evaluation until after the winter clinics. “This gives us time to digest the things we’ve learned and read about before critically examining what we’ve been doing,” he says. While Brooks rarely changes his “bread-and-butter stuff,” he tweaks things and will consider new ideas based on the returning talent. His coaches also regularly test out new schemes with athletes attending the Saturday agility training sessions in the off-season.
Brooks also reviews the weekly plans maintained by Brooks’ coordinators during the prior season. These summaries include key changes made throughout the season. In the winter, Brooks’ decides whether to formally implement a change in the playbook. This also applies to recognizing trends. “We faced the Jet Sweep a lot during the playoffs, and had to make some on-the-fly defensive adjustments. If we believe opposing coaches will continue a trend, we’ll prepare to teach these coverages as part of our plan,” he says.
“The off-season offers time to look at everything and chart a direction for the team,” says Brooks. Come August, his staff is focused and ready to “teach the heck” out of the decisions made months earlier.