The Football Coaching Podcast with Joe Daniel

It's been around forever. The 4 verticals passing concept is probably the most commonly called passing concept in football today. But there's a lot more to it than just running 4 guys down the field.

Part 1: Origins of the Call Where did the Double A Gap Blitz come from? Blood, Sweat and Chalk credits Jim Johnson as DC under Andy Reid's Eagles teams in the early 2000s. Credit to Cincinnati Enquirer article , Mike Zimmer as Defensive Coordinator in Cincinnati really popularized it (with Paul Guenther?). Teams have been attacking the A Gaps since the start of football. Johnson developed the doub...

It's a half-episode! Look for Season 8, Episode 2 of The Football Coaching Podcast with a deep dive on the Double A Gap Blitz on Monday at Noon Eastern!

Season 8 of The Football Coaching Podcast is focusing on deep dives on individual play calls, so what better play to start with than the Zone Read? In fact, we've come full circle - Zone Read Option was the topic on the very first episode of the podcast back in 2012! The deep dive series will take a look at play calls from every angle. We look at the origins of the play, the details of execution,...

The season kicks off and that call you've been working on for 6 months just is not working. Run plays, passing concepts, blitzes, stunts or coverages. Whatever it is… it's not working. This is the 5 step process to evaluate that football play call before you just kick it to the curb. You're always smarter in February than you are in September and October ( or whenever your season happens this year...

There's an old saying among option football coaches. OK, really it's among all football coaches… mostly old football coaches. If you can't block 'em, read 'em. Pretty simple. When you don't have anybody that can take that guy 1 on 1, you always have another option. Just make him wrong, no matter what he does. That's the premise behind option football. Make one guy wrong, no matter what he does. Fo...

Any time you decide to install a new playbook for your football team, you could run into trouble. It takes time to teach the skills your players need. It takes time for the coaches to understand how to teach those skills, too. The knee jerk reaction when your team isn't firing on all cylinders in the first few weeks of the season is to panic. Go back to what you were doing before. But that's not t...

Football drills are a big favorite among coaches. It's our thing. Standing there holding a whistle, watching your guys run around hoops and over bags. That's what coaching football is all about. Except that most defensive drills are a waste of time for high school football players. They end up never translating the drills to the field. Today you'll find out the football drills that really matter a...

When they hit the football coaching scene a few years ago, defensive coordinators were scratching their heads defending RPOs. But while it's a great tool for offenses to attack, run pass options are not as mystical as they may seem. If you've got a good RPO team on your schedule this season, you don't need to panic and change your whole defense. Follow the 5 tips for defending RPO's in this podcas...

Using a creative evolution in the coverage package leading to a modified 2-Read Coverage in his 4-2-5 Defense, Hollis-Brookline High School Defensive Coordinator Fred Hubert helped lead his team to a New Hampshire State Championship in 2019. Find out the keys to the team's success and how this take the 2-Read Quarters Coverage package can work for your defense.

Week 1 of your season sets the tone, so you need to have your best offensive game plan ready to go. With the 2020/2021 season that doesn't mean having incredible strategies, either. It means getting the most from your offensive playbook.  The game plan that wins this year is the one that's tailored to your players. What they can handle. It's about keeping it simple so they can play with confidence...

There's a good reason so many defensive coordinators are also coaching linebackers on their staff. The position is critical for High School and Youth Football defenses to stop the run. Many coaches put their best defender at an Inside Linebacker position. If you're fortunate enough to have a natural, instinctive linebacker to play the position then your job is easy. Just stay out of his way and do...

Welcome to Coaching Football 101, class is now in session. Today's episode barely scratches the surface of all that a new football coach needs to know, but we only have an hour. A football coaching friend likes to say that every man in America thinks he can do two things: grill and coach football (in 2020 you can add doctor to that list). But every experienced football coach knows at least half of...

Coach Tim Snow wasn't thinking about spread formations when he first started studying the Pistol Power Offense System in 2015. That first version of the system looked a lot more like the traditional One Back Offense that I first learned from Coach Bill Mountjoy years ago. But the great thing about the System is that it evolves. And as Coach Snow and the Winnisquam High School offense evolved in Ne...

Every coach has been trying to figure out just what's going to happen with the 2020 football season. From state to state there seems to be just as much uncertainty today as there was 3 months ago . This week's episode of The Football Coaching Podcast takes a look at the questions your coaching staff needs to address to get ready. This is not about what's going to happen. None of us really know wha...

Coaching defensive line technique for young players can be frustrating. There's a world of bad habits and natural instincts you've got to break. During Season 7 of The Football Coaching Podcast we've looked at how to use some of the core principles from JDFB Coaching Systems to solve problems. Those core principles include shows on coaching using ASKA and pulling levers for constant improvement. N...

You can argue if it's the best, but the power blocking scheme is definitely one of the most used running plays in football today. On this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, we're doing a deep dive into all the details of this great gap blocking scheme attack. Gap Blocking vs. Zone Blocking I'm biased. Power is a core run play in The Pistol Power Offense System. But the other primary blockin...

Time to put the finishing touches on that defensive playbook to get ready for the upcoming season. How much do you need in it? The biggest problem many coordinators will run into this season is not going to be not having enough play calls. It's going to be having a defensive playbook that is too big. And for no reason. When you're using a Coach Simple approach, that defensive playbook needs to onl...

Understanding horizontal and vertical seams is critical to your run fits on defense. Let's take a deeper look at the concepts. This concept is a big one in run fits. Understanding horizontal and vertical seams, and how to pull the levers to fix those seams for your force defenders, is one of the fastest ways to improve your defense. Seams is a fancy word for run lanes… or run lanes is a fancy word...

What does it take to run a Championship caliber 4-3 Defense? Find out from Coach Dave Dugan.  Bishop-Fenwick High School in Massachusetts is a perennial title contender and their 4-3 Defense run by Defensive Coordinator Dave Dugan is a big contributor to that success. Coach Dugan joins The Football Coaching Podcast to talk about what's worked in building his defensive attack. Find out how this bra...

Strength calls are important to get your best players in position to make the play. Here's how to use them. There's a reason defensive coaches make strength calls. But there's a lot of thought that needs to go into those strength calls.  In this episode we'll talk about how to make your strength calls fast, make them easy, and make them work for your defense. Because if they're not helping your de...

Do you have a plan for when your team gets to start practicing again? Here's the Do's and Don'ts. In some areas, coaches are getting to start working with their players again. In other areas, that time is still a long way off. But you need to have a plan.  I'll share the 7 things you cannot do if you want to have success in the 2020 season when teams start getting back to work. Plus the plan for t...

The concept of using Levers to get constant improvement on the field has fascinated me. Here's how to make it work for you. Nothing has changed the way I look at coaching football in the last twelve months like the concept of pulling levers. It takes everything I've learned about coaching and puts it into a systematic approach to constant improvement. I love the levers concept because it builds on...

Forget about fancy ball drills. This is what Wide Receivers really need to work on in your football practice. No position group wastes more time working on things that don't matter for their offensive attack than receivers. In this episode, we're going to focus on what a Coach Simple, Play Fast, Win approach to Wide Receiver drills really looks like. Cut the fancy ball drills. You just don't have...