By this time in the off-season, most of us have established a pretty good routine in the weightroom with the players for the off-season workouts.  We've gotten through the Holidays, fallen into a good rhythm, and we're looking ahead to Spring Break.  It's now time to turn your attention back to what's important...COACHING.  It's time to kick off some "coaching" off-season workouts.  That's right, in order to get better, you've got to get your coaches working to improve in the off-season.  This means film study, boardwork, testing and mastering teaching progressions.  By watching season cutups together as an offensive coaching staff, you can identify areas where your players may need improvement in skill development.  You can also isolate plays or situations where execution wasn't quite right or there is a problem with something schematically.  This film study can also be useful with program design for your off-season workouts by allowing you to identify areas in which some or all players need to improve.  It's better to address the problem now and have a plan of action to fix it, rather than roll the dice and hope that the player improves prior to the start of Fall camp.  Another key component to the off-season is refining your teaching techniques and progressions.  Offensive coaches in the flexbone need to develop a systematic teaching approach and progression for all positions.  By identifying the skills and techniques necessary to perform at a high level of proficiency in this offense, we are able to give our players an opportunity to improve and "play fast."

Heres a helpful Off-Season To-Do List:

1. Watch play cutups as a Staff (technique/scheme emphasis & player evaluation).

2. Depth chart and personnel evaluation.

3. Evaluate past season offensive strength & weaknesses.  Project future strengths & weaknesses.

4. Develop improvement plan for upcoming season for players individually, as well as Offensive unit as a whole.

5. Watch play cutups as a Staff with emphasis on "eyes training" (training for game day responsibilities and playcalling).

6. Demonstrate knowledge of offensive schemes through "boardwork" with entire coaching staff.  Also serves as professional development tool to improves coaches' presentation skills.

7. Identify necessary skills & techniques by position.  Develop teaching progression for these skills & techniques, as well as a grading system to accurately measure performance of these skills & techniques.

8. Ensure Strength & Conditioning plan matches player development needs as outlined in your Offensive improvement plan.

9. Staff presentations of "1st day" teaching progressions to the entire coaching staff.

10. Spend more time with the family and less time on football.  It's the off-season for pete's sake.