Head Coach – Cal
2013 AFCA Clinic, Dykes’
shares his learned wisdom.
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
Started out at Navarro
Community College. Lined the field, did the laundry, etc. Worked with Hal Mumme
and Mike Leach at Texas Tech
#1 thing you can do as a
teacher/coach is learn to prioritize. What are you good at? This may change
from week to week and year to year, so learn to adjust based on personnel.
“Details matter, but the big picture
matters more.”
Sometimes we as coaches
can’t see the forest for the trees. You as a head coach have to be in a state
of constant evaluation.
Surround yourself with
good people. People you trust and are committed to the program’s success.
“I hired guys to coach, and then I became the team coach. I hung around
the locker room and picked the guys brains to get a feel for the team.”
“If you can recruit good
football players who totally bought in, it’s gonna be better than a great player
who’s only kinda bought in.”
The #1 thing I evaluate
coaches on is how they communicate with their players.
Good character is more
important than good knowledge when hiring a staff.
Morale is critical. What
kind of working environment does the HC create? How do the assistants interact
with each other? Everybody who has anything to do with the program must be
bought in. This includes managers, trainers, video guys, academic people,
EVERYONE. The players must be hearing the same message from everyone in the
program, and everyone who comes in contact with them in any way.
“Don’t let it become all
business.” Enjoy the experience, don’t always make it a grind. We as coaches
enjoy being around young people. You’re trying to help kids and they’re
allowing you to do what you’ve always wanted to do.
Have fun whenever you can.
Lighten the mood once in a while.
Execution is more
important than scheme.
Be as simple as possible,
the simpler you are, the faster your players will play.
PRACTICE
Practice is the most important part of how successful your program is gonna be. They never practice
more than 2 hours, and that’s at the beginning of the season. The time spent on
the practice field starts to decrease once the season progresses. By the end of
the season, practice is often around an hour and ten minutes (and those are the
long days). The normal practice time is about forty minutes near the end of the
season. INJURIES HAPPEN WHEN KIDS GET TIRED.
Be as physical in practiceas possible. They do not bring people to the ground. This is part of the reason
why they do not practice very long, it allows them to use the time they do
spend on the field practicing physicality.
You must design drills that emphasize important skills. This depends on what you are doing on offense/
defense, etc. Don’t waste time drilling a skill that your players will never
use in the scheme that you run. (If you’re strictly a zone team, don’t practice
a power pull with your OL)
NEVER let bad effort
slide. Address it and get him off the field. Shorter practices allow you to
emphasize going 100% on all reps. Twenty reps going 100% are better than 80
reps going 25%.
“Rep it until you get it right, or
throw it out.”
The players have to have
confidence in the play during a game. How will they believe in the play if you
never executed it in practice? A lot of times they have thrown out things in
the middle of the week, even concepts that they may have ran plenty of times
already earlier in the year, for whatever reason it isn’t working that week.
They may end up coming back to it later on in the season, but will shelve it
for that week.
“It took us until week six
of year two to learn how to run and throw the slant properly, but once we
figured it out, it was automatic from then on out.”
“You have to practice situations more
than you think.”
PUT IT TOGETHER
Stats - You can measure data. The #1 thing is turnovers. They won 15 of
their last 17 games, and won the turnover battle in all 15 wins. In the two
losses, the lost the turnover battle once, and tied in the other game.
3rd down – Have to stop them and have to convert them. Once they get to
about 3rd and 8 at the 50, they usually tend to treat it as two down territory.
This allows them to call higher percentage plays that they couldn’t have called
if they were automatically punting on 4th down. It makes your offense much more
dangerous and unpredictable on 3rd down.
Red Zone – The difference between winning and losing games is the
difference between TDs and FGs in the Red Zone.
Turnovers - Defense goes through a turnover
circuit every day, starts practice that way. Offense does the same thing, they
use offensive players to strip the ball, etc, to avoid getting too physical in
these drills and getting your players beat up. Emphasized ball security with
the QB, didn’t throw an INT until week 11. “Be smart on 3rd down. Punting is a
good thing.”
At least half of practice
emphasizes 3rd down, Red Zone, Goal line situations.
“Listen to your instincts,
you’ve got a great sense of where your team is, trust what you see, and then
address your issues.”
“The
smartest guy in the room is the guy who’s always listening.”
Had some 2nd year
leadership issues at La Tech. Started a ‘Leadership Council.’ (Read the
book, Water the Bamboo. Talks about how bamboo doesn't grow hardly
at all during the first two years after being planted, but you still have to
put the work in, keep watering, keep taking care of the soil. Just like Saban
says – “Respect the process”) The team started out 1-4, had some issues, but he
kept reminding them to water the bamboo. It gave the players something to talk
about and believe in. They ended up winning a conference championship.
Had some issues down the
stretch this past season. 9-1 and two weeks away from going to a BCS Bowl, went
0-2 the next two games. “I could see there were issues, and I could’ve done
something about them, but It’s pretty hard to change what you’re doing when
you’re 9-1.” They had internal issues between the offense and the defense,
top-ranked offense and 120th ranked defense. There was a lot of resentment
between both sides of the ball. They needed to learn how to handle success.
