Each week Coach Bass brings his 30 years of NFL coaching experience to USA Football. Email Coach Bass your question.
Rebecca sent the following question:
I am a parent that will be meeting with a college coach to talk to him about a full ride scholarship that they have offered our son.What are some of the questions that we would want to ask?
Hi Rebecca,
Congratulations on taking a proactive interest in your son's future. There are some questions that I might suggest, but the key will be for you to listen closely to what is said before you start asking questions and to make certain that everyone is clear and completely understands what the coach is offering to your son. Also, listen carefully to what he tells you about the school, the coaching staff, how your son will fit into the team, etc. You may have to interrupt his presentation if there is an area that is not clear to you or if you have any questions about what he is saying and want him to expand on it.
The following would be questions that you may want to consider.
1. Does the school offer a course of study that is of interest to your son? His education should be the number one concern.
2. What is the policy for redshirting freshman players? It is not uncommon for it to take five years for a football player to have enough credits to graduate and an extra scholarship year can help this happen
3. What is the graduation rate for the players in the football program? Players need to get a degree and not just use up their eligibility.
4. Is the coaching staff stable or is there a turnover of assistant coaches each year, especially the assistant coaches who will be coaching your son? Constant turnover does not lend itself to a stable environment.
5. Will your son be able to get tutoring help in his classes if he needs it?
6. Ask him about the school's admission process and how do student-athletes fit into this?
This meeting should not be adversarial, but you and your son need to feel comfortable about the head coach, his staff and entire program as this will be a big part of your son's life for the next few years. Your son and you should be proud that he has earned the right to receive a scholarship - less than 3 percent of all high school players go on to play in college. I wish nothing but the best for both of you.
Coach Tom Bass
Adam sent the following question:
I am an assistant varsity football coach in charge of QBs, RBs and ILBs. We run a 3-5 defense with our OLBs on the LOS. We have run this defense for two years and have been in the bottom of the region on points allowed.
Teams throw to the flats on us consistently and run very well on us. We have a hard time getting our ILBs to play sideline-to-sideline, and I feel our reads are too slow. I have always been a fan of a 4-3 or 4-4 on the high school level but our head coach is committed to this defense and feels it gives us our identity.
He takes a "bend but don't break attitude" and feels that most teams will eventually self-destruct. Meanwhile, we have an explosive offense that sometimes sits on the sidelines while the other team has an 8 or 9 minute drive. It could be personnel, but I wonder if it is our scheme sometimes. Can you give me any thoughts?
Hi Adam,
Since the head coach is committed to running the defense, then it may be best if you look at things that you might incorporate into the present scheme to improve your pressure defense and coverage.
One area might be to see if you could loosen up the outside backers based on down-and-distance situations. On second and third and long, you might consider walking both backers half way into the flat. This would give you some help in that area.
To stop the offense, you may want to advocate a run-style blitzing package to go with the normal "bend but don't break" defense. You could blitz one or more of the backers with the three down linemen to get penetration across the line and disrupt the timing of the offensive play. The blitz could be simple with everyone assigned a gap and charging straight ahead.
This could be an outside linebacker to the wide side of the field or to the side of the formation that the offense seems to favor. This penetration on the snap will disrupt any wide running play to that side, give you quick added pass rush and provide a player who is in the backfield, can get as deep as the ball and be in position to stop any reverse or bootleg.
Make sure that your outside backers understand if they have the responsibility to contain any wide run to their side of the formation. If they do, then it is important that they be taught to come across the line of scrimmage for 2 yards and always take on any lead blocker with their inside shoulder and forearm and keep their outside leg free so that they can react outside if the ball carrier tries to extend the play to the sideline.
Try to work within the system that you have in place and offer modifications or small adjustments to the base defense rather than trying to fight the battle with the head coach of completely changing the defensive scheme.
Stay positive and speak with one voice as a coaching staff and never let the players know that you are questioning the material that they are being taught, as this may cause doubt and indecision on their part and cause the team to become fractured.
Coach Tom Bass
Coach Tom Bass, the technical writer and advisor for USA Football, is a 30-year NFL coach who has also authored several books, including "Play Football the NFL Way" - the first "how to" book ever authorized and published by the NFL. Coach Bass is happy to personally autograph his books to you. Book ordering information can be found at http://www.coachbass.com/.
