Better than the old block

    After coaching my son, Matthew, for the past three years, I had to take a season off to heal up from a series of medical issues.  It gave me a chance to just be a fan of his and I am excited about his development.     Right now, Matthew is technically more sound than I was as a senior at the University of Richmond back in 1986.
    This season, he went head to head with a few Division I prospects and other good defensive ends while making the switch to left tackle from his natural center position. This was a move I considered before taking my medical leave, and it became necessary because of a lack of tackles on the roster.
    This position change gave Matthew a chance to show some versatility to college coaches. 
     One of the reasons, I jumped at the chance to coach him in his freshman year is that as  college coach I noticed that there was a real lack of fundamentals among players arriving at our campus at Johnson C. Smith University.  One of my first meetings as running backs  coach, I wanted to find out exactly how much my guys knew so I got them on the board with a marker and asked them to draw up some simple defenses front and the result was not good. On the field, we had to teach every fundamental from stance to proper blocking technique.
     My main goal when I moved over to Berry Academy of Technology in 2010 was to take every opportunity to teach the basics of football so that if our players moved on to the next level they would be able to excel.
     Watching Matthew play, I feel certain that because of his fundamental understanding of playing offensive line and his knowledge of the game he will be able to contribute once he gets to college.
     One of the biggest things I liked on film was his ability to use his hands with proper placement.  Starting when he and two of his line mates were freshman, hand placement was one of our every day drills or EDD's.  The first thing we worked on each day was stance and then first step.  I would run the same drills I picked up from Campbell University offensive line coach Kevin Thompson who handed me a drill tape produced by Coach Chinnis Berry.

     In pass protection, he had success against highly touted players because he was precise in his hand placement.  I was glad to see our drill work carry over to the game.  When we did punch drills, I encouraged our lineman to pick as specific a target as possible. In practice are target to punch the breast plate of the shoulder pad was narrowed down to the "E" and "R" on the front of our practice jerseys.  If we were working half man on combo's it would become the "B" or "Y" depending on your post hand.

     Another thing that jumped off the film was his ability to drive defenders off the ball. He got a lot of chances to lead the way in the red zone and on a number of occasions drove his man well into the end zone.  

    On gap blocking schemes Matthew and his line mates would crush the play side shortening the corner for the puller and the running back or quarterback.   When it came time to pull on counter he did a great job of turning up in the hole and blocking his man.  In the past, we spent a lot of practice time making sure those blocks counted. I would teach them to locate the man they were responsible for on the pull and by skip pulling keep their shoulders parallel to the offensive line and eyes on the linebacker or defensive end.

   The icing on the cake, was Matthew's ability to seal the edge on outside zone.  That was a constant source of frustration in previous years for me and some of my tackles. I remember on practice reloading an outside run three or four times because my tackle just could not make that block.  When we run outside zone -- I teach lineman that we are in an overtake mentality.  Our ultimate goal is to gain a gap on defenders. If we can't overtake, then we simply take them where  they are going and allow the running back to find a crease.  This season there was no doubt that we were running outside because Matthew was not only able to overtake but also wheel around on defenders pinning them inside.

    It is so satisfying to see improvement like that from any player that you have coached but when it's your son it leaves you speechless.
    Note: Matthew and his line mate Andrew Howard both received all conference honors in the South Meck 8.  Congratulations!