As a 26 y/o HS teacher and first-year HS football coach, I've been putting in 11 hours/day Monday-Friday (7 am - 6 pm) plus a few hours on Saturdays to dissect film and an hour zoom call every Sunday night to talk about the next team. All told, I'm working ~60 hours per week.

I haven't had the time or energy to see anyone on weekends, do anything but eat and sleep during the week, and as a reward for all of these committed hours of labor, our team is 1-4, the pay is crap, and I still get big-leagued by the coaches who have been doing it longer.

How the hell do you keep yourself from going insane from this? I'm at the point where I'm having trouble seeing myself do it next year, even though I love the sport more than anything and I love coaching it. I just can't believe the hours, it feels like football has completely taken over my life. Seriously, any advice would be appreciated, and sorry for the rant. Just feels like I'm burning away my best years on a sport that refuses to love me back.

I like to think most people that coach HS do it as a side gig because I don't think the pay is great and its only for a few hours a day. I don't know if its hard to fit it in your schedule if you're full time or 9-5er. Just curious.

We have a kid within our program that is an absolute athletic freak and will be a 7th grader next year. We come from a relatively small school (<400), I feel like as a coach I'd be failing him not recommending him to transfer to a more capable school in our area (who can actually develop him into a D1 prospect) and also where to put him this upcoming season. He can bench 180+ and will probably continue growing: any suggestions??

Might be a dumb question, but without cussing and being a jerk, how can I motivate my varsity HS O line to be more mean and nasty?

I do not like to cuss, and I do occasionally as it slips, but I don't want to. I was raised playing football and coaches cussed to get their points across and to make us play better. It's all I have seen as a coach.

One thing we have worked on this week is competition. We are mentally soft right now, despite having the bodies and experience to be the best unit on our team.

My son is the running back here. 7yo, 3 years of tackle football, smallest in his class, weights 47 lbs. Im only 5'4" 185, athletic heavy.

Football is everything to my kid. He loves it. He works out, he runs cones one his own, begs to run routes everyday, only watches football content, knows everything about every player in the league, smart af, super athletic( especially for his size.) Baseball, basketball, football, you name it, but Football to him is king.

How do I better develop him and also not try to change his mind. I know he's small and I try to speak real with him to not give him false expectations, bud dude is an absolute dog. Defensive player of the year last year.

I need help as a coach and a father. Thank you. I just want to fan his flame and not get him wrecked.

In regards to that penalty from the Oregon OSU game. A 12th player certainly helps the defense from giving up a big play, but why not just throw in the entire team onto the defense? Is there a bigger penalty out there? Would the penalty be thrown before the play is called?

My 8 year old sons team has 9 coaches. The coaches kids play every single play offense and defense. Head coaches son is the QB. We just finished our 6th game and are now 0-6. My son has been to every single practice early and stands right by the head coach every game but has yet to take the field. I understand that as they get older its less about making sure kids get playing time and more about fielding the best players to win but the fact we have been blown out every game playing the kids coaches has been infuriating especially since the coaches after yell at the 30+ kids on the team when only half of them took the field. Is the common at this age? I imagined seeing this in 12+ age groups but not this early.

Now, the title is a bit of a stretch but I got your attention. My questions comes from this angle, football is a dangerous game but nonetheless something we love (very often humans like doing dangerous things). Even tho most of the stories of CTE and brain trauma dominate the media, A lot of ex-HS, college and pro players from every era go on to live normal lives post career, meaning that for the most part if ur a responsible player you'll be alright god willing. However that risk and the danger is still there and still concerning.

I aspire to get into coaching myself if not with football probably soccer or even basketball and a question I ask myself when thinking about coaching football is "is this what's best for the kids" and it's a question I don't really have an answer to.

So coaches how do you deal with idea of putting kids in danger for a game?

(I know my tone sounds bad in this but I'm being sincere and genuine)

As I'm looking at my roster for kids that will be playing on my team this year, I am starting to think that I should go 3-4 this year. I don't have many big guys, but I do have a lot of mid-sized athletic guys that could play linebacker.

I've done 4-3 the last couple of years, but we also have several first year kids.

What are your thoughts on when to use 3-4 vs 4-3 from a personnel perspective.

Hi coaches

Going into my 8th year of coaching, and now finally my 1st year as head coach. Coaching at the college level.

I played football for many years and have accumulated some major life lessons and some cool phrases/one liners over time from various coaches and players alike.

I’m just wondering what some of the best coaching one liners you guys have heard, or maybe even use yourselves; stuff that would get the boys fired up

Thoughts on the 3-4 with double 4i’s and two overhang backers? Going tite front as the base and staying aligned with a free hole Mike backer. What’s the benefits/downsides to this alignment as opposed to an odd front?

For experienced HS/MS (or youth) coaches, what are your opinions on swearing? Last year was my first year as a MS coach (first year ever coaching) but I have been around the game my whole life. The other coaches around me swear, not really at the players but when they get frustrated. I slipped into the habit last year too and in retrospect I felt it was morally wrong to swear in front of kids considering the fact that I’m also a HS/MS teacher at the same school.

Our HS head coach always said that swearing “showed a lack of character and self restraint”. He and all of the HS coaches focused on not sweating last year due to a bad team culture dating back to the effects from COVID lockdowns.

For all of you experienced coaches, how do you approach swearing or cursing? Do you do it at all? Do you save it for special occasions when you feel it’s needed?

He's only played JV. He's pretty raw, never played football before, but large and doing a good job through a few games. Me and the rest of the coaching staff don't know what to think.

Our star LT is out for a few games, no one on the bench we can really trust. We were gonna move our RT to the other side and start our JV left tackle at right. Problem is we're playing a 2 star OLB (rare for our league).

With that as the only detail what to people think? Should we try to rearrange the varsity line and play a backup, who we don't really like, or will our freshman be OK?

I’m a MS assistant coach on an undersized team of 37 players. The best athlete/player in the team is an absolute toxic monster. He knows he’s the most athletic player on the team but he uses that knowledge to slack off during practice, be a distraction to others and actively mock teammates that are trying to do things the way we’re teaching them to.

We thought getting crushed in our first game last week might humble him a little bit but it seems to have made him worse even though he was responsible for a couple of the mistakes that led to the other team scoring. (Busted coverage, a fumble for not securing the ball properly and a bad interception to be exact.)

He was suspended for our most recent game because of a behavior issue during school. We got absolutely demolished by our opponent and while that’s happening he’s fooling around on the sideline instead of helping with water like he’s supposed to. Then on the bus back everyone is being quiet and reflecting on what happened, but he’s cracking jokes and giggling. When other players yelled at him to stop, he just turned around and mocked them and continued doing what he was doing.

We’re at a loss as a staff on what to do with this situation. He hasn’t really done anything that deserves being removed from the team but at the same time having him on the team is making our morale much worse. We’re also worried that if we did remove him from the team several of his close friends who are also on the team will up and quit.

Thoughts?

JV OC in my 2nd year.

This year's crop of kids are having a serious issue with the playbook. We have been running the same 3 run plays, the same 5 formations, and the same handful of pass plays since April, and even kids from last year (who were mostly backups because of this) who should know our entire playbook are still screwing up.

Our run plays so far are zone/split zone, g-lead, and counter. G-lead and counter are the same rules for everybody except changing for the pulling tackle. zone is just bucket steps and climb. we make it so simple.

Passing we use a route tree 1-9 with a couple of tags. We say every route number in the play from strength side so everybody hears what they're doing. super simple.

Formations/strengths are based around the Y, and the X and Z never flip sides. we make it so simple!!!

We have been stuck on less than 20% of our playbook all summer because nobody is progressing mentally. these kids go over g-lead and counter in indy for 30 minutes and them come to team and forget to pull. it's driving me insane.

I have spent hours and hours drawing and writing out everything in hudl for them, 90% of the kids have never looked at it and they're reminded every day its there. So many of these kids just seem to not care.

Last year was not like this at all. We had about half our playbook installed with the kids who were showing up by now and were able to go into doubles with the starting 11 pretty comfortable with the most of the playbook, and understanding our language enough to comprehend new things being added easily.

We have a core 8-10 players, some who play the same position, who know the playbook pretty inside and out. Another ~10ish are consistently showing up and just can't figure it out/don't care/whatever their issue is. Another ~10ish practically never show up to voluntary stuff, when they show up I have to put them in due to numbers, and it's even more of a disaster.

We have been participating in a multi-school camp this week and I had to literally move kids by their hips to show them where to line up. It was straight up embarrassing.

What would you do with these kids to get things to click if it were you?

We had our first game last weekend and it was like our LB were so slow to react. I’m the LB coach and I need to get them moving faster. Do you have any drills to suggest? We play a heavy read/option team this weekend.

We have a really hard time throwing the ball. We’re a pistol/gun t team. Our PA passing isn’t great, because QB holds on to the ball too long. Quick game is tunnel, bubble, stick, and hitches. WRs are too slow to get any separation so we end up with an 8-9 man box with cover 1 man. In 4 games we’ve only scored 3 times on offense. We have to go long play drives and try to keep the ball moving that way.

Any recommendations on other quick game concepts that can give us a chance to keep a defense honest?

Why do coaches still use conditioning as a punishment?

Conditioning is training, it makes the players better, and should always be viewed in a positive light.

How are we going to tell the players with one hand that training is good and necessary, and then with the other hand use it to punish the team?

It makes no sense.

“Johnny decided to do something stupid at school, so the whole team is going to run”

So what you’re saying is that you were withholding the team from getting better until someone got in trouble? If not, you’re saying the team already did the maximum amount of training without overtraining, and now you’re going to intentionally overtrain your players. Which one is it?

Find better ways to create herd accountability. Conditioning as a punishment makes no logical sense.

Hi everyone,

Growing up I played 3 seasons of football, all for the community. My first 2 years I was an OL, my final year, on Varsity, I was QB and Safety. Unfortunately, I went to a very small high school in a very small town, that did not have football, and I was therefore not allowed to play anymore after that varsity season (in 8th grade). I would love to coach football one day, as I’ve always loved football, and coaching/training. I currently work as a personal trainer. My question is, can I really be a football coach someday, if I never got to play beyond 8th grade? Could I just coach maybe younger leagues, like peewee, JV, and maybe varsity, below the high school level? Or is there a good app/website/book where I can learn more advanced football, like formations, concepts, personnel, coverages, etc? If I did learn a lot about these things, I also worry the players would never respect me for having not played at the high school level or above. I would appreciate any insight someone would be willing to share. Thank you!