The House of Blue

In reference to the first part of your post, one of the things Joker was talking about was to try and get younger players used to the speed of SEC football during practice. I also think he is trying to instill a work ethic that expects players to run on and off the field at a full pace during practice and treat every play as if it were the last. That was my take on it. As far as trying to install more plays etc I really do not know. I think its a good post.

1. You do lose some instructional time on the practice field when you ramp up the tempo. You do lose the immediate instruction, but there is a couple advantages: a) more reps as stated b) less time to think promotes more reaction. Often younger players spend so much of their time trying to reason through plays, coverages, routes, assignments, etc....instead of just reacting which is ultimately how you want to play in the future anyway. In essence you want to #1 teach them how to do something, #2 have them do as quickly and efficiently as possible without thinking so much, and repeat steps #1 and #2 as much as possible. It can be a very effective strategy.

**But keep in mind that the practices are taped and often time there is classroom instruction during position mtgs.....also not everyone can practice at the same time....often as soon as you rotate out in practice you can get direction from a coach while the rest continue to practice....instead of stopping everyone from practice to instruct 1 guy**

2. You want to promote physicality...whether that means hard hitting or not. However you can get it is probably the best way to go. Especially right now when the vast majority of injuries can be taken care of before the season. Many programs have tougher Springs and easier Falls. You can promote physicality other ways as well. When running WR against CB drills you promote sparring quite a bit. They are not likely to get injured while not making full body contact. Same with the o-line vs d-line.....get them to spar and clash, but in a safer environment.....like singled out from the rest of the linemen.

*Warning* (Soapbox Moment) Also, I am a fan of physicality, but not of "hard-hitting" as many know it. I would rather see a beautiful form tackle that is effective rather than when a defender balls himself up like a missile and body punches a guy. For one thing....go for the sure tackle, not a highlight play. For another thing often the hardest hits in the game come from tackles or hits that don't look all that hard on film.

1. Joker wanted to speed things up for a couple of reason... He wanted the freshmen to get used to the speed of the games and also wanted to emphasize that you have to do the little things like hustle to be good, then he also wanted it to aid in players getting in and staying in better shape than they normally would be. Now if you are going very fast all the time then it could result in lack of time for instruction by the coaches. I don't however percieve this to be the main problem. I believe the main problem is that they are repping too many different plays in practice. I had a player tell me before that they practice plays that they don't even call in games.... I don't know if that's because the opportunity just didn't present itself in the game to call those plays or what, but in general its usless to practice plays that you don't intend on using in games. They need to rep the heck out of what they will run in games.

2. I'm not 100% sure how Joker handles hard hitting in practice but if its anything like Rich Brooks then its fine and shouldn't be changed. You don't want to hard hit all the time in practice because you will come up with more injuries than UK had last year. But you will have individual periods where you would do some hard hitting. How Rich Brooks did it and my former coach Coach Kragthorpe did it our periods of practice to really hard hit was when the DLine was going against the Oline, or in the run fit drills. When there is a team period came which is when the whole offense and defense came together we didn't hit hard but we did what they call "Thud" which is when you still hit the guy but you don't take him to the ground, on RBs and WRs you can't hit them but have to almost catch them in your arms and hold them and the defense persuits to the ball and breaks, on the QBs you can just two hand touch them but can't touch there arms or coach will be down your throat in a hurry. To me this is all the physical play you need in practice any more is accessive and unneeded.

I we had 2 games, one against Minnisota and another against Okalhoma where we tackled horrible and our DC which was Todd Graham (who is in Arizona now) made the whole defense come out to practice 10 minutes early and run tackling circuits everyday in practice except for fridays until the year was over with. We ended up being way better at tackling and didn't have a lot of injuries either.

I agree the above is the reasoning behind the increase in tempo,

I just was not certain that it was done properly and had a feel that some of our guys did not learn enough or get enough out of their in game reps early in the season. I was left with the gut feeling they got reps just be be getting them.

But, I have no personal means of making such a judgement.

But, do you think players just stood around and did nothing for Papaw Brooks? I don't. But, with things changing, they won't stay the same. I thought it quite possible that the distinctive change made to practice tempo could have (unintentionally) resulted in a change to time allotted to individuals amid all the moving and changing around at a different pace than was previously done. If everyone, i.e. the staff, is not on the same page and looking for these things, I could see how time for (at least some) individuals could suffer.

Does being put on the scout team ever have the side effect of "retarding" the growth of a player because one is focused on mimicking other teams instead of personal development?

2. I am quite certain that hitting is harder than under Brooks. I know Joker has mentioned the intent to do so, Minter has mentioned his belief in the necessity of hitting hard in practice, and I believe I remember seeing a quote or two regarding Papaw's unease with the amount of hitting being done now. But, perhaps my memory is mistaken.

Are you serious??? Sorry if you are, i've been called stupid and ignorant on here so many times it's rattled my confidence...

If you are serious, my answer is no scout team doesn't "retard" a players growth if anything it helps. It gives a kid a chance to get reps against better competition and forces them to become better or break... It also helps the starters because they are getting to see the schemes they will face that saturday.

I always took pride in Scout team what time I was on it... At C-College our HC would give the top scout teamers a break during conditioning if they provided the starters with a good look because all HC's know it sucks for a HS star to know they may not play at all for a year or more... One reason the BAMA's and LSU's are better than everyone else is because their scout team is so strong... It's a synergistic effect, the better the scout team the better the 2 deep... Kids can also use being on the scout team as a tool for the future. Once they become starters they'll know what the other team is doing (unless the other team has a coaching change). It also gives the coaching staff a chance to see young guys that they may have over looked due to having close to (or sometimes over) 100 kids on the practice fields... Staffs will also take 5 to 10 off the top scout teamers and place them on the special teams, the two deep can't play every snap in all phases of the game. I hope that helps, I also hope this isn't another attack that I didn't catch onto that makes me look like a "retard" and a nice guy at the same time...