Ghost Coaching....sending it home

With limited practice time and with having players going both ways, cramming extra coaching points and ideas into player's heads has become more challenging. More so than ever, I have been experimenting with video cutups on DVDs to send home with the players by position.

This can be real simple or pretty in-depth. I have sent out a total of 6 different DVDs since April to my positions with the benefit of;

1. a better visualization of technique and concept is formed
2. repeated viewing (= conditioning message)
3. tracking curriculum covered

The first DVD was a consolidated collection of NFL/NCAA cuts of our coverages (1,2,3,4) for the DBs to get a understanding of how to play, how players fit within that coverage (run & pass), what breaks a coverage, and playing route patterns.

The next DVD was a break-down of our first intrasquad scrimmage, both OL and DBs.

For the Oline video, I included NFL/NCAA cuts of our zone and 90's vertical set protection for the players (since OUR footage was not a good example to use), illustrating individual work (2 steps), group work (6 steps), and team work (game film) of what these concepts actually look like (what's important).

For the DBs, since alignment was crucial to many of our technique work, I included a 45 second prelude of pre-snap snapshots of our scrimmage. This made sure we highlighted how and where we align based on our coverage rules. This was done for the corners, then the FS. Lastly, I wanted to make sure we covered one of the most important concepts that we struggled with, which was handling the smash concept from C3. I included all the clips of 4 verticals and smash so it could provide a clear picture of what we did versus how we should be responding.

For both of these DVDs, I recorded a voice-over narration from a Sansa voice recorder and my Blackberry, piecing the audio and video together with Nero.

I will probably do this during the season, as I do not anticipate us doing much real film time or providing coaching points from film (so the DVDs will suffice for that).

When the season comes, I hope to be able to use more team footage than NFL/NCAA cuts.

A gimick I've used in the past (with printed handouts) is to put an 'easter egg' within the video to gauge who is actually consuming the material. With handouts, I'd give a reward to anyone who could spot 3 spelling errors. First one who brought it to me would get $10. This can be fun when you are taking a long bus ride on those summer tournaments (plus, spelling errors are my biggest pet peeve). With video, I suppose I'll bury a break 10 minutes into a video, claiming the first player to call me gets $20. We'll see how that goes.