FOR 5 YEARS, OUR football team was rolling along pretty well. At 34-16, with two conference championships and several all-conference players, we felt that we could compete with just about anyone on any given night.
Then the bottom just completely fell out. The program suffered a winless season, followed by a 1-9 season that featured several embarrassing blow outs.
As the 2005 season approached, we would be starting the season with pretty much the same cast of players minus a couple of seniors who had graduated. We also replaced both the offensive and defensive line coaches. With such minor changes we knew that in order to improve as a team, the returning pieces would have to improve greatly.
Making Changes, Back To The Basics
Putting my ego aside, I really believe there are only a few programs that can roll over great season after great season. If you stay in this game long enough, you will have a wide variety of ups and downs. If you plan well, work hard and motivate your players, however, you’ll certainly have more up than downs.
All that being said, as defensive coordinator, I knew we had a major job on our hands. Consider the previous season’s numbers:
We also allowed 30 touchdowns of 25 yards or longer. As a result, we went to training camps and made simple changes and designed some very attainable goals for our defense.
Change No. 1: Changing Our Defensive Scheme From 3-3-5 Defense To A 5-3 Defense
After struggling through an 0-9 season, our staff worked hard to understand and install the 3-3-5. When it was all said and done the next season, we finished 1-9. Looking back, our defense was worse. This isn’t a knock against a 3-3-5 defense, but it just didn’t work well for us — it didn’t fit our personal or match-up against our opponents as well as we had hoped it would.
We tend to have smart players who play hard and usually avoid making mental errors. We have never, however, been blessed with player who possess a ton of speed or are great blitzers. As a result, we simply couldn’t stop the run and we got few positive plays from our blitz and stunt packages.
This season, we switched to a 5-3 defense, which allowed us to get more size on the field, and consequently, our run defense improved tremendously.
Change No. 2: We Simplified The Defensive Individual Periods.
As coaches, we are always learning and are excited and eager to try a new drill or technique. In some cases, we spend too much time doing too many drills which leads to less mastery of the skills stressed within the drills.
Following the two really bad seasons, each position coach picked up a few important concepts and simply kept working them. As a defensive backs coach, I focused on footwork, tackling and Cover-3/Cover-1 techniques. Chart B illustrates what a typical DB practice looked like under this new “back-to-the-basics” approach.
Setting Goals
Once the decision was made to change our base defense and to revamped our practice philosophy, we decided that the next step would be to set goals. Setting goals would be a key step toward getting out team’s defense back on track.
Goal No. 1: Improve The Run Defense.
As most coaches believe, teams that run the ball well and who also stop the opponent’s running game — win more games. Our team was proof positive of this adage. During the seasons that our team struggled, our run defense was horrible. We made a conscientious decision to change this and we decided that we were going to stop the run no matter what.
This first step was to switch to a 5-3 defensive front. The second big step was to focus on our team’s tackling. We devoted much more time to tackling in practice and we worked tackling into almost every drill we did on defense.
Finally, we committed to getting the best 11 tacklers on the field. In doing so, we actually sacrificed some speed in the secondary for better tacklers. Although some defensive coaches may disagree with this idea, we felt that given the sorry state of the run defense, that better tackling was far more important than fast cover guys.
Goal No. 2: Increase Turnover Production.
During our worst season, we came up with a paltry 10 turnovers. Most alarming was the fact that it wasn’t due to a failure to recover fumbles or dropped interceptions, but rather that our defenders were not even in position to make these types of plays.
The following season, we incorporated several stripping drills into our tackling-improvement plan. We also worked diligently on installing a variety of drills to improve our discipline and speed in pass drops.
In the end, we came up with 17 turnovers the following season. Although still a poor number and a modest improvement, we unfortunately dropped some interceptions and left a few fumbles on the ground.
No matter, it was nearly double the number of turnovers recovered from our worst season and, more importantly, it gave us something to shoot for the following season.
Positive Results, Lessons Learned
After going 0-9 and 1-9 respectively, we improved to 5-5 the following season. In addition, we were in every game with the exception of one. The previous seasons had featured a number of blow-out losses.
Some coaches who are coming fresh off a state championship or a deep playoff run may look at a 4-game improvement that got us to .500 with a bit of skepticism. Take a look at chart C (at top right), however, and consider the numbers for the 5-5 season:
We felt that the strides we made during the 5-5 season were huge. We also allowed only 7 touchdowns of 25 yards or longer — down from 30 the previous season.
A 2-year struggle reinforced some important axioms of football to our coaching staff: “When you are struggling, accentuate your positives. For us, that meant replacing our lack of quicker athletes with bigger bodies and switching our defense to a more conventional system.
Secondly, we selected a few critical skills for each position and worked them to death during practiced. And if nothing else, we wanted our defense to be loaded with good tacklers. If you can create that, your defense will be tough, regardless of size or speed.
Next, we wanted to establish targeted, reachable goals with a team that hadn’t experienced winning and we wanted to build our team’s confidence.
Improving our run defense and placing an emphasis on forcing turnovers were reachable goals that our players both understood and wanted to achieve.
We noticed that as our players saw these goals realized, their excitement and confidence increased and so did their on-field performance.
Finally, as coaches, we realize that 5-5 is no cause for celebration, but the following season, we expanded upon our set goals and continued to accentuate our strengths as we attempt to reach even greater heights. And we can’t wait for the next season!