Passionatley?
Bo Pelini
I’m not sure if Bo Pelini is going to succeed as the next Head Coach at the University of Nebraska. His defensive performances at LSU over the last two seasons have consistently placed among the top three. Evidently “Bo knows defense”, which is a huge problem in Nebraska this year, when the defense scored 114th out from 119 players.
The coverage by the media of Bo has been quite overwhelming at best the country. Nebraska has had only four head coaches in the last 47 years, which means this is an important thing in this case. Many reports have been published about him in the last two weeks, considering that NU football fans do not have a Bowl Game to think about. One story that got me to think about Bo’s style of criticism and correcting players, which is something that many coaches of youth football have to deal with.
Criticizing Players The Right and Wrong Way (Most Often Way) According to Bo:
Criticizing Players
Some of the quotes from Bo were featured in Todays newspaper, which could have relevance to your team’s youth team or the way you manage youth soccer. The article tried spbo live score to understand the reasons why Bo’s old NU players were so fond of him and worked with such dedication for Bo. A particular incident struck an emotional chord for me during Bo’s 2003 campaign here at Nebraska:
A player committed a mistake during practice which led to one of Husker assistant coaches scolded the player. The assistant was yelling and screaming and ran from the sidelines to the defensive huddle on the players’ faces.
Pelini took the assistant to the sidelines, and said “All that stuff you just did: Was that for you or for the player? Because I heard you yelling at the kid and not one time did you tell him what he did wrong” He then told the teacher “So the next time he makes that mistake it’s on you.”
Pelini later went on to mention that he holds players accountable for their 100 100% effort during every play and gives them grades through practice and game film. Pelini also holds players accountable for their tasks and may sometimes pursue an individual, but Pelini will always be specific about the error and ways to prevent it from happening again. Pelini later went on to mention that he will always make sure to wrap his arms over the player after training and tell them “I know you can do better than that.”
Criticizing Youth Football Coaching
In the course of coaching youth football, we witness instances of non-instructive critique. How often do we are familiar with the phrase “hit somebody” during games or “you gotta block.”
While there might be a little truth in these phrases, they’re not particular or instructive and are not always efficient. Like in college, instruction and criticism must be precise and instructive. Many youth football coaches tear youngsters with negative comments or negative tone and rude words.
My Own Experiences, Man You Hate to See This
When I coach games I am constantly hearing these non-instructive words frequently, and so do you. In the majority of games I coach, I begin the game with the same play a couple of times. This is a game that I am confident we can run well, and should perform well against the particular defense we face the day. It is a common practice for us to be able to efficiently and quickly go down the field getting our 5-7 yards each play. Eventually the defense will request timeout. Most often, the defensive coordinator of the team in front will get annoyed and will scold his players for being beaten by the same play repeatedly and over.
During this timeout , I will not speak to my children. I look at my children and the other players and tell them to “shhhh, listen, listen.” Then, we can listen to the pain and anger from the opposing coach’s voice and sometimes, he’s screaming so loudly that you observe tiny spitballs leaking from his mouth, players avoiding the spills as the coach urges his players to “try harder.” The coach tells the players “it’s the same play, it’s coming right here” and often slams his fingers into the ground until it’s hard to imagine what happened to his finger that did not break. Sometimes, it’s difficult not to be a little giddy or even smile slightly. It’s like the bigger and more impressive the opponent is, the higher the anger level of the coach. When I hear this, I smile big and tell my children “Listen to those poor kids, I knew you guys would be able to do this to them, let’s finish it off and score.”
In other instances, this coach could re-arrange his defense in a different way and may even instruct them to employ different strategies. In other instances they employ unsound tactics like “bring the house”, I’m sure we’ve experienced everything. However, the majority of the time the coach on the other side shouts at his players to “try harder”, we play the same game again and then move the ball into and score, and his frustration increases. In the past five seasons, we been able to score on 93% our first drives. However, on a couple of occasions , we used the exact same play throughout all through the series. We’d run it in order to demonstrate to defense players that although their defense was created to block the offensive component however, it revealed another flaw that we planned to take advantage of it. In other instances, we would use the same play using 10 people “in the box” to demonstrate to our children that we were able to use our base play against any opponent.
Whatever the case, I’m not going announce the offensive plays until we are at the range of the scrimmage where we can see players lined up with our no-huddle play-calling method. If the coach was reasonable in his actions then we’ll continue using our usual playcalling technique, focusing on weaknesses and running plays that our “Easy Count” system tells us to play. However in the event that the coach was abusive and has adjusted his defense too much to stop us from running the play we run the previous 6-7 times in the same row, I’ll make the complimentary play to make a major gain from it, or an important touchdown. If I discern him setting his defense in the huddle, I will go ahead and announce an huddle play. smile at the kids and say that we’re going to score with this play and be sure to get out for the bonus point. If you repeat that one time or two, children will believe everything you tell them. I’m not sure how many occasions we’ve scored right away after the defense calls timeouts, but I’m sure it’s somewhere between 25 and 30 percent. This often shuts these kinds of players down and amusingly, I sometimes feel sorry for the kids on the opposing team who must endure the irritated “try harder” coach.
I usually tell a humorous tale or two about such experiences in the clinics. Many of you who have used my method have tried the same procedure and experienced the same exact outcomes. I get e-mails throughout the course of the season from coaches saying “I thought your stories were funny but I had to smile because the same exact thing happened to me last Sunday. I had to laugh, you are some kind of prophet.” I’m not a prophet however, it happens so frequently it’s easy to see how it’s going to happen to many of you, too.
A lot people who “try harder” guys have no idea what’s wrong in the first place They put it down to “lack of effort” to help themselves feel better about their situation. Of course , it’s not the coaches. Most of the time, their children “shut down” when they receive this kind of “instruction” when the very next play is a huge score or a scoring. You will often witness the spring bursting out of these confused and confused children’s steps, and the confidence of your children increases. If this teacher had followed easy steps, like the Game Day Scouting Report on page 246 of our book, he’d know what’s happening and could make some sensible adjustments.
We Have Always Beleived in the “Bo” Way
If you’ve been reading this blog or read my book, or seen my DVDs you’re aware that we hold children accountable for “perfect effort” and do exactly what they’re supposed do in every game. When they do have mistakes, the criticism needs to be precise, informative as well as helpful. I always give the child the opportunity to rectify the mistake later during practice, and then publicly congratulate him for doing something well, regardless of how small it might be. Try to get your hands around him prior to the end of the practice to give him a boost and tell him you value the kid. The “I am sure you could improve on this” criticism is among the most effective phrases that a coach of youth football can use , and one of the stars rising on the field of College football coaching appears to think the same.