How a Number Dictates Practice
The number 0 dictates our practices.
We are lucky to have a drone film practices, so every night we can watch and grade film. I keep grading simple: there are two columns, one for decision and one more mechanics. The QB gets a 0 if he makes the wrong decision or uses the wrong mechanics and a 1 if he's correct.
We can easily see what percentage of plays were correct decisions and mechanics and what percentage weren't.
But the grade percentage is just a number (and not the important number). It doesn't tell the whole story and by itself doesn't help the QB get better. The playlist we make from all the 0s is what's important.
This playlist gets us inside the helmet of the QB by forcing us to ask him the right questions.
Let me explain. We tag each play so we can create a playlist of the 0s and see what plays we're struggling with. This playlist of 0s on the play with the most 0s becomes our priority numero uno.
Now when we watch film we can pull up this playlist and start to figure out where the breakdown is. The breakdown could be in how we're teaching the play, what formations we're running the play from, what the QB is looking at, or it could expose the mechanics the QB is using on a particular play.
We can then go through the play with him and ask the following:
What's the read?
What's the defensive structure?
Using the answers to the first two questions, what do you anticipate happening?
The answers to these questions are priceless in terms of getting inside the mind of your QB because we are mimicking the thoughts he should be having pre-snap. Now we can see where the holes are because they are going to show up right on that playlist. The QB's answers along with watching the play help him and you see what needs fixing.
This is high school football. We don't have hours of meetings. Each day requires a rigorous focus if we have any hope of getting anything done. This method is one of the most efficient things we have started doing.
No longer are we guessing about what problems we need to help the QB solve.
I'm not sure if others do this already because we stumbled into it in our attempt to figure out why certain mistakes were happening. In a future email I would like to go in more detail about how this process actually plays out with a specific play.
If you do something similar or different, would love to hear about it.
Emory Wilhite