Nick Saban - Winning with Team Defense - Full Video

[Music] you Oh guys I'd like to make most of the time when I do this when we get going we're rolling pretty good but at the same time we like to do it as informally as possible I want everybody to feel like I'm just one of the guys at your school and we're talking ball and if you have a question please stop and ask if you would like to for me to answer a question about something that's a little bit different than even what we're talking about I'd be more than happy to do that first of all I'd like to let each and every one of you know that you know Michigan State's not that far away from here probably three and a half or four hours depending on where you're coming from it's our philosophy my philosophy and our staffs philosophy that we would like to give back any way that we can for the people that helped develop our program which I think the high school coaches wherever they are certainly do that I think you guys do the best job of coaching of anybody at any level so therefore we'd like to give back to you I've been coaching this game for 22 or 23 years now and have never invented one idea one philosophy or one technique some player or some coach somewhere along the line gave me the idea to do it that way and we've always been very open about trying to help them develop professionalism and professionals in this profession so if you ever want to come and visit us don't hesitate we'd love to have you the first thing I'm going to talk about guys is attitude development of a team of a defensive team whatever and I think this is very very important and I think you need to know that that I've given this talk to the mid-american conference to the big 10 best defense in the United States to the Cleveland Browns team that gave up the six fewest points of any team in the history of the National Football League two years ago and it's always the same no matter what the level is and I think my coach gave it to me when I was ten years old and that's where it all started at Pop Warner football and some coal mining town in West Virginia where I grew up but this is what I believe this is what I've always talked whether it's as a head coach to the whole team or to the defensive team regardless first of all teamwork is the essence of being successful I don't think there's any question about that but I think the first thing you have to do is you have to have a way in a philosophy of how you're going to instill in the players getting them the one to do it how do you go about doing that well what's gonna make that happen for them what's going to make them want to do it and I think that's really really important and I think you have to get people to make commitment to what you want them to accomplish to what has got to be important for them to accomplish when we go recruiting I look for basically one real important ingredient in any young man and that's what his character is and to me character is what you do when no one else is around what kind of decision and judgment do you make when nobody's watching you and that's important that's really important I think now it takes a certain amount of self-discipline to have character it takes a certain amount of self-discipline to be a successful person because you have to have self-discipline to have character you have to have character to be successful because you're going to have to make some judgments we can't control all the judgments that they make I've never seen anybody be successful that doesn't know what they want to accomplish never ever have never ever will and I came from a place where if you ask a guy what what is your goal in life he says I just want to buy a new pickup truck that's what I came from that's exactly everybody worked in the coal mine I'm a daddy in music when I was in the eighth grade my dad took my basketball uniform carried it down to the coach gave it to the coach took me by the hand and took me 558 down the shaft and said you're never going to participate in sports because you got a D if you continue to get B's in school this is where you're going to end up and when that baby opened up 550 feet deep I said I'm making no more DS and I never made a d EV er again in my life and that probably turned me around for what I wanted to do and I was going to accomplish because I was going to work in that hole every day but there was a unique way that my dad and that example made me aware of what needed to be important to me now what I just tell the player you make the commitment to what you want to accomplish as an individual you have to know what you want to accomplish to be successful once you know that and it's important to you then that desire that you have to do it is going to give you the willingness to work and invest your time to stick with it overcome adversity that you have along the way be persistent learn from the mistake that you have which i think is very very important to us as coaches kids have to have the attitude that the criticism that you give them the coaching the teaching whatever you want to call it whether it's positive reinforcement and I think we all need to find ways to do that I or its negative that they need to know that what you're telling them isn't with their best interest for that for for their ball being it's only to make them better that's what I told every pro player because in pro ball you got to be a psychiatrist to coach them you got a guy making three million dollars a year you're making two hundred thousand dollars a year you know if it the comes down to it you're gonna get fired before he gets fired but you've got to get that guy to do it are you gonna get fired too so how do you motivate that guy what do you tell him how do you get him to do it you make him make some commitments to some things that are important to him you find out what's important to him get him to commit to it and then you got an opportunity to do it but getting people to learn from their mistakes and find the positive seed of whatever it is that can be learned from the mistake that they make is very very important and I always tell our coaches to coach for the next play if you're yelling and screaming at a guy and confronting that guy for what he did on the last play and you're really just ripping them for what he did on the last play if what you're doing is not going to help them play better on the next play then you're not a very good coach in my opinion because you always coach and teach for the next play you always want the guy learn from the experience that he just had so he plays the next play better and if you continue to do that and and that will make you a good coach because your coaching will actually be reflected in what the players do on the field because there they want to do it they're working to do it now you're teaching them to do it and every time they make a mistake they're learning something from it and getting better and they're persistent and sticking with it now if we're going to be successful athletically whether it's a Michigan State or whatever school you're at there's going to be a certain amount of adversity that you're going to have to overcome all the time and I don't think you can really have any great victories unless you have adversity I really don't think that at all and I think that comes on an individual basis and it comes on a team basis when we played when I was at Ohio State in 1981 Michigan had a great football team and we were going to plan the last game of the year as always and Woody Hayes was not the coach I coached there with farol Bruce but woody was still around he was just out of coaching for a couple three years at that time and he came and talked to our team and gave the best talk that I've ever heard any coach ever give to a team and we were 17 point underdogs Michigan was one two or three in the country I don't know I just remember they had five all-americans on offense Anthony Carter butch Woolfolk Bubba Paris Becker I can't remember them all but they had a hell of an offensive football team we were 17 point underdogs I think they were undefeated in the league but they needed to beat us to go to the Rose Bowl woody gave the team and talked to the team about how bad to weather was how cold it was all the negatives 17 point underdogs all their great players all of our young defensive team that had been kind of ridiculed for the whole year because he hadn't played as well as the Ohio State tradition went through all these negative things about why we should lose the game that we had an excuse to lose the game and why and then he equated those things all to adversity and adversities to be overcome and he equated it to the world war in the Pacific that we won and it was such a great victory because we had all these things to over come now I'm the history buff because I can't remember all the things that he talked about but I thought that was a great example of taking a negative situation we were going to Michigan 27 degrees out snowing 17 point underdogs had a young team about nine sophomore starting on defense against a great offensive football team and a much better team overall and turned it around for the players to be a very positive thing that the only way this can be a great game and a great victory for us is because there's so much invert adversity involved to overcome because you can have no great victories unless you have tremendous amount of diversity so I thought it was a real neat way to package that we won the game 14 to 9 and we got screwed because no one thought would win and we didn't even have a good bowl game to go to because all the bowl scenarios were if Michigan won and we lost we both got to go to really good games but there's another part of that that I think especially if you're in a program that has not been successful and this was definitely true with our team this year and I'm talking about individuals now is that people have a tremendous kind of a habit or whatever to put self-imposed limitations on what they can accomplish I think it's it comes from a little lack of confidence I come it comes from having some doubt about what they can accomplish and I refer to it as self-imposed limitations and the first time I was made aware of it is I had a friend that I grew up with in West Virginia who went to Vietnam and he was the best free safety I mean when he smacked them underneath the chin their helmet popped up in the air ten yards and he wasn't a big guy weighed about 175 pounds but he was a point man in Vietnam for two or three years and he was the kind of guy that would chase those Vietnamese down cut their fingers off wearing him on his belt and all kind of stuff well he got captured after he was over there for about a year and a half and and he was he was put in a cage about as big as this podium here and he the reason they put him in a cage they didn't have any prisoner of war camps in some of the places that that catch these guys so they could transport him around when they they stayed on the move all the time and they called these things Tiger cages little cage like this and he said it was the most restrictive he felt so limited and and very imposing to do anything and and the only thing that was important was to survive and he would stick him down in rivers and all kind of stuff and the rats would get him and it was just terrible and then when he finally got out of that and he came back he realized that hey whatever you had to do and whatever you had to overcome you could remove all the limitations you had on your own self and make yourself do it and he said I watched people here now at home in the United States have it so good and have so many limitations on what they can do because they just don't think they can and that that experience made him realize what you really could do if you had to do it well let's don't say you have to do it let's just say I want to do it I can do it what can I get done and that's basically what we're talking about in athletics the kids don't even have to do it so you really got to talk to him about removing some of those and that's confidence it's believing in themselves and I think that's very very important to being successful I don't think there's any question about that another example of that was I saw a guy fishing once and he had he would catch big fish and throw them back and keep little fish and I suddenly went to the guy and I said hey buddy I can't understand why you would throw the big fish back and keep the little fish he said I only had a 9-inch frying pan so I only keep what will fit in the pan well to me that's that self-imposed limitations that's an example of a guy that only can accomplish so much because he's put a limited on what he can accomplish and I think we all do that now I've been guilty of it myself and I know our football team last year at Michigan State did not think they could beat Nebraska and they played okay for a while and then they really kind of quit in the game and I don't think they thought they could win at all period and then as a team there was a lot of things that they had to overcome along the way and learn which we'll talk about some of that as well but having that belief in yourself knowing what you want to accomplish having the willingness to work the persevere to overcome adversity and then to have the confidence to remove all the limitations you put on yourself as to what you really can't accomplish are all to me important and build an individual character and I think you have to confront and demand the players I'm going to tell you a story and and maybe this will bring it clear to you as to how I think you need to get the players to make these decisions about what they accomplish you can't want them to do it you got to get them the one who to do it I went to San Diego State I worked out every defensive player we ever drafted or had on a draft board in Cleveland for the for the draft I went to San Diego State the very first year I was there and they had a defensive lineman named Pio sy Coppola telli he was a Hawaiian guy that grew up in a great ghetto in Honolulu and you really couldn't get anybody at San Diego State to say anything good about this guy and he's about 6 6 300 pounds he played extremely well out in the hula bowl he had great push lots of natural strength but you could not get anybody there to say anything good about him in fact when I went to the strength coach and I said well tell me about Pio saiga pullet le I mean what kind of guy is he he says I can tell you this coach he says if he was on fire I wouldn't piss on him to put it out that's how much I think of them so that's about as bad as an endorsement that anybody could ever give to a football player and I said well why is that he says well he fights on the field we can't have practice he won't lift weights he doesn't do what the coaches say he just a bad guy so I worked this kid out at San Diego date and then afterwards I sit down and I sat down and talked to him and I said you know no one really says much good about you here they say you're a bad guy you have any self-discipline they can't have practice you know why do you think that I should go back to Cleveland and endorse you as a player that we should draft and he really couldn't give me an answer for that and he said but coach I really want to play professional football he says I really really want to that's something I've always wanted to do and I said yeah but you refuse to make any sacrifices here to be able to do it and now the people here won't endorse you enough for me to even go back and be able to recommend that we have you on the team and he says coach I'll do whatever you say I said okay that's the opening I said look I'll go back and say that if we draft you in Cleveland I'll go back and endorse your character stand on the table and say well you know the guy can play and I'm not worried about his character if you say that you'll come you'll work and you'll never defy any person in authority in the organization you never give the the strength coach any problem you'll never get in a fight on the field lose your temper and and and and become an individual selfish person that only is interested in the little battle that he has gone on rather than what's important for the team none of these things can you do if I come there now you make that commitment to me and you shake my hand and look me in the eye and say you'll do it then I'll go back and endorse your character now this is the first time I've ever done this all right so I was dumb enough to do it he said to do it he's still there on their team after five years he's never been a star player for him always been a good player and they've never had any problem with it never did I even once have to ever sit down and four years of being there with them and talk to him about how he acted what his character was what his work habits were or anything else and nobody in that organization has ever seen him as a problem and the strength coach at San Diego State says if the guy was on fire I wouldn't piss on them to put it out now that's as bad as an endorsement as anybody has ever given me about but because I showed a little confidence in the guy made him make a commitment to doing certain things and then he used that guideline and did it and he's been fairly successful in the National Football League and that's all it took for him because he had the ability like the ability to do it but I think those are some individual things you have to do to motivate people I don't think there's any question about that now there's oh there's three things that I've always required to the players individual things again and they're all intangibles they don't take any and any they don't they don't take any ability I've always told players that you can do three things and I don't care if it was Michael Dean Perry was making three million dollars a year or some walk-on from wherever on our football team at Michigan State right now first thing you can do is give effort it doesn't take any ability to give a hundred percent effort and you say oh that's a simple thing coach but I'm going to tell you what I'll take your film you take our film you take our film Michigan State you take our film at the Cleveland Browns you take any team that we ever coached take our team in 1987 at Michigan State the Big Ten championship team the best defense in the country take that team and look at it you'll find a player Laughlin on that film every down every down and those teams gave as good an effort as anybody at their level at the time our team in Cleveland 90 years ago whatever year that was 1994 defensive team everybody in the league thought it was a really high intensity group and I cannot you'd have trouble finding a play where everybody was going 100 percent for every play the whole play but that's that's an intangible that it doesn't take any ability to give effort the second thing is that they have mental and physical toughness you cannot play defensive football if you're not mentally and physically tough you just can't do it and to me toughness doesn't come from ability it comes from an attitude and mental toughness also comes from an attitude and that may be more important in some ways than even physical toughness and the third thing is you have to know what to do know what your job is understand what you're supposed to do how you're supposed to do it and why it's important for you to do what the coach wants you to do that takes know ability we had two middle linebackers at Michigan State when I was there before totally and completely different in style of player and personality the first one was Shane bulla his dad Henry Hank however you know him was a great defensive coordinator in the National Football League for her I don't know 16 or 17 years kid was smart at about a 3/8 in school he was about 6 foot tall weighed about 215 pounds probably ran five flat and was a very productive player led the big 10 attack at that ability level because he was smart and ran the defense got hitting the right things all the time right coverages did everything exactly like you coached him to do it he graduated Percy snow came in Percy snow was when the Butkus Outland first-round pick of Kansas City not nearly as bright a guy in terms of distil intelligence had a lot of ability played hard hateful attitude tougher and hateful just every day when he got up he wanted to smash your ass but he had more pride in his work than just about any player that I've ever coached and when we went over the game plan and we played a lot of automatic fronts and coverages in those days he spent whatever time it took before he went on the field to make sure that he never got embarrassed in front of his peers that he couldn't make every call exactly like it was supposed to and he actually ran the defense and had command of the team on the field just as well as Shane bulla did before him for 100% different reason because of the pride that he had in his what he wanted to do as a person so so he functioned at an intellectual level that was just as good as a smartest guy ever coached to position but it was for a different reason and he knew how important it was for him to take over that team and them to have confidence that he knew what they were supposed to do now that's the only way to me you can play team defense if guys know what they're supposed to do how they do it and all that type of thing it's the only way now I think you have to set goals for your team now we're in the team stuff to be successful because I said teamwork is the essence of life for us as coaches there's no question now I've talked about a little bit of individual motivation all right now we're talking about team stuff now you cannot have a team unless you talk to your team about suppressing their own personal ego for the good of the team you can't have one you can't have a team the team will never have a new personality and enthusiasm of its own if you have a bunch of selfish people playing the either state just can't happen and they have to give that up and it's got to be more important to the players on your team that they're a part of the team's success than they are an indispensable part of the team if that makes any sense to you I tell our players this all the time the guy that wants to spike the ball in the end zone and and jump up and down and high stuff and all that and bring all the attention to themselves when they do something good rather than the teammates that help them do it that guy's a selfish player he's playing the game and he wants to do it because he's a selfish player there's no question about your team can never have a personality an energy and enthusiasm of its own high unless your players do that selfish behavior has got to be put aside now Pat Riley's book is is a very good book about coaching I think maybe some of you read it but one of the most important things I read in there about this selfish thing and I just read it to our team and put it up on the wall is the part that talks about the disease of meat and people who create 20% of the success 180 percent of the credit starts with that the disease of meat and here some indicators of it and I'm just reading them in experience in dealing with success our team last year we didn't think we could beat Nebraska we thought we could beat Louisville we pounded him and played him very very well and won in a lopsided game I and Purdue really didn't have a heck of a lot better team I and we should have been able to do the same to them but we couldn't practice and prepare the same way two weeks in a row because we were in experience in dealing with success and other things became more important couldn't concentrate couldn't focus couldn't prepare for the next game because we won the last game that's just all growing up chronic feeling of being underappreciated and I'm gonna tell you what guys I was a leet and a competitor and in baseball basketball and football all three sports made Allstate and all three of them and I'll tell you what there's very few of these that I didn't feel somewhere along the line when I was a player paranoia over being cheated out of what's your rightful share I got 16 points in this game my buddy got 14 he got his picture in the paper and his name in the headlines and I did resentment against the competence of your partner's you resent that someone else on your team is doing well personal efforts solely to outshine your teammate leadership vacuum resulting from formations of cliques and rivalries how many times have you seen the guys that aren't planned stand in the back and and try to make a point that they're they're not they're not interested in what's going on right now they're not they're not going to be a part of it there's other things that are more important to them because they're not the center of attention they don't want to be a part of anything I tell you what that that does not happen on our team I mean I will get right in the middle of that and as fast as you can in a heartbeat because that kind of stuff destroys your team because it's a formation of cliques I and this clique has this motive and this goal in mind and this one over here has some other goal and motive in mind and you can't have a team because everybody's moving in the same direction everybody's not working toward the same goal feeling of frustration even when the team performs successfully is there a coach here that has not won a game and going in a locker room at some point in your coaching career and seen a player disappointed after you want a game I've had I've said it's happened a dozen times for me defensive lineman didn't get a sack defensive back didn't make any plays running back didn't gain a hundred yards wide receivers are great for it didn't catch any passes in the game team played great but we didn't have to throw the ball to you so now you know you're gonna pout because you didn't catch enough ball as anybody has anybody ever coached in their career and not seeing that happen happens all the time I don't think you can let it happen and I think when it happens I don't think you have to mount a guy in front of everybody but I think you should talk to him about it and make people realize that they are being selfish that the are being self-centered which is that it's a natural thing to do and in this day and age it's more that way than it's ever been before my children are five and nine and I promise you there are a lot more selfish and self-centered because of what they have and what they're given than what I was when I grew up yes well I think that's okay as long as he thinks that because what if the reason that he wants a play well is for the team success and not for his own individual gratification even though there's a fine line in there between all that but I think a player can feel bad that he didn't play but he still should be happy that the team won because that's the goal the goal should be to win the game that's the fun of it all and then and then I would tell that player hey I know you had a tough day out there today you got beat a couple times or whatever playing right corner but hey we won the game feel good about it we'll get it fixed them all that's the way I would hand them with a guy and I don't mean you got to confront all these things all the time you know in a real negative way some way guys this is another point now but that that that's kind of my deal on teamwork and I watch for those things like a hawk I mean I'll watch for them like a hawk because I tell you what the society we live in now is full of frontrunners and people who do very very well when things are going well and people that have this selfish attitude will do that and as soon as things go badly they will cut themselves from the herd immediately I'm not associated with that you you you can't have that you cannot have that absolutely cannot have that you have to find a way in your program guys to reinforce positive behavior you you have to reinforce positive behavior you have to find ways to do it you have to you cannot always be a negative coach because that's the nature of coaching is to be a critic but players respond a lot better everyone responds a lot better to positive reinforcement I mean those pigeons did for Skinner however many years ago that was all right when they pecked and the thing came out I mean it's just that's just the way it is and I think sometimes you got to get on people and if any of you have ever seen me coach you know I can get on them with the best of them and I believe in it confront and demand there's no question about that but I tell you what every now and then I want somebody standing behind me saying how many good things did you say and how many bad things did you say and did you always say a good thing before you said a bad thing to a player unless he didn't deserve it and when they really get mounted with me is when they don't do one of the big three that I talked to you about before the effort the toughness knowing what they're supposed to do those things if they're trying then you got to teach him and it's better to teach him and reinforce in a positive way something that I do that we use in Cleveland was a production chart for defensive players and it was a real simple system but I tell you what you walked in our meeting room and it was a theater style meeting room and I had that right there where that mirror is when they walked in the door the first place everybody's eyes went was to see who was on the top of the chart it did a couple things the guys that buffaloed the team that they were great players and didn't have any production the team didn't think they were great players anymore the two guys that were on the top of that board the whole year were Pepper Johnson and Eric Turner and they were the two leaders of the defensive team and everybody looked up to those two players and because they were reinforced and recognized and they didn't have any problems being leaders because of their performance and production but it's a real simple point system guys for a tackle you get two points for an assist you get one interception you get three cause the fun where you get three recover foam where you at three get a big hit you get an extra point so the tackle is worth more you get a sack tackle for a loss you get extra point all right now to reinforce it the other way though if you miss a tackle you get minus two if you get a no hustle or a loaf you get a minus one if you get an Emmy which is a mental error you get minus one to get a penalty you get minus two so you have a way to go through the game and a guy got 24 production points you got eight tackles for us just had two loaves got an interception batted the ball down I used to give them one for that and let me tell you about grade since I'm talking about team defense here now if you grade and you tell players that if they grade a certain percentage they have a winning performance you're not promoting team defense and I'm gonna tell you how this happened the first year in 1983 were at Michigan State we go to Illinois Mike white was there they had a good team they were throwing the ball and all that stuff and we didn't have a real good team and we got beat bad like 42 13 or something we come back the next day we're great in the film we grade the film we give the grades out watch the film critique it and I'm in the outside linebacker meeting and the guys come out of the room and in this outside linebacker I won't mention his name says hey I graded 92% I had a winning performance and it just dawned on me how could anybody walk out of this room watching this game and think they we had anybody on our whole team that played with a winning performance when the whole goal should be number one for the team to win and I said there's something wrong with this that if a consistency grade gives the guy the right to think he had a winning performance so what's that guy naturally do he walks out of the room and says I played well enough for us to win so let's get the other 21 guy straightened out and we'll have a good team now is that promoting team or not I don't think so so we still great I'm not saying we don't great we grade we give consistency grades but that's what they are they're consistency grades their technique grades and that's it and you've all coached the guy that makes high grades but doesn't ever make any place and has no production and you could even give a guy points for a good consistency great if you wanted to in this production chart but the guys that make plays especially on defense or the guys usually win football games for you not the one that plays this technique exactly right every time and never makes it tackle the other thing that I think will help promote team defense for you is how do you evaluate the success and failure rate of your defensive team how do you do that the way I've always done that this is to take every down in distance in the game first and ten-second 733 and more and I say those are the breaking points on defense for us to have the advantage on the next down so we the winner lose the down to say that we're there in other words it's first and ten they run a toss sweep to the right Carl banks is playing outside linebacker he gets hooked he's number 58 and 29 is a strong safety he gets cut the ball bounces outside at second five all right now we had nine other guys on that play I mean flat the nose flat headed the center knocked his ass back and two gapped them and steered him and ran to the ball the five technique did the same thing pepper did this everybody did the same thing those two guys one guy got hooked and the other guy lost contained I don't get personal 58 got hooked 29 lost contained that's it that's why 2nd and 5 the other 9 guys did what you were supposed to do everybody did what they were supposed to do now what that does is it show you watching the film and you say I this is a loss for us guys gave up 5 yards here what it makes everybody see that if 58 didn't get hooked in 29 just put a stone out there this ball cap made the guy run inside the ball cap every we wouldn't gain any yards I need anybody to be a super hero here just play the team concept and the team defense and then if we can't put the defense up there and show them that they can have success in it if everybody did what they were supposed to do then we'll throw that defense out and I'll never call it again that's what I always told the players now you talk about watching it and I don't care what it was they started playing it played it played it believed in the technique that you were teaching them saw it be successful salt they all did what they were supposed to they could be successful and it reinforced every point that I've talked about so far today every point second seven make it third and three or more because we got a chance to stop them now we're creating situations in the game for us to make plays on defense and when we make it put the down and distance in our favor if it's third down and 20 what's a win fourth and one if they complete the 19 yard pass and punt that's a victory for the defense it's not a loss and it makes the players very aware of the situation in a game because their that they approach the game on a play-by-play basis so that's that's the way we've always done that now one thing I didn't tell you was we always have goals on defense and these have been the goals and look the first year I was in Cleveland I took everything that you could take and there's more stats in the NFL that you can shake a stick at there's a book this thick of them at the end of the year everything that had any significance to winning I felt offensively or defensively and I said okay these are the things and I didn't want to have too many because I'm kind of one of those guys that not really a simple-minded coach but think if you emphasize a hundred things that people only get four or five of them or two or three of them or whatever so you can't have too many so we have eight the first one is to win the game and being around a lot of good defensive football teams I've never ever been in a situation as a defensive coordinator or a head coach where one unit thought they were superior to the other and pointed the finger at the other unit and I think as a defensive coach that's easy to do if you have a bad offense and you have a good defense the defensive players start pointing the finger at the offense you guys aren't getting it done you're not scoring any points or getting beat three to nothing whatever but when you make the first goal win then that can never be and I always tell the defensive players look some days we can give up 40 and and some days we can't give up any Unwin but the object of the game is to win because you win as a team and you lose as a team they don't say the defense won the day any offense lost or vice versa they just say Michigan State lost I don't get any points for playing good on defense so that's got to be the first goal the number one criteria playing good defense is to prevent the score alright so whatever it is that tells you is good then for defense at your level then you put that as the goal I think 13 points is good at our level I think there's only one team in the Big Ten that gave up fewer points than that I think the rules in college football right now really favor the offensive team guys can go downfield block on passes and screens and it's just you know I mean it's it's tough to play that well but whatever it is maybe it's seven points in high school I don't know for sure what it is but preventing the score has got to be emphasized and then here are the things I think that keep the team from scoring first of all you guys stop the run if you don't stop the run you've got no chance to win and I'm sure it's even more true at the high school level than it is at our level but you have no chance to win I and I don't say 150 yards or less than 100 yards a game or whatever like I've heard a lot of coaches say you take the running football plays in the game and you divide it out they gained 100 yards in 30 attempts what's that go into it three point three and less than that is good rush defense that's as simple as that if they're in the wishbone and they run it a hundred times you're gonna give up some yards but if you give up 250 yards rushing that's only 2.5 yards of rush that's good defense against the wishbone even though it's 250 yards rushing pass plays to me the way the stats are crazy if it's a pass play it's a pass boy so if the guy gets sacked that comes off the passing yardage and you have to do it that way that's what it's you do this stat the way I'm talking about and you give up five yards per or less per attempt passive that sacks in completes interceptions completions the whole thing in other words a guy threw the ball 40 times for 200 yards that's a flat 500 for the day that's not bad pass defense and I know we've all conduct been conditioned to say they got 300 yards passing how could they get 300 yards passing well if they threw at 85 times they can get 300 yards passing if they can pass at all and catch and you may not have been in games like that but I have I've been been in games where the guy dropped back 95 times turnovers one of the most significant things in football and winning and losing is turnover ratio so for your defensive team to get turnovers and your offensive team not to give them up it's going to be very significant in your success and failure as a team so to get turnovers on defenses is big no big place if you're going to be hard to score against you can't give up big runs and big passes if you're going to be hard to score against you make the team March the ball and that's the whole theory you know special teams controls the vertical field position in the game that's what you're that's should be your number one go over your special team control the vertical field position in the game what's the net punt how many turnovers can we get in special teams where do we make them start when we kick it off to them where do we start when we get it the worst thing that can happen to you in a football game and I don't want to get off on the special teams tangent guys as you're playing away and you're in Indianapolis and you're Seattle and you can't hear yourself think hi and you're winning the game and in total control and everybody's sitting on their hands they score they kick it off to you they splatter you on the kickoff return and the ball goes and they get it again that's it's done for the rest of the day you're on the silent count you can't hear the snap count it's over so and and that's a big play because what kind of vertical field position did you control with your kickoff return they got the ball back on the 15-yard line my first decision is a head coach against Nebraska this year was we got a good offensive team not a very good defensive team personnel wise at least so we're going to receive the ball if we win the toss at Nebraska what happens got splattered on the opening kickoff and the ball went flying and they got on a 15-yard line it was a bad coaching all right but big plays no big plays you can't give up big plays and if you're on offense you always need to make them third down people have to be aware of third down and when I was a college coach I was never that aware a third down but but you go through first down and we practiced too much a first down and regular down defense and don't practice enough situation defense I'm convinced to that because first down there's only a minimal part of the game but if you think about how you practice I bet you practice that part of the game 70% of the time but third down efficiency to get off the field when you make it third down and whatever and only let them convert 30% of the time that means you're getting off the field and and I'm gonna tell you in the NFL if you can't get off the field on third down I don't care how good a defense you are you give those players enough chances they're eventually gonna make enough plays to beat you but if you get them two third down and you get out and you get off and get you get your players off the field that's part of playing good defense to red area efficiency if you can 60% of the time when a team gets to the 20-yard line 60% of the time you get out of that without giving up a touchdown and all four years in Cleveland we were above that and in the top three in the league and at one point we went 15 quarters which i think is a record without giving up a touchdown 15 straight quarters without giving up a touch now because of how we played in the red area and how much do you practice in the red area and you can't really as a defensive coach you if you play your coverage is the same in a red area the field is different there's no vertical stretch if you don't change the techniques and play closer and teach your players how to play then you yeah I mean I don't think you're giving them the best chance to be successful you got them get them closer to the line it should be harder for them to run the ball you got no depth of the field to defend but that's a clinic in itself to talk about red area efficiency but I think those things are the most significant thing like you talking about sacks I look at all the teams that had the most sacks I didn't play good defense they didn't play good defense the teams that powered the pocket in the middle and a quarterback could never step up and throw it they played good defense but the guys that we're just trying to sack the quarterback all the time and getting pushed by half of town the worst thing that can ever happen to you as a defense is to have a pass rusher get pushed by the quarterback because now you're playing with how many guys ten you only got 10 guys defending where that guys looking so there's just a couple couple other things I'm gonna bring up to you guys and they're giving me the high sign here but I think I've given you I kind of skipped around a little bit more than I usually do but getting back to this team thing you have to have organizational values and principles as to what's important on your team then you have to have integrity to stick to those principles and I think players will respect that in you those principles and values give your team direction and your team needs direction that's your road map that's your road map they're all looking for it man how do we get there they all want to know and if you can show them the way they'll believe in you and do it now you can't do it without discipline so don't think you could take a shortcut and not do it without discipline direction and discipline will give the players what they need to succeed I really believe that people talk about integrity all the time but you can't have integrity if you don't have principles and values in your organization what do you have integrity to one of the players have integrity to you can't have it you've got to know your enemy which to me is preparation but you got to know yourself too so that you do the right things for your team to win so that you have the right players doing the things that they can do best to give you the best opportunity to win my old coach used to say all the time it's not holding a good hand but how you play a bad hand that really will make you successful because you're not always gonna get good cards and I like playing cards so that's really important in success my high school coach I'm gonna tell you this one story I learned this a long time ago there was no reporters in here right because I got in trouble for this one because they ended up in the paper when I was 15 years old I was a sophomore quarterback at a school that want had 133 football games in a row and it was a little town in West Virginia and it wasn't as good a ball as you have in Chicago probably probably wasn't as good as ball as they play in Canton Ohio all right but relative to that area and what I knew it was good ball we were playing a team that we were third in the state they were fifth in the state in those days the first two teams went to the championship and played my high school coach was the coach of the year I can't tell you how many times he's in the state coach's Hall of Fame and all that stuff and he was a great coach but as a 15 year old sophomore I called all the place not because I was capable any quarterback that he coached called the place we were in this game with this team and we were playing at Masontown Valley bad lights bad bleachers graveyard in the end zone bad locker rooms the whole I mean that's just the way it was and it looked like a great stadium to me because that's all I'd ever seen scores tied 12 to 12 and we go to know we're behind 18 to 12 we get the ball back with about two minutes we go to minute we go down it's fourth down and 10 our own 25 there's 20 seconds to go so this is the last play of the game to us if we don't make a first down and it may be the last play because he decides to call timeout and that's our last timeout now the clock didn't stop when they moved to change in those days which I hate that too but that's another topic so I I'm totally relieved as a high school quarterback that this coach is gonna make this call on 4th and 10 to win the game to grow the state championship and all that stuff I run over to the sideline and said where you think coach he says I don't know what do you think I says he'll why'd you call timeout if you're not gonna call the play he says I'm not gonna call the play you call all the plays all year you call this play he says I'm just gonna tell you this you have a right halfback out there that's a fastest guy in the state and this guy was a good football player he made all-american and West Virginia later on he because he was a sophomore at the time and you got an all-state split-end who was a first-round draft choice other Chicago Cubs never made it to the big leagues playing split in and when this plays over I don't care what you call I want to see the ball in one of the two of their hands I said okay this is true this is happening on the sidelines with the graveyard in the end zone so I play accident man fourth and ten to win the game faked it to the right halfback threw it to the split end throws the touchdown we won the game and ended up winning the state championship after the game he came up to me and he said do you know why that was important to do that that way or why I gave you the opportunity to do that and I said no I really don't I just wanted you to call the play and he said well it doesn't make any difference what play you call in a situation like that because in a situation like that you don't think a place you think of players because the best players on the field will make the best plays to win the game so I always remembered that when we went 104 yards against Michigan and it was 104 close we got a 15-yard penalty for a dead ball foul which didn't say much about the discipline that we've been talking about but we only had we had three guys are gonna get drafted and two guys would get drafted on offense next year five draft choices on the offensive football team not one one guy other than those five guys touched the ball and all 50 employees we played my last professional football game in Pittsburgh January 9th a year ago AFC playoff $40,000.00 game to me and our players playoff money Bill Belichick is a great coach most prepared guy I've ever been around over prepares the team over analyzes everything but does a hell of a job as a coach we have a meeting the night before the game and he says we always have a meeting with the coaches he says goes through the defense he says the reason that we've lost twice to Pittsburgh now we were 12 and 5 in that season we lost three games to Pittsburgh and this is the third one he says the reason we lost the first two games of Pittsburgh and we lost 2017 and 1410 which we've had nine turnovers as an offensive team and we only got one turnover away from them on defense so we're - eight turnovers in two games and we only shoot have won both games or could have won both games they were very close games what we lost and furthermore the two guys have had all the turnovers were Eric Metcalf and Leroy hoard which are two best offensive players so in bills deduction he tells the offense I don't want those two guys to have the ball in the first half of the game don't run run Ernest Byner do do whatever you got to do I don't want Metcalfe returning punch I said wait a while no the last time we beat these guys in Pittsburgh a couple years ago Metcalfe had a 91 yard touchdown punt return and a 75 yard punt return we won the game 28 24 he says I don't care if they're not in there they won't turn the ball over and I'm thinking to my old high school coach where are you now because the two guys that are going to give us the best chance to win the game we're not gonna give him the ball and we did and we were behind about 21 nothing and a half time and you know that's got doing something like that it's kind of like to me you bench Babe Ruth the seventh game of the World Series because he strikes out a lot he also is the greatest home run hitter I don't want to piss anybody off the likes Hank Aaron but you know maybe the better greatest home run hitter that can win the game for you hitting home on but all of a sudden you decide that him striking out is a bad thing and you're gonna bench him for it so you got to also learn how to use your players surround yourself with good people know how to identify what their talents are and utilize them in the game so that's an important part of your team too but that that that's just a lot of stuff about team about how to build team how to tie together some things to do to help you bring it to your players and we're gonna talk Paul then on the next things over right okay guys guess we got a ten minute break [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Coaches Choice

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Keywords: instructional coaching videos, videos, coaching, instructional football videos, NFL, American Football, Football, highlights, sports, clips

Id: SlqCabtqC68

Length: 56min 48sec (3408 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019