The Football Coaching Podcast with Joe Daniel

The Overhang Safeties in your 8-man front defense set the edge. Defend the flats. They are critical to shrinking the field for your defense. Overhang Safeties are a major piece in your 4-2-5 Defense or 3-3-5 Defense. If you call it a 4-4 Defense or 3-5-3 Defense, they’re your Outside Linebackers. The principles are still the same. Episode 209 of The Football Coaching Podcast will go in depth on coaching the Overhang Safety position. This won our Twitter Poll @footballinfo this week. Check in each week to vote for the next topic. I’ll talk about the alignment of the Strong Safety and Weak Safety. We’ll look at why you use variations in alignment and how to align your defenders to maximize their effectiveness. We’ll look at the most effective stance for your defenders to execute their assignment. In this episode, I’m also going to address the most common question I get about the Overhang Safeties. What keys should they read? My answer is a little different than most, but something I have found to be very effective from week to week and season to season for these guys. Finally, we’re going to dive into how to coach the technique for your Strong Safety and Weak Safety to perform their job within the defense to help you shut down your opponent. There’s a lot of variation in this topic based on coverage. We could probably break it down by coverage, and again by Strong and Weak Safety. I’ll talk about these guys in as much detail as possible without getting too specific to your coverage. But there will be some differences. I also focus a lot on the 4-2-5 Defense System and how we teach our defenders in there. You can get all the details on the System and get instant access today when you check out http://425defense.com.

Special Teams are one-third of the game. Every coach says it. Most of us don’t actually spend that much time on it, though. In fact, a big part of special teams comes down to execution. Limiting mistakes. If you can do that, you can make big things happen. I posted 4 Special Teams units on our Twitter Poll @footballinfo. The winner by a big margin was the Kick Return schemes. And why not? Kick Return is a huge key to scoring for your football team. It’s probably the single special teams unit where you have the highest probability of scoring (PAT/FG not included). Plus this is what’s going to set up your field position on the next drive. Or the opening drive! In this episode we’ll break down kick return schemes for handling deep kicks, sky kicks, squib kicks and onside kicks. You’ll also learn how to use the right personnel on your Kick Return unit. And last but not least… we’ll talk about practicing your Kick Return team. How can you get the most from these guys in the necessarily short amount of time that you have? In this episode, I mentioned Coach Lew Johnston’s Put the "Special" in Special Teams by Being Unconventional video. Coach Johnston has been a huge help to me this year, so… buy his video! Want more podcasts? More football coaching videos? Support The Football Coaching Podcast on Patreon!

The Playbook. It’s like the Holy Grail of football coaches. We dream of putting together that amazing playbook. With just the right selection of calls. You’ve probably drawn up one or two in your time. If you’ve been dreaming of this job for long, you at least drawn up a few plays. Almost every football coach has downloaded a few playbooks from the Internet, too. Good and bad. The truth of the playbook isn’t nearly as sexy. Playbooks don’t win games. Players do. What else do players do? Leave their playbook in their locker (or worse). Forget to study it. And execute the plays completely wrong. No matter how many times you drilled it. In this episode, we’re going to talk about putting together your playbook, so that it actually gets translated to on-the-field success! Want to have a successful playbook? Check out JDFB Insider where I supply you with the playbook, but more importantly teach you how to teach your players so that your team executes on Game Day. Visit https://joedanielfootball.com/membership for more information.

Press Man Coverage is our Twitter Poll winner at http://twitter.com/footballinfo for this week. I’ll look at some of the myths and reality of coaching Press Coverage. We’ll also talk about technique for coaching press coverage to your athletes. I used to be one of those guys who shied away from press technique. Always thought you had to have some kind of freakish athlete to do it. Now I’m going to share with you why that’s just not true. Why you can use press coverage for your football team, even with average athletes. This episode is brought to you by The 4-2-5 Defense System at http://425defense.com. Visit there to get all the details on this complete Coaching System, including how to put together a coverage package that matches your defensive front. Whether you’re going to run Cover 3, Cover 1, Quarters, Robber, or Split Field Coverages, The 4-2-5 Defense System gives you complete instruction on how to do it. Plus you get base run fits, change-up fronts, blitz package, game planning, practice planning and more. Everything you need to dominate on defense this season with The 4-2-5 Defense System. I’ve worked with over 1,000 coaches on installing the System around the country and around the world. At every level including High School, Middle School, Youth, College, and Semi-Pro. Check out http://425defense.com for all the details on The 4-2-5 Defense System and how you can get instant access, today.

Discover the fascinating history of the Single Wing Offense, a revolutionary approach that is making a comeback in football. Learn about its unique traits, including the absence of a traditional quarterback and its emphasis on teamwork. Delve into core plays like power, counter, and sweep, all while exploiting defensive mismatches. This discussion highlights the importance of simplicity and execution mastery, making it a must-listen for coaches and enthusiasts alike.

You’ve got the playbooks printed. The players will be there. Are you ready, coach? This week in The Football Coaching Podcast we’re looking at preparing for those critical pre-season practices. Getting your team ready for Week 1, when it really counts. Everyone wants a cookie cutter answer to installing your offense or defense. It’s not that easy. You can’t just run practice plans someone hands you. It’s the same as running a playbook you download from the internet with no understanding of the How or Why. This episode shares my 4-Step Blueprint for Pre-Season Practice Planning. I’ve established the four main goals of pre-season practice, and then put together a framework for planning how to get all of this in. Links In this podcast, I referenced a few other podcasts and resources… Episode 125 - 5 Keys to Perfect Practice Planning Episode 80 - The 4 Types of Defense in Football The 33 Stack Defense: Run Fits is on my YouTube Channel

The Wing-T Offense has always been a fascination of mine. Even though I’ve never really coached the system. For this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’m indulging that fascination by exploring the origins of the Delaware Wing-T Offense. You might know the story. You probably don’t. I didn’t. Tubby Raymond is not a major part of this tale. In fact, he marks the end of the story. Instead, we’ll talk about the true origins of the Delaware Wing-T Offense. A story that begins with Dave Nelson, Harold Westerman and Mike Lude. And it doesn’t even start at the University of Delaware. Nope. This story starts in Maine. A few key resources for this episode… I’ve had a blast gathering information for this episode. Here are the key pieces so you can read them for yourself: Dave Nelson, Tubby Raymond and the Rise of the Wing-T Offense by Doc Bear. Big help in getting started on the right path. Mike Lude… An Originator of the Wing-T by Hugh Wyatt. Coach Wyatt has been on the podcast, and this kind of first-hand knowledge was exactly what I was looking for. Appendix III: History of the “Winged T” - by Harold S. Westerman posted by Dave Westerman. I think this was posted by Harold Westerman’s son on his personal blog. It was a really good read. No idea what it is the appendix to. The Grand Experiment: Dietzel’s Ingenuity Results in National Title by Marty Mule’. Not much related to the Wing-T and most of it is only interesting if you care about LSU football history. Tells the story of LSU’s 1958 season, which got started in part with Paul Dietzel switching to the Wing-T Offense. Fritz Crisler’s 1947 Single Wing Playbook is an interesting look. And to balance it out, this is a good look at the T Offense from Kyle McElvany. I also found Frank Leahy’s book on the T Formation pretty cheap on Amazon.

This week is a special Football Coaching Podcast mailbag episode. I’m answering questions from coaches on all kinds of topics. I’ll be discussing… How to coach the 7-technique (or 6i) Defensive End. This is a follow-up on the last episode about the 6-Tech Defensive End How do you get into coaching, when you don’t want to be a teacher? What coverage options do you have for Trips formations in the Miami 4-3 Defense? ...some other things, I don’t clearly recall, because I was recording this episode at about 3am before leaving for vacation the next day. That in itself should make Episode 202 of The Football Coaching Podcast a must-listen! I’ll have to listen too, because I have no idea what’s in there. For an in depth look at the 4-2-5 Defense, I’ve got an exclusive video series you can check out at http://425defense.com/podcast. You’ll get instant access to the first video on the foundations of the 4-2-5 Defense, with two more videos to follow.

You’ll find out the advantages of using a 6-tech Defensive End, how to coach this technique, and whether or not your football team has the right guy to play that position. The 6-tech Defensive End won our poll topic getting 33% of the votes and beating out Kick Return Strategy. There won’t be a poll next week, but I do need you to send an email to joe@joedanielfootball.com or tweet me your questions for next week’s Q&A Podcast. I started using the 6-Tech Defensive End when we switched to the 4-2-5 Defense. We continued to use it in our 3-4 Defense front, as well. For an in depth look at the 4-2-5 Defense, I’ve got an exclusive video series you can check out at http://425defense.com/podcast. You’ll get instant access to the first video on the foundations of the 4-2-5 Defense, with two more videos to follow.

In this episode of The Football Coaching Podcast, I’ll talk about advantages of Press Quarters Coverage, the basics of coaching Press Quarters, and adjustments that you’ll need to be ready to make if this becomes your base coverage. You can use press quarters coverage with any traditional defensive front. I’m focusing on the viewpoint of a 4-3 Defense, since that’s where we have used Quarters most often. You can run this with your 3-4 Defense, 3-3-5 Defense, or your 4-2-5 Defense. If 4-2-5 Defense is your thing, I’ve got a special 3 video series that you can get instant access to right now as my special gift. Just visit http://425defense.com/podcast to sign up for that series right now.  Links Coaching Press Quarters Coverage video on YouTube that was made for this episode. Quarters Coverage video - this is the foundations of the Quarters Coverage I teach in The 4-2-5 Defense System. Football Coaching Podcast Episode 189 - How To Coach Pattern Read Coverage Football Coaching Podcast Episode 196 - Defending Trips Formations  Visit and follow my Twitter Profile Page @footballinfo to vote for next week’s poll topic!