The Most Overlooked Aspect of Coaching
How to create a system for teaching your players.
Great Coaches Are Great Teachers
Coaching isn’t just about calling plays and building schemes.
It’s about teaching—taking complex football concepts and breaking them down in a way your players can understand and execute.
Just like you have a system for offense, defense, and special teams, you need a system for teaching your schemes. Because if your players don’t know what they’re doing, your X’s and O’s don’t mean much.
Attention spans aren’t what they used to be, and overall football knowledge is on the decline. It’s up to us to bridge that gap and get our guys where they need to be mentally.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Explain & Show with Technology
Before players ever step on the field, they need to see what they’re doing.
We start every install by sending them video clips and diagrams before we meet. That way, when we do get together, they’ve already got a baseline understanding.
From there, we’ll briefly review—highlighting the key takeaways in under 10 minutes.
We keep it short because lecture-style teaching is the lowest form of learning. The longer we talk, the more they tune out.
2. Walk-Throughs
Once they’ve seen it, they need to feel it—without the chaos of a full-speed rep.
Walk-throughs slow everything down, giving players a chance to focus on footwork, landmarks, and responsibilities without the pressure of live reps. It’s a great way to build confidence before full-speed execution.
We also use walk-throughs at the end of practice to correct common mistakes. Instead of constantly stopping practice, we keep team reps flowing and circle back later.
This isn’t just an install phase thing—we do walk-throughs on both sides of the ball every day, all season long, to correct and reteach.
3. Individual Technique Work
Now it’s time to isolate skills.
Everything in individual work should relate directly to what we’re installing that day. It’s easy to default to the same old drills, but if they don’t apply to the plays we’re running, we’re just wasting time.
Have a plan. Make sure your indy period builds toward the bigger picture instead of just checking a box.
4. Partial Work (Inside Run, 7-on-7, Half-Line Drills)
Before we jump into full-team reps, we bridge the gap.
Inside run, 7-on-7, and half-line drills allow players to focus on their role in a specific part of the offense or defense.
It also lets us layer the passing and run game at the same time—while the OL and RBs rep the run game, the QB and WRs are getting their timing down. (Or the secondary on defending the pass and the front 6 stopping the run.)
5. Full Team Work
This is where everything comes together. 11 on 11 full-speed reps.
We are not always a tempo team in a game, but we practice like it. We want to get as many reps as possible in the time we have for that period.
The biggest mistake I see is too many coaches kill their practices by stopping all the time.
The best team periods have constant flow. Players should get as many live reps as possible, with quick, in-the-moment corrections.
If you’re stopping every few plays for a five-minute lecture, you’re draining the momentum and reducing your weekly reps.
Correct on the run. Keep the reps going.
6. Film for Correction & Practice Adjustment
We film every rep of our partial and full team times. When going fast and focusing on reps, we can’t see and correct every mistake. With film, we can slow things down, and the players can visually see their errors.
Film isn’t just for fixing mistakes—it should dictate what needs to be re-taught.
If the same errors keep popping up, we know what the emphasis of our practice and corrections need to be.
And players need to be active in this process. Instead of just pointing out mistakes, ask:
“What should you have done here?”
“What’s the adjustment?”
The more they start diagnosing their own mistakes, the less we have to correct them. That’s when you know teaching is working.
Don’t Overcoach
As much as players need structure and feedback, we’ve got to be careful not to overcoach.
Self-discovery is a huge part of learning. If we constantly tell kids what they did wrong and how to fix it, we rob them of the ability to figure it out themselves, which ultimately leads to mastery.
When I coach quarterbacks, I try not to tell them, “You missed the read” or “You should’ve hit X route”. Instead, I ask:
“What did you see?”
“What made you decide on that route?”
I want them to think through their process, not just wait for me to tell them the answer. The same applies to every position.
You can’t be on the field with them on game day, correcting every snap, so don’t make them rely on your cues and corrections all week long.
Final Thoughts: Coaching is Teaching
Our job isn’t just to call plays. It’s to make sure our players understand their why. That means:
Keep it simple
Give them reps, not lectures
Let them take ownership
When players truly understand, they play faster, more confidently, and more consistently.