Coach Calande

Attitude comes from the head coach, attitude reflects leadership! Attitude also comes from being extremely sure and confident of ones assignments. Be sure to be a great teacher of the fundamentals, especially tackling and pursuit. You will want to stress gang tackling and stipping the ball. what is your base defense?

If you havent picked up an issue of DOUBLE WING ILLUSTRATED e-magazine, you might want to soon!!! issue number two has an article "Defending the double wing with the 46 Gambler defense" which is at least "interesting" and might have quite a few concepts you can use. check out www.coachcalande.com

Coaches, if you are interested in learning the GOOD GOD blocking system and applying it to the dominating double wing offense or even using it with the single wing, then simply type www.coachcalande.com into your address bar or search engine and you will find the information you seek. AS far as "adapting" the information to 8-9 year olds, not necessary as you will see on my site that there is more than enough evidence to suggest that the younger kids can execute the systems I promote with extreme success. Please be advised that coaching is never easy, its up to you as a coach to teach to fullest of your ability and to assist the kids in learning the great game of football. Blocking rules such as GOOD and GOD are to HELP THE KIDS not make things harder?! The rules are to eliminate doubt, frustration and confusion, its ONLY THEN that kids will play to their full aggressive potential. Please contact me at coachcalande@comcast.net with questions.- Steve

visit www.coachcalande.com to order the first issue of "DWI"- a brand new emagazine for coaches, by coaches. The first mag has been out for a week and here is some of the feedback... "Best five bucks I have ever spent!" "Well worth it!" "really enjoyed the first mag, now impatiently waiting for the second! Looking forward to the BEAST article" "Lots of great articles, good variety of topics!" "More informative than an issue of AFM" use the "how to order page" - thanks Steve www.coachcalande.com

Cancer does one thing...it grows and spreads. you must "treat it" or cut it out completely. treatment for cancer- lots of physical activity in the form of "bellies" and "up downs" bear crawls, sprints, loss of playing time. if signs of cancer do not disappear, intensify the treatment. what you tolerate, you are encouraging.

I really appreciate all the input. I think what I have to do now is get more involved in what is being taught to the lineman I know that we are not drilling them on steps and etc. I felt that I had a coach that would drill them on these things while I worked on timing with the backfield. So that is a situation I will have to watch more. I agree with jack, a good dive rule is gap/on/backer....its all one on one blocking unfortunately but the fb in the bone is up close so he hits the hole in a hurry if hes well coached... have the other backs fake option and of course run an option to compliment that play (make it look like an option anyhow) id say from there you want 3 other blocking schemes...my suggestions... blast scheme- also called "iso". have the oline block big on big up front and run the iso at teh B gaps. if the guard is covered the g and t can cross block with teh tackle going first. the two backs, fb and near half lead thru the hole as the backside half gets to follow the two of them thru the b gap. the lber is blocked by the two leads. (thus the term iso)... id also add a power off tackle play. have the playside linemen block gap/down/backer (first man inside), pull the backside guard thru the hole, double team the de with the fb and near half for a walloping kickout and give the backside half (or qb keep) the ball off tackle. finally, id run a counter off this, use the same blocking scheme the other way with the fb and same half back faking the power and the near half counter stepping adn cutting back to follow a trapping guard back to the other side. again, line blocks gap/down/backer....(first guy inside) you could probably do more with double teams and all that but i was just giving you ideas for a quick fix kind of attack. in the off season you might study up on blocking schemes, tons of diagrams and playbooks posted on various sites. be glad to help you with some stuff we do. - Steve

my advice...or opinion i guess...dont let him quit. ever. quitting is a habit. kids sometimes only want to do things that they are good at (unless it comes with a reset button)...and of course, he gave up that td pass...big deal...every pro cornerback that ever played the game got burned a few times. heres the deal, tell him NO, YOU CANT QUIT. football is what? 8 weeks? QUITTING IS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Coaches, its been a long time coming, but this is a very good manual that will provide your whole organization with what you need to run great dw practices and drills. check out the dw drills page on www.coachcalande.com for details about the huge manual. - Steve coachcalande@comcast.net * this practice manual was made SPECIFICALLY FOR THE CALANDE STYLE DW. It compliments my playbook, clinic dvds and system dvd sets.

Without a doubt you need to avoid MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL SYNDROME thinking that you need multiple zone coverages and multiple fronts. You arent playing against lil Joe Montana and Lil Jerry Rice. My suggestion based on helping thousands of coaches with attacking man to man defense is to begin research on the 46 Gambler defense (46 is not a 4-6, its got 5 men in rush and 5 in coverage with a "free backer" used to creat stunts and unblocked "hit squad" players at the point of attack). Another great choice is the "GAM" or gap/air/mirror which our 46 Gambler borrows from at times. Go for the throat, teach man to man press coverage with 1 or 0 free safties and come after the offense, break up the run game completely and destroy the qbs confidence with a rabid dog approach to defense. I have dvds, manual and clinic footage available should you decide you are intrigued. if you just want a free power point to explore teh defense some email me and ill send it to you. im a big believer in the 46 Gambler (as are the many guys that come to the WAR ROOM to discuss it every day)... www.coachcalande.com will take you to the war room coachcalande@comcast.net is my email and ill send you the free power point of the Gambler. You will love it, but i warn you, its a coaching defense...you must commit and coach it as i instruct. -Steve Coach Calande, I agree with your "aggressive" defense. I'm a 2nd year defensive coach for 8 and 9 year olds and we started installing the 4-4 defense towards the end of the year last year not necessarrily out of desire but simply because we didn't have the "meat" to run a 5-3 type defense. We had a bunch of mid-sized kids that were quick and not very aggressive. The 4-4 is basically a 6-2 type defense but I like having those OLB's just shade the outside of the man on the end of the O-line. To keep things easier for the kids (when I started talking about gap responsibilities and stunts I always got the deer in the headlights look), I would have my 4 down linemen line up in the gaps (a and b gaps). From watching this, the olinemen would be confused if he had a defender over each of his shoulders. And we all know that confusion on the offense leads to big plays by the defense. Then, I would have all 4 of my LB's pick a side that they wanted to shoot and tap the downlinemen's hip to whichever side they were gonna shoot (so the d-lineman would know which way to go). This kinda gave my kids some responsibility and accountability to make their own plays. So we would basically blitz up the middle every play and the only way the offense would make a play is if there was a breakdown in coverage. But that's gonna happen with an aggressive defense and we made more plays for negative yardage then they had positive. My CB's have alot of responsibility in not letting anything get outside of them. My CB's are normally my best open field tacklers and have to stay honest to their side of the field. I've thought about maybe teaching some stunts and various alignments from the 4-4 but I don't want the kids thinking too much when they need to concentrate on attacking the ball. Should I just keep things as elementary as possible or should I start trying to implement various stunts and blitz packages? Most of the offenses we see run the Wing-T or the veer. What do you suggest is the best way to go about stopping those offenses and keeping them on their toes? I am fortunate to have done very well against the wing-t by making them throw. our Gambler is 13-1 in our county against the wing-t...and its probably because i respect it so much. when i teach defense to my boys we always walk thru against wing-t plays. my feeling is that if we can defend the wing-t belly, buck and power series we can stop any other I formation or T formation or wishbone. we work on option and spread attacks later when my kids are sound against most teams bread and butter. Anyhow, if you are playing a 44 as you called it with men in the a and b gaps that means the c gaps are largely undefended? when we coached the 44 we ran it as a stack defense stacking our mlbers behind the dts who lined up head up on the guards, our des lined up head up on the te or in a shade on the tackle. the olbers would line up head up on a wing or split the difference if there was a split end (so they could defend the flat/slant) or they would stack behind the de if there was no flank threat. we gave each "unit" (dlineman and his stacked backer) a number and simply called out the number of the unit we wanted to stunt...super simple...ie "13" would mean units one and three would perform x stunts...the dline would slant to the gap opposite the direction the lber chose to blitz (same thing, just tap the hip)...the lbers tapped hip even when the unit stunt was off so the offense had not a clue. we played one coverage all year ...3 deep, 4 under zone. only later did we switch to the 46 Gambler defense and a pure man attack. why? the wing-t teams would run unbalanced sets on us and give our balanced defense fits. www.coachcalande.com

Coach- a good rule of thumb is matching the total schemes/plays to the age of the boys. and typically with your age group good TEACHERS can run a few more plays while bad coaches will try to make their team look like an NFL team running way to many formations, shifts, motions and all kinds of silly stuff. At the jr high level we ran double tight double wing 100% of the time and had about 30 plays. Typically we would run the same 8-10 plays all day long and scored a point a minute doing it. I would say you could totally commit to the wishbone to give your team a nice power and misdirection attack. you might choose to "break the bone" by shifting the halfbacks to the wing positions or just move one out to a wing. this will improve your passing game and your flank attacks as well as give you an opportunity to add motion to the attack when you are ready and comfortable. the best thing is to be able to run all the same plays from a few formations or limit the formation to just one and run more plays. what you dont want to do is become "formation dependent" and develop tendencies that your oponnents can pick up on. for example, some goofs will line up in trips, every time they do, the qb runs a sweep to trips for example...that becomes a key for the defense. suggestions/examples to keep things simple base from wishbone...call it "bone" wishbone with right half back at wing call it "bone right"(gives you flank attack to right) wishbone with left half back at left wing, call it "bone left"(gives you flank attack to left) double wing set - "wing bone" (gives you two flanks)- with short motion by wing allows you to run same plays as the bone right/left for example. suggested core plays for your offense power off tackle (perfect for your age group since most teams over play the sweep, the off tackle holes tend to be huge) counter off tackle (wing counter when in a winged formation) blast (also called iso or lead) forget dive and go with wedge instead - much better play! fb trap sweep (run it only when you have a wing to hook the defensive end to the inside) qb bootleg option to run or pass power pass half back pass from sweep look Thats all id run, mirror the plays to both sides. www.coachcalande.com will take you to THE WAR ROOM forum.

Ill help ya out any way I can...take a look at some of that feedback...you can even see some clips of the lil guys running the 46 Gambler. - S

sure, did you get a copy of the 46 Gambler power point while you were there?- steve the clinic dvds (4 disc set showing coaches running thru the drills!) and coaching manual are on the www.coachcalande.com site

Coach , the sooner you teach reads the sooner your defense stuffs the run and pass every down. Reads are not something to make a boys life tougher but to make the job at hand EASIER. I am not sure why some fear any type of reads...you cannot react if you cannot read, if you cannot react than you cannot play defense. I am a coach that believes in attacking defense...you attack your reads and keys! IN the 46 Gambler defense we protect the lbers from linemen that might otherwise try to block them. thats part of our philosophy, keep the best tacklers free to be the "hit men" in the defense. Now, to get them to the point of attack we give them a key...the near back. if that near back comes we attack his first step. if he goes we attack that first step WHILE READING for another back crossing or a guard pulling to him. I have coaches all over the world teaching these reads and keys to 7 and 8 years olds up thru and including the high school level. Dont let the word "read" scare you, these boys "read and react" constantly when they play video games. seriously. www.coachcalande.com

you guys can get a great look at how I install the wedge on my lastest clinic videos - 2006 Newmanstown double wing clinic. other than that feel free to email me at coachcalande@comcast.net and ill help in any way I can. www.coachcalande.com will take you to the WAR ROOM.

blocking as a team? you mean applying their blocking rules to make the schemes work? Coach every play needs a specific scheme and a set of blocking rules (priorities) to make it work. At the 5-6 level you most certainly want to have the following plays in your arsenal sweep power off tackle counter off tackle reverse isolation or lead play wedge each play needs blocking rules to make it go. can you share more of what you have been teaching? www.coachcalande.com will take you to the WAR ROOM.