Coach ,

We spend our off-season researching, adding and deleting ideas, installing our updated offense and getting it ready for the season.

All of those tasks are time-consuming, but ultimately the success comes from a well-executed game plan.

Execution is refined in practice and practice is driven by a well-thought-out game planning process executed by the staff.

I learned early on that there are many ways to approach attacking a defense and they can all win championships. 

A big part of it is the coach’s thought process and that begins with a philosophy of how to attack.

To illustrate this, here are three distinctly different approaches that have worked for successful coaches.  You will see that there is not one approach that works better than the other, but what is clear is that each of these coaches knows what the key aspects of their attack are, and they set up their offense and game planning based on that.

#1) Distortion - Andy Kotelnick, OC, Kansas

Andy Kotelnicki has climbed the ranks as a coach moving from OC at Wisconsin Whitewater to U. Buffalo in the MAC and now as the OC at Kansas in the Big 12. Since I met him, his approach he’s always talked about is “Distortion” and this concept is the driving force behind how he puts together a game plan. He explains in this video (click on image of video).

#2) Players-Formations-Plays, Geoff Dart, Head Coach, Mount Union. I love this philosophy and how it delineates a process of putting together an offense then utilizing it to attack the defense. Coach Dart explains this philosophy here:

#3) Based on QB Ability, Joe Osovet. Coach Osovet has been an offensive innovator in how he manipulates a defense, but the foundation of his attack every year and every game is understanding the abilities of his quarterback. He shares his thoughts here:

My own thought process evolved over time, and the Mount Union philosophy mentioned above had a big impact on my development of our offense as well as our game planning process.  I took what I learned at a clinic from Hall of Famer Larry Kehres, one of the winningest coaches ever and added other components that I felt important to come up with my 6 P’s of the game planning process. I explain it in this video:

The purpose of this email wasn’t to give you the answers of exactly what you do, but rather spark some thinking and conversation with you and your offensive staff so that you can have a defined philosophy that refines the work you will do every day leading up to the game.

When you better understand what you believe and how that is applied to put together a game plan that creates the practice plan, then you will have your offense in a good place and you will find you can be more efficient and effective in your work.

Good luck in your final preparations for the season!

Coach Grabowski

PS Check out all of the tools plus perspectives from successful coaches that I put together in this resource.