During my senior year of high
school, I helped lead our varsity football team to its first playoff berth in a
decade. With regards to the text, “Reframing Organizations, Artisry, Choice,
and Leadership”, by Bolman and Deal, my football teams structure followed a dual authority model. It all starts with
the head coach, who is essentially the head boss. Branching off from him are
two coordinators, the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator.
These
coordinators have their respective position coaches that work for them. For
example, there are specific position coaches for the running backs that would
report back to the offensive coordinator. Obviously, every week we played a new
team and therefore required a new offensive and defensive game plan. On Sundays,
the head coach and his two coordinators would meet and design this game plan to
be implemented on Monday. This was then relayed to the position coaches and
team through film sessions and chalk talks. It wasn’t until Tuesday that we put
pads on and physically practiced the new plays.
This
is only when it comes to practice, during games the pressure is mostly left to
the players. I happened to play free safety on defense and was in charge of
communicating are coverages to the rest of the secondary defense and
linebackers. Although I made the initial call, any other secondary member or
linebacker could communicate back a different call if he saw something that I
did not. This would follow the model of an All-Channel network. There was
communication floating freely between all members.
With
reference to Katzenbach’s six distinguishing characteristics of high-quality
teams, I think his first bullet point applied to my position in football
dramatically. That is, our coach and defensive coordinator would put forth a
plan with an opportunity. Then it was up to my defensive platoon to handle the
challenge with flexibility and coordination. Essentially, once our coaches
taught us the game plan, they had to stay out of the way and let us go to work.
Our defense, which was rather successful in stopping opposing defenses, did
have a good mix of expertise and specialization. For football purposes this is
pretty straightforward, we had large linemen that could create piles at the
line and a quick secondary that could drop back into coverage or come up and
stop the run. We also had corners that were able to drop into zone coverage, as
well as play man to man. This combination of teammates with different
specialties is what lead to our defenses success.
References: “Reframing Organizations, Artisry, Choice,
and Leadership”, by Bolman and Deal
Several of your classmates also wrote posts about being on the football team. I think yours is the first to write about playing defense. And for the most part they wrote about the coaching hierarchy, as you did. I'm more curious about player coordination. If I understand the free safety position, it has some ability to roam to where the need is. This is after the play is called. If it is a run, it is to plug a whole. If it is a pass, perhaps this is to double team a wide receiver.
ReplyDeleteThe teamwork aspects come from expecting others to be in certain places when you do your job. They are in front of you. For the most part does it look like people are where they are supposed to be? Or does it look like chaos?
Conversely, your teammates may have expectations for you to be there when they need you. Ae those expectations typically confirmed or are they frequently disappointed? The play calling, of course, does matter but the implementation may matter more.
You said your team was quite successful your senior year. But success might come from something else than teamwork. (Having very talented players or perhaps a team with a lot of seniors.) It would help in this piece to identify those other factors to better understand what it was that teamwork contributed to the good performance.
At the beginning of the season it did appear as chaos but after practicing all summer people began to fall into their roles without much help. I spent a lot of one-on-one time with my defensive coordinator learning the ins and outs of each position. This was only so I could help a player if he got lost in the speed of the game. After all, with a loud crowd and bright lights some players happen to get star-struck and forgot what they had learned in a closed practice.
DeleteWith regards to zone coverages, the secondary must rely on every unit to be in position as well as make reads on the quarterback. Often times one player is given a zone that he could not possibly cover but if the quarterbacks eyes are read correctly, they have a pretty good idea of were to be. If a player is out of his zone, the whole entire defense can suffer. When it comes to calling coverages, every coverage has weak spots so execution is more important than the actual call.
Our secondary was made up of many talented individuals of varying year in school. It happens that one of our best defensive backs was our youngest. So I don't really think age plays much of factor, more so football knowledge and instinct. Although athleticism is key, I would attribute team work to our success. If we couldn't rely on players to be cohesive in movement then we would not have been successful. We had rather athletic second string players, but when they entered the game it seemed to mess with the chemistry of our starters.