AFQ X's and O's

Free football coaching strategies, play diagrams, X’s and O’s for coaches at all levels

Coaching



Fostering Relationships With the Coaches on the Staff: Getting What You Need to Get Done

  The coaches on a staff are like any other group in an office, school or place of work; they all have unique personalities and talents that can be used to make an efficient working unit. You may not like…

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First Year Head Coaches: Start the Year Right With an Organized Staff Meeting

As a first year head high school coach, you may be swamped right now with school and practices about to start. However, this is when organization can keep you afloat.   Every year before your season starts, you need to…

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Coach Fitness And The Message It Sends

Happy August, and happy return to football! I’m sure you’re all filled with excitement and anticipation for the new season. As I frequently tell my wife, I work year-round to see results on 10 (hopefully more) fall Saturdays. I’m anxious…

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Powering Through the “Lulls” of Preseason

Recently I sat down with a fellow coach, and with August upon us, the discussion turned to the upcoming preseason.  The main topic was the lull that most of us experience scheduling-wise during preseason. That is,  a week into preseason…

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Starting the Season: Firsts Things first – Remembering What is Important

  We started a ceremony here a few years ago to start our pre-season.  The purpose of the ceremony was to help us focus on the things that are most important: 1- Football is fun. We have grown up watching…

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42 Rules for Getting Better at Practice

Practice. How do you use it? How do your players view it? Hopefully, they don’t disparage it like Allen Iverson did in this famous interview. As coaches, we understand the importance of it. Some of us may even prefer practice…

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Using “The Rule of Threes” in Coaching

Paralysis by analysis.  It happens to our players when they are thinking too much on the field and not reacting.  They are slow to react and you can see the wheels turning in their heads.  I once heard former Boston…

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Four Plays = 75% of Practice Time

The Pistol-Flex Offense prides itself on being a relatively simple offense to implement.  This is due to the fact that we only have a limited number of plays (13 to be exact).  This allows your players to become masters of…

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Organizing A Call Sheet

When organizing a call sheet as the offensive coordinator, there are many ways to organize your play calls. After six years as an offensive coordinator, I have experimented with several formats in an attempt to find what works for me….

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The Wise Old Coach On the Mountain

A few years ago I was looking through old UK football programs and found a picture of then-Virginia Tech Head Coach Jimmy Sharpe. Coach Sharpe was in Bear Bryant’s first freshman class at Alabama. He later was an assistant for…

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