Jacob Jones

REAL coaching is not about recruiting a bunch of dudes and teaching them to do things that only dudes can do well. REAL coaching is taking athletically average kids who have been getting off the cheese wagon at your school for years and teaching them to play basic fundamentally sound football with great effort.

This is not meant to be a hot take, and I know I risk being roasted, but this is what I genuinely believe. If you do not agree, you be you. I love Gap-Down-Backer (GDB) and think it is the absolute best blocking scheme for sub-varsity football. Be leery of what coaches who have NEVER coached below the college level espouse because they have NEVER coached anything but handpicked grown-ass men. It is ALL good stuff, but not all of it is doable for coaches who are coaching popcorn farts. Many of the techniques they use are great for 6-5 OL, but not ideal for 5-6 Pisk Willies. Remember, they are coaching recruited or drafted behemoths, and many of us are coaching what the bus or mom drops off at the school house in the morning. I have sat under some of the most brilliant OL coaches ever in dozens (if not 100s) of clinic sessions over the decades and walked away a more knowledgeable OL coach. I came back to my players and soon realized I could not do much of what they taught me with my 185 guards and 210 tackles. Imagine hanging out with Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller at the Manhattan Project and then trying to pass that knowledge on to a middle school Physical Science class. I believe that is a fair equivalence. That is the way I have come to look at some of these guys. They are brilliant, but does that brilliance translate to all offensive linemen and especially those at the sub-varsity level? Forget all that staying-square stuff when running GDB. I talk about it in my book. GDB is all about horizontal movement (displacing defenders sideways) and using their momentum and our angles against them to out-leverage them. Staying square is great for Zone, Duo, and Gap-On-Down; schemes that use doubles and combination blocks. True GDB has no double teams or combos, so staying square is actually counterproductive. If you coach at places where you have players who can successfully execute the Saturday and Sunday stuff, great. I have done it too when I had the players. I once had a coach ask whether we should teach the higher-level stuff to prepare our kids for the next level. My answer was no. Why? Because only about 7% move on to the next level; why should I sacrifice the other 93% and their HS experience? Plus, there is a reason they do not teach Quantum Physics in high school: students are either not ready for it or not equipped to learn it. My job is to put my team in the best position to succeed in their games. The college guys have 'coach' in front of their name too. Let's be honest, those little linemen that most of us coach are not playing past the high school level. NOTE: This is my edited response to an email I received from a middle school OL coach who was trying to understand the differences between the systems.