Stats

Fall is a very busy time of year for me. The mix of work, football coaching, and traveling to watch my son's team play leaves little downtime. Still, I find it once in a while and so here I am; writing something somewhat miscellaneous that might hopefully evolve into a story. 

The (American) football season is rather short but very intense. It has a structure to it that you don't typically see in other sports. The first two-ish weeks, starting in the August heat (although we were blessed this year with near perfect weather), is a rigorous rush of teaching the team our systems of playing. We try to make sure everyone gets enough reps to be competent in running the various plays, etc. These practices, loving referred to a two-a-days, are intense and meant to get everything tuned up for the season. 

Once this phase has completed, usually capped off by a scrimmage with a couple of other teams and game week #1 commences. The weeks for the remainder of the year follow a cadence that actually starts at the end of the previous week's game. That game's film is reviewed and the good, the bad and the ugly are tabulated and what needs to be improved is defined. Players that got opportunities and proved their quality move up the depth charts and the unfortunate opposite happens as well. 

What makes good teams is this internal competition to earn a spot on the field. In this I am supportive, however I do stand by that game-time opportunities should be provided wherever possible, especially when the differentiator between #1, #2 and maybe even #3 on the depth chart are a big gray area. Recent witnessing of this not happening (see the link) is, in my mind, doing a disservice to the team as well. The other end of only playing the best, is a missing risk mitigation of if something happens to "the best". Game experience is invaluable and very different from the practice environment (steps back off soapbox). 

Once through the review of the previous week, we dive into the next opponent. We lean forward into what we can improve in the context of how the next opponent plays the game, or at least how we think they play the game. Film of the next opponent is watched, reviewed, analyzed and really turned into a type of data science. We ask a number of questions in this. Who the opponents "stud" players are? What do they like to do in certain situations, e.g. starting a drive, 3rd and long, near the goal line, etc. ?  What do other teams to do to beat them? The players are encouraged and even given homework to watch film and come to their own conclusions. There is a pragmatic mental aspect to football which seems to make it unique. 

The rest of the week is making sure the game plan, new plays and adjustments are implemented. We make sure the team sees enough full contact and gets in workouts to maintain strength and intensity. Peak contact days are two to three days prior to the game to allow some recovery. One interesting change compared to my playing days is the encouragement and scheduling of a weightlifting session the day before a contest. It's not a super heavy, intense workout but a workout none-the-less. That last practice the day before a game is also more mental, fine tuning what we do as a team and making sure assignments, etc. are understood. 

And then gametime. Each gameday is an event with meetings, personnel checks and maybe walk throughs before even suiting up. Then we head to the field. For varsity games there's actually a lot of technology to set up and check. First, there's an array of headsets. The offense and defense each have their own frequencies with a few people, such as the head coach, able to switch between channels.  Video has also gotten much more sophisticated compared to even just a decade or so ago, or especially when it was just a single guy with a VHS video camera on top of the stands. There are usually two video feeds, one from the booth capturing the width of the field and one from the endzone that is more focused on the line play. These get fed into software where the formations and play-calls are entered. This is done into software designed for this. The video is correlated with the plays in real time and coaches can analyze the film as it comes in. 

While we are in the era of AI and automation, there is still a lot of manual watching and correlating that needs to be done to make sure everything is running and lining up properly and the software stops short of making adjustment and play call suggestions. While it might get there, I get the feeling that would be one step too far as part of what makes coaching/playing worthwhile is keeping this mental chess match going. It can be stressful, especially when things aren't going well. 

Sometimes the other team just seems to have an answer for everything you try to do. That is at least the feeling during the game. However, the reality often is the team being unable to execute on a certain play call or enough bad things have gone wrong that you're needing to play catch-up and throw the ball deep. From the offensive side of the ball, this one dimensionality is bad as the defense only needs to defend one or two things versus the whole playbook. We've all seen it on all levels, the hail Mary's, the desperation long throws. To be successful here means having athletes who can make the plays. When these desperation plays work they go down as lore and get names like "The Immaculate Reception" or "The Music City Miracle" (yes, I know that was a kickoff return). If you have a little more time and are successful "The Drive" becomes a more fitting term. My son's high school team has a "The Drive" memory, taking the ball all the way down the field in the fourth quarter of their section playoff game against Apple Valley to win and move on to the next round. 

More often, these efforts fall short and are just logged as another try and loss. It's important to remember in these times that: a) football ultimately is just a game and b) these last-minute situations are often the result of much earlier events. Even a poor week of practice can be a contributing factor, meaning the outcome of the game might already be decided before the coin toss if you got out-hustled by your opponent during the week. And sometimes, you just have a squad of 14 or 15 hard working kids matched up against a team that is 35 or 40 players deep. Regardless, a reality check can be in order.

At the end of the day, this is an amazing game and it's great to be a part of it. There are so many moving pieces and there really is a role for everyone if you're willing to ask. Even if it's just taking a few stats at a game.