A key principle to success is preparation. Henry Ford said, “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success.” Preparation starts with doing your homework – scouting. While teaching a military history class, I came across the famous Chinese military strategist and general, Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu wrote the still relevant book The Art of War, circa 512 B.C. He didn’t coach football, but he could have. His military strategy philosophies are certainly applicable. The one that caught my attention was this famous saying: “So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.”
Sun Tzu applied this philosophy to war. Every business person however, whether he or she knows it or not, has made use of his strategies. A good example is Peter Siris, a Wall Street analyst who wrote a book entitled Guerilla Investing. The subtitle to the book is “Winning Strategies for Beating the Wall Street Professionals.” He freely quotes from Sun Tzu to outline his strategies to upset the market pros. The titles to his chapters show the Sun Tzu influence. “Know Your Enemy,” “Know Yourself,” “Avoid the Enemy’s Strengths,” and “Attack the Enemy’s Weaknesses” are illustrations.
I applied Sun Tzu’s principles to football: in addition to scouting our opponents, we also had to scout ourselves. In a competitive league your team will not be the only team to scout their opponents. Every game we played had all of our upcoming opponents’ scouts in attendance. What are they seeing? You’d better know. What tendencies do you have? Do you call certain plays more often than others? Do you favor the run over the pass or vice versa? Do you have strong first and third down tendencies? Do you have field position tendencies? If you know exactly what your opponents’ scouts are seeing from your team, you can better predict what they will do to try to stop you.
It was always a chess match. I liked to be as unpredictable as I could in play calling. The teams that scouted us best probably knew what we were going to do, but didn’t know when. It was often better to pass on first down or second down and short, and run on third and long. Quick kicks on third down and long were a staple over the years for us. Fake PATs and punts were practiced every week and used many times during a season. The unpredictability of our calls kept many teams from loading up on us in certain key situations. It also kept them back on their heels and uncertain of what to expect. What made it fun was the fact that our opponents were doing the same thing to us. As I said, it was always a chess match. It can never be a free-lance, “hodgepodge” approach. Your “unpredictability” has to be planned and practiced.
We usually scouted as a group, or in small groups of coaches. However, it is important to assign one top scout to a particular team. Let that assistant take the responsibility for preparing the information on that team personally. With personal responsibility comes motivation and commitment. Of course, the head coach must be involved in scouting the opponents. His most important role, however, is as the final coordinator of all gathered information.
Each position coach should be assigned to scout or to break down film according to his “need to know.” Past films and reports should be analyzed and incorporated into the database of current film and game observations. Tendencies will almost always present themselves to you when you do this. The pre-knowledge of what an opponent likes to do in short yardage or long yardage situations, with particular down, distance and location, is invaluable in preparing your offensive and defensive strategies. Determine what types of defensive alignments and adjustments you will see based on the offensive formations you plan to run. You must know your opponent’s schemes and adjustments to adequately plan your attack. Obviously, you must also know exactly how you will adjust your own defense to meet the challenges of their offense. Place an equal emphasis on your opponent’s kicking game and personnel information. Too many games are lost because of poor kicking game information. Conversely, many of the greatest upsets have come because of great special teams planning.
Knowing the opposing team’s personnel strengths and weaknesses is also crucial — especially for play calling. I always wanted to know who our opponent’s key players were. Key player information should include the strongest and weakest players equally. Most of my game planning revolved around how to attack the other team’s weakest links and how to distract, delay, or avoid their strongest players. When we encountered a particular player who was strong against the run, we ran away from him. If he were quick to pursue, we either countered or ran directly at him. If he liked to penetrate deep, we trapped him. This type of personnel information is invaluable.
Finally, this information must be shared with your team. I liked to “core” the scouting information. “CORE” is my acronym for “Categorize” (break it down), “Organize” (put it into teachable form),“Repeat” (go over the report multiple times), and “Energize” (get your team excited about how this information will give them the edge). I like the word “core” because good scouting will be truly at the core of your team’s success.
Additionally, we followed Eric Butterworth’s philosophy when we presented our scouting information to our team. He said, “I tell you and you forget. I show you and you remember. I involve you and you understand.” At the beginning of the week we verbally went over the scouting report. Then, we walked our players through the report on the field. The rest of the week we physically ran the plays at them over and over again. By game day, our players knew what to expect. Just to be sure, however, we walked and then ran through the report in the gym the day of the game.
I think it is also important to let your players know how many hours you and your staff have put into this preparation. It is amazing how the players will grow in confidence when they see what you and your staff have done. Remember, when you make that fourth-and-one play call, they must believe in you and in the call. The more you share with them the preparation time that you and your staff have spent, the more likely they will be to trust and believe in the call. More accurately, they must first believe in you! The trust in the call will naturally follow when they believe in you and your staff. To paraphrase Coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University: your players must believe in their leader first; then they will buy into your program.
Planning ahead is crucial. Don’t wait until the week before the game to prepare. You already know who your biggest rival is, or who will be your best opponent next year. So why wait? Don’t! Start in the off-season preparing the raw data for the big game. You may need to do certain things differently than you have done them before. If you need to run certain plays or certain formations, you’d better introduce them from day one. You don’t want them to be new the week of the game. You don’t have to run or show all of them during the season prior to the big game, but you do have to allocate some practice time to them each week if you want to be successful on game day.
Video cut-ups of successful plays against this opponent will reinforce the idea of your team’s success against that opponent. Make sure you include positive outcome plays from all aspects of the game (offense, defense, special teams). When you can, include a negative play sequence followed by a positive play. For example, if you can show where your team was penalized but scored or stopped their opponents anyway, show it. If there was a “bad call” in which your team was penalized, but responded with a good play, show it too! You are reinforcing to your team that they will win no matter what happens in the game. Your players are looking for a sign that tells them they can win. Give them the sign ahead of time.
Through great scouting you can prepare your team for any and all eventualities. Do not overlook the sometimes-neglected aspects of the game. When preparing against a particular team, make sure that you go over every possibility that could present itself in the course of the game. On-side kicks, on-side kick returns, how to take a safety, quick kicks, fake kicks, fake kick coverage, fourth-and-one play call, and overtime are a few of the often neglected but important aspects that must be prepared and rehearsed each week.
Great scouting and preparation gives you the ability to prepare your team for all circumstances. Take the time to develop these most important components to create the chance to pull off the upset.
(From Art of the Upset by Bruce Reynolds.
Published with permission of the author).
About the Author: Bruce Reynolds was the head coach at William Penn HS in New Castle, DE for 27 years, 1974-2000. He is a two-time Delaware HS Coach of the Year and won seven state Division I Championships. A graduate of Duke, Reynolds also has a Masters in Education Administration from Delaware. He can be reached through his email: bcreynolds@aol.com or his web site: coachbrucereynolds.com.