Tag Archives: football resources

Share a Day With a Pistol Expert!

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I am extremely excited to announce the following:

coach-bA longtime friend, great coach, and awesome clinician, Coach Scott Baumgartner, will be coming to the Kansas City area to hold a one-day clinic on Saturday, March 4.  Coach Baumgartner and I were on staff together at UCM where he coached receivers.  He is currently coaching RB’s at the University of New Mexico under head coach Bob Davie.  The Lobo’s pistol offense led the FBS in rushing this year.

coach-b2This is truly a rare opportunity.  Coach Baumgartner is considered one of the top experts in the country regarding the Pistol Offense.  He was on staff for 9 seasons at the University of Nevada under Chris Ault, and was QB coach there the year (2005) the Pistol was invented by Ault and the Nevada staff.

The clinic will be held at the Lecture Hall at Truman High School in Independence, MO, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.

Many of the KC area coaches know Coach B.  He is a regular on the Glazier circuit and is a polished presenter… sharing very good information from drills, game cutups, philosophy, etc.

The cost of the clinic will be $10 per coach.  You can pay with a Credit Card via the PayPal link on my site, or cash/ check (made out to Jeff Floyd) the day of the clinic.

Here is some additional information regarding Coach Baumgartner and his coaching experience:

Considered one of the leading experts on the Pistol Offense, University of New Mexico running back coach, Scott Baumgartner has over 20 years of coaching experience.

Baumgartner has roots in the Kansas City area through his years as wide receiver coach at the University of Central Missouri from 1996-2003 … this prior to his stint as QB/WR coach at the University of Nevada under Pistol Guru, head coach Chris Ault from 2004-2012

NCAA Football: Gildan New Mexico Bowl-Arizona vs New MexicoCoach Baumgartner begins is fourth season at the University of New Mexico, and his second year of coaching the running backs. The Lobos led the FBS in rushing this past season, his first with the RB’s. Prior to coaching the backs, Coach Baumgartner guided the wide receiver corps that established record production in the UNM pistol offense during the Bob Davie (head coach of UNM) era.

nm-bowlThe Lobos have earned bowl berths the last two seasons under Davie, their first since 2007. Davie has turned around the New Mexico football program that had won 3 total games in the 3 previous seasons prior to his taking the helm.

Before arriving at UNM, Coach Baumgartner was an assistant at the University of Nevada under head coach Chris Ault for nine seasons. Baumgartner was a member of the Nevada staff (QB coach) that in 2005 invented the pistol offense. During his tenure at Nevada, the Wolfpack had seven finishes in the top 15 nationally in total offense.

I hope you will be able to join us for this single day of offensive football learning.  I know this is fairly short notice, so I am hoping you will help me in disseminating this information to interested coaches!

  • Coach Scott Baumgartner – University of New Mexico RB Coach
  • Truman High School, 3301 S. Noland Road Independence, MO 64055
  • Lecture Hall
  • Time – 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
  • Cost $10

Any questions, contact me via phone (214.385.8695) or the twitter or email links below!

Remember – You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you…. Don’t Believe It!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

Be Prepared

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It is always a joy watching teams that are well prepared… that never seem flustered… that seem to expect the unexpected.

It is a joy watching teams that are well coached.

I know most football coaches use a script for their Thursday (day before contest) practice to “rehearse” kicking game situations. We, too, used a script for our final practice, but expanded its use cover more “unexpected” situations outside the special teams.

script-jpeg

You can download the Excel file of the script we used here (Thursday practice script) but equally as important as the script itself is how we used it in teaching and preparing our athletes.

Here are some basic tenets that we employed in our Thursday practice script:

We tried to keep everyone involved both physically and mentally.

You can see in the script sequence there are times when JV and Scout team players are actively participating in situations. In addition, the athletes know that for each segment we will call out for at least one substitute… so they ALL have to be on their toes.

We wanted to keep all our coaches involved.

Our coaches should be coaching. Everyone has a function during this script… if they are normally on the field during the game, they will be in their same locations doing their same duties (i.e. “get back” coach). If they are normally in the pressbox, they will have assigned duties during the scripted scenarios (i.e. spotting the ball during 2 minute drill). Nothing undermines the importance of this practice like some of your coaches standing by the side and talking about their evening plans!

We wanted our athletes to understand the situations.

We used our Thursday script to make sure that our athletes understood personnel, alignment and assignment for each of these situations, but also the “why”, the strategy and philosophy that corresponded to each of these scenarios. For example, when and why might we want to take a safety during the course of a game, what can we expect in sudden change situations, what is our thinking offensively when we are “backed up”?

We want the practice to be “crisp”.

Each week, we kept the routine (and the script sequence) the same… including how each group huddled prior to entering the field, where each position group would stand during the game, how we would communicate, and coach’s assignments. We had already spent practice time during the week working on specific technique and assignments… this should be a refresher.

The first few weeks, we would spend more time explaining the concepts behind each of these scenarios, but as the season progressed we were able to be more succinct.

We had weekly “reminders” for each scenario.

For each special team, and special situation we would interject a reminder (or two) based on our scouting report for that week. If we knew the opponent had a particular strength (or weakness) it gave us one more time to emphasize that point prior to the game.

We used the script to continue teaching the kicking game.

It gave us an opportunity to quickly reinforce concepts like alignment, assignment, angles, and technique used in each phase of the kicking game. Although we did not use the time for in-depth coaching (as I mentioned we wanted to keep the practice crisp) it gave our athletes another opportunity to hear our “catch phrases” in each special team segment… phrases like “cone to the football”, “lane integrity”, “hay bail them” or “2-gap them”.

The bottom line is, we wanted our athletes to be prepared… in ALL situations. This was one tool we used to put a capstone on our weekly prep.

I hope this effectively communicated how/ why we used this script as part of our Thursday game prep practice. If you have any questions over this (or any other post) please shoot me an email or message me…. I WILL reply.

Good luck to all of the coaches this week as you enter the halfway point (how is that possible!) of the season.

Related posts:

Remember – You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you…. Don’t Believe It!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com

Tools and Time

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This week I had the opportunity to help out at my daughter-in-law’s project called 50/50.   Her team is putting an art gallery in the West Bottoms of Kansas City made out of shipping containers.

Stay with me…. this isn’t about an art gallery.

Here are some things that came up during my work at the 50/50 project one evening…

  • They commented that “the new Phillips head drill bits made it a lot easier to set the sheet rock screws without stripping them out”.
  • We had a box of long drywall screws, but ran out of the shorter screws (which they preferred using) … so we went around picking up short ones that had been previously dropped on the floor and used them. We ended up having enough to finish what we were working on.
  • We needed a drill bit extension to drill a hole into a tricky spot on a doorframe. We had to stop until we got one.
  • I had to run home and get tin snips to bring to the project site so we could cut the sheet rock corner bead.

Now, this team is doing tremendous work, but it really reminded how much time is saved by having the right tools…. good tools when you are working.

For football coaches, especially during our season, time is at a premium. The amount of hours in the day is same for all of us. Saving hours or minutes using good tools puts more time in your kitty…. time that can be used doing additional football or teaching prep (which is what most of us do!) OR maybe you could sneak in some additional family time.

Over the last three years I have shared a variety of football coaching/ organizational tools (all for free) via my web site, YouCanDoMore.net. These are tools and procedures that I trust, and have saved me countless hours over the years.

Here are my most popular (using views and downloads as a metric) categories of posts, with a little information about each:

Defensive Game Planning:

sample call sheet

My post, Defensive Game Planning – The Call Sheet, has been viewed over 10,000 times. If you Google “football defensive call sheet” my post is the third one listed, and the second one if you filter it for images. The Call Sheet we developed while I was at the University of Central Missouri is a great tool… but even more important than the single tool was the process we used for game planning.

Those procedures and ALL the tools we used can be found at this link – Defensive Game Planning – All Posts, Forms and Videos.   These posts on game planning have been viewed over 30,000 times with over 15,000 downloads of the tools and videos included in the Defensive Game Planning series.

Film Grading:

film grade sheet

We all look at video, and most of us grade it… practice, scrimmage, and game. I believe film evaluation can be one of the most powerful teaching tools at our disposal. While I was at UCM, we developed a tool that we used in grading our film. You can read about how we used the tool at this post, Film Grading Tool, and download the Excel template here, Film Grade Template.

We used this tool not only to evaluate our athletes, but also to evaluate how effective we have been as coaches and to self-scout. It tracks mistakes made, and defensive efficiency by front/ stunt and coverage. These posts have been viewed over 5,000 times and this template downloaded about 1,500 times. If you Google “excel film grading football” the two top hits are from these posts.

Practice Planning:

Practice 1

Every good coach that I have ever worked with has been meticulously organized regarding practice planning. A simple organization piece that can save you time during season is to have a practice plan template.   You can read about the template we developed at UCM at these posts, Practice, Not a Minute to Spare,  Running an Effective Drill, and EDD’s- Every Day Drills.

You can download the template we used at this link, Excel Practice Plan Template. These practice-planning posts have been viewed over 1,000 times and the template downloaded 600 times.

As I mentioned, all of this is free. It was all shared with me, either partially or in its entirety… and they are all customizable with just a little Excel knowledge.

The single thing that I will ask, that if you read the post, download the file(s) or click the links, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts on these subjects…

  • Do you like the ideas?
  • What tools do you use in your program?
  • How could I tweak them to make them better?

As always, if you have a question just shoot me an email or tweet… I will respond!

You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you… Don’t Believe It!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com