The running game and "The Discipline of Football"

By Paul Haynes

Head Coach

You always get a gauge of how your team is handling things after a loss.

I like to have guys try to grade themselves, and what you are looking for in that is to see if guys think they played better than how you think they did. 

When we look at our offensive line, their expectations are high. They’ll be the first to tell you, though, that they could have played better against Ohio University.

We are seeing them challenge themselves, which is a good thing. It is a very good thing.

The hard part for those guys is that you open up with a league game. There is so much on the line with needing to get a win, but there is still a lot of football to play this season. People who are unsure of themselves may want to change the whole gamut, but that’s not who we are. We know where we need to get better and it is a process.

There is also a misconception about what it takes to run the football. It’s a lot like the misconception that exists with stopping the run. When we visited the Pittsburgh Steelers, their defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau talked about how you have to include the secondary to stop the run. It’s the same thing if you want to run the football. You have to include everyone else. It isn’t just the five guys on the offensive line. It’s blocking on the perimeter and a whole lot more. As a whole, those are things you have to realize. 

You look at personnel, and then you look at schematic. We have our best personnel. Now we just have to do everything a little bit better. I was just reading an article by Dick Vermeil, and he talked about this. There is some good in what we are doing. So it’s not that we can’t do it. It’s just that the consistency wasn’t there. 

                                                                         Photo by David Dermer

There were a couple of runs in there that we had for 8-or-9-yards. When it is blocked right, you get the 4-yard average you want. It’s the same defensively. When we execute, things work.

It’s called “The Discipline of Football” 

The Discipline of Football is to be able to do your fundamentals and technique under pressure. The game doesn’t change. Your mind changes. 

Can I do it for 70 plays in a row … in a row … in a row? 

The only thing that changes is what you are thinking.

Whenever there is a tight game or you feel like you have to do something extra, usually thinking about that something extra is what screws you up.

You have to slow the game down. That’s what practice and film study is about. It’s putting yourself in the situation, like flight simulation. You put yourself in the situation so many times that the game slows down. That’s easier said than done when the bullets are flying, but that’s what you train yourself to do.