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High School Session

Practice and Program Organization

Thank you for coming out today. The Þrst thing Ijust want to do is say what a great profession we’re in. We’re all blessed, all thankful, and sometimes you lose sight of that. So be honored and be proud of where you are and where you’re representing be-cause a lot of people don’t have an opportunity like we have. I coached high school for 20 years and I think that gives me an advantage in college coach-ing to some extent, because in high school, you have to adjust. You don’t recruit. You don’t go out and get your guys and bring them in here to Þt your system.You get who walks in the door, so you have to make your system Þt them, or you have to make a systemthat Þts them. ThatÕs a big ingredient in preparing afootball team because every year is not the same as the next. We all face struggles each year with what we’re going to do offensively and defensively and you have to be creative with special teams.

Creativeness is a great tool for having a chance to have success. That’s why criminals get caught. It isn’t because they aren’t intelligent. There are a lot of intelligent criminals. They’re a lot smarter than I am and some of us in this room, but they do the same thing over and over again. They have a method of operation. So you need to have variety. You need to have creativeness to give your guys a chance to win.

One thing we’ve always tried to do anywhere I’ve coached beginning back in 1979 in Sundown, Texas, don’t ask players to do something they can’t do. If they can’t run, don’t put them out there in a posi-tion where you need to make them run. Don’t ask the corner to lock down if he’s not a lockdown cor-ner. Try to put players in positions of success. Give them opportunities to be successful. Give yourself a chance to win.

The thing that’s so different and varied about this audience is that my background is all limited to Texas. I’ve coached there all my life. I grew up there.

My dad is a high school coach there, and that’s all I know. I don’t know if there is life out of coaching — don’t want to know, quite honestly.

People ask it all the time – “Why are you coach-ing?” Well, to make an impact, make a difference, all this, and all that. Some people will believe you, and some people will think you’re full of bull. Honestly, we can, and it’s a thrill to be able to come back to see guys that you’ve coached, hug their neck, shake their hands, tell them you love them because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. Fans are go-ing to be with you, they’re going to be against you, but souls and hearts stay with you, and that’s what counts in the business.

The thing that’s different is the varying degrees of what you are allowed to do in your states as far as practice and organization. I don’t think it would ben-eÞt me to stand up here and say hereÕs what we didwhen I was in Hamlin, Texas, because it may not ap-ply to a guy in Georgia or to a guy in Mississippi. I’ve been to those states, and I know some of the ways your hands are tied sometimes administratively and what they allow you to do with on-Þeld coaches, andhaving an in-season, or in-class, workout period where a lot of you have to go before school or after school. So there’s advantages and disadvantages all across the nation.

The one thing we all have, and it’s the one thing I’ve said my whole career, is there are 24 hours in a day. What we have to do is use those 24 hours to your best advantage and give yourself a chance to win. It’s easy, in our situation, my situation, your situ-ation, to sit around and look at what somebody else has and think, if I had that, I could make that a lot better. Take what you have and make it good. A lot of times the journey is better when everybody is saying nay, and it turns out to where it may be a yeah.

That’s something that we actually started doing

Art BrilesHead Coach

Baylor University

Tuesday, January 12

Philip MontgomeryCo-Offensive Coordinator

Baylor University

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in 2003 at Houston when we went there. The Univer-sity of Houston is a great university. I love the culture of the big city, and all that goes with it. They were a 0-11 football team two years before we got there. What you had to do was just grind and go. We’re at Baylor right now. Baylor has not been a powerhouse. Pick up the paper. It isn’t like everybody’s saying I’m the greatest coach in America. I haven’t done any-thing. I’m honored to be here talking today just so somebody might act like they’re listening because if I’m talking in Waco, Texas, they’re telling you what I’m doing wrong. They aren’t thinking I’m smart, so this is an honor for me. It’s also an advantage, and a thrill, to be able to help a place, help a high school, help a university, help the people that love that uni-versity feel good about what they believe in. To me, that’s important.

You all have different drives, ambitions and goals, but at the end of the day, it should be to the love of the people you work with — student-athletes. Take care of them. Give them direction. Give them hope. Give them a faith. Treat them with respect. Anybody we meet, we’re going to treat them with respect. If they’re going to disrespect us, then that’s a different story. We can play both sides of the ball, but we’re going to give them an opportunity to be good Þrst.

That’s a general background, philosophically. Like I said, IÕve coached high school 20 years andI’ve been coaching at the college level for 10. The high school days for me were very rewarding. I re-ally didn’t have any ambitions of being a college coach at all when I was in high school because I’ve always felt like you take the job you have, you do what you can do, and then you let it happen how it happens. I was fortunate to be able to get onto Texas Tech in 2000 and got to go back home to Houston in 2003. Nobody wanted the job, and I ac-tually played there.

The one thing that I always try to do as a head coach and did it as an assistant coach, is make per-sonal contact with the players on a daily basis. Any time IÕm in the ofÞce, I donÕt sit in the chair up thereand wait for people to come to me. I go out and Þndout where the players are because they need you. A lot of times you may think they aren’t listening. They’re listening. They’re paying attention to what you do. It’s critical that you give them the direction that you want them to go. You’re going to say, “OK, you’re a captain, you’re a leader.” You’re going to tell him what you want him to lead. You don’t just elect captains and say, OK, here’s how we’re going to go, guys. No, if the guy’s going to be a leader of your

football team, you better know how he’s thinking, what he’s saying and what he’s doing because what happens in the dressing room speaks volumes. You better Þnd two or three guys that will run the dress-ing room and that will run your football team. I’ve never elected captains as long as I’ve been coach-ing, which is 30-something years. I always felt if a guy made it through until he’s a senior and stayed in the program and stayed productive, then he should be a captain. Put it on your resume that you were a captain because it’s a big deal. If a guy stays in your program and takes care of his business and stays productive, there isnÕt anything wrong with that. Letsomebody build themselves up, and you’re going to pick your leaders anyway. Our guys know who our leaders are right now. We’re not electing captains.

I told them at our last meeting before the break, we have two starters on our football team. One of them is an offensive tackle, the other’s an outside linebacker. That tells the team who some of our leaders are. The offensive lineman’s going to start because he’s mean, he’s nasty, he’s aggressive and he pays attention. He’s physical and he has a good attitude every day. I told our offensive lineman the other day, you can be strong. You can be physical. You can be tough. You can be intelligent. You can have passion. Good, but you aren’t playing if you aren’t mean because it is a physical game in the trenches. We have to have guys that are physical and tough in there.

So what you have to do is create an identity for your football team. You don’t just show up and say, we’re going to be this and that. You have to plant the seed, then you have to let it go. The defensive guy, the linebacker, he’s 6-foot, 211 pounds, from Waco, Texas, believe it or not. He’s passionate, fast and fearless emotionally, and that’s what you need on that side of the ball. If you’re playing defense, you’re not going to play it yawning. You’re not going to play it batting your eyes, looking around, wonder-ing what’s going on. You have to know what’s hap-pening before it happens. You have to anticipate what’s going to happen before it happens. You have to understand everything that happens before it hap-pens. The score on the board determines everything the offense is going to do. You have to have guys that are intelligent on that side of the ball that under-stand, that play with passion and intelligence at the same time.

Instead of getting through all this philosophy, I’ll entertain any questions anybody might have con-cerning any situations that they’re involved in.

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The question was, “What do you do when you’re generally outmanned every time you line up to play the game?”

I’ve been in that situation. In 1986, I was at Georgetown High. we were just guys trying to sur-vive and Þghting like hell just to hang on. We tried acouple of variations and we started going shotgun, one-back in 1985, the second year I was in Ham-lin, Texas. We went to the semiÞnals the Þrst yearand got beat on penetrations, but I Þgured we shouldrun split-back veer. Next, we Þnally matched up withsomebody as good as we were, and lo and behold, we didn’t win the game. We were tied and got beat on penetrations. The next year I decided we’re going to have to change something if we’re going to have a chance to win a state championship. So, I went shotgun, one-back in ’85, did well the next year, and I’ve been with it ever since. At Georgetown, the Þrst year, we started doing

a lot of no-back, spreading the ball, directional snap on shotgun and doing some stuff that was a little bit out there for the time and hung on. The next year, we didn’t have a very talented team, but we were play-ing some really talented people at that time. So we decided to slow the game down. I told our linemen and our backs, “Don’t get your butt off the ground until that umpire makes you get up. We’re going to waller around and try to run one play about every 50 seconds. Just try to hang on, get seven points, get 10 points and give yourselves a chance to win.” What you don’t want to do is let your pride get in the way of your intelligence. You can’t force feed some-thing if it’s not there. You have to be intelligent about your situation and what you’re looking at.

In today’s game, you can slow the game down, play Þeld position, play it by the book, be real soundin special teams, have a little special teams wrinkle that will give you a shot to make a big play at an opportune time. It might offset something, and then what most people will probably tell you is spread the Þeld, have a quarterback that has a little mobility,and instead of banging for yards, try to steal yards. To answer your question directly, there are always going to be slow guys that can’t play on the edge. I think it would be, “How good are you up front?” I think that would dictate what you could do. If you had good offensive linemen, then you might be able to get in there and pound it around a little bit, steal some yards. Take what you have and try to make it work. Good question. Anybody else?

The question was, “In high school you may have to have guys that play both sides. How do

you organize practice? How do you determine how you’re going to do it, when they’re going to practice, and how they’re going to play, and if that’s the thing to do?”

Fortunately, I’ve been in that situation in a larger high school, and then in a smaller high school. The way I tried to do it, and this is not derogatory toward offensive linemen at all in the high school level, but I always felt like you could make an offensive line-man. If you could get a kid out there, get him tough, get him strong, get him nasty, get him mean, get him excited, just point him in this direction, and get him there with a lot of vinegar in his heart and ready to get after somebody’s butt, then he could play a little bit. I put our best guys on defense. Every year, wetell defense they have the choice. With the excep-tion of a quarterback, and maybe a running back, they would take anybody they want. I’m an offen-sive guy, but I said, “Defense, take who you want, weÕll Þnd a way to move the ball, work it around andmake it happen.” So, to answer your question, I think the more people you can involve in your team without hurting your team, the better your team mo-rale is going to be. Mom and dad want the 10 best on the Þeld and then their son. ThatÕs what parentswant. That’s the way they see the game, but if you can make it work to where you have more people that are involved in your program with a positive at-titude, you have a good chance to have good things happen.

That’s probably about all the time that I’m al-lowed. Like I said, this does my heart well seeingthis many people in the room. I was telling them outside beforehand that we weren’t going to have a great crowd. First of all, they don’t know who I am, and Baylor hasn’t done great. What I like about Bay-lor is that bear is a lot meaner looking than how we played. That’s a little bit of a falsity right there, as far as advertising, but we’re going to play well. We’re going to get it done. We may be facing some bigger battles than some other universities, just like you’re facing bigger battles at some other high schools, but nobody wants to hear about that. They don’t want to hear why it can’t work. They want to hear why it’s going to work, so our deal is we’re going to make it work. We’re going to make it happen. If you all are ever up in Waco, feel free to come by and see us anytime. We’re always open for new ideas and listening to what you all have. We’re always open to what we can do to help ourselves, and then maybe share any ideas with you all. Philip Montgomery: We’re going to start today

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with our practice, our program and organization here. The Þrst clip that youÕre going to see would just layout our Þrst day for us. Sunday, we bring them up,watch the Þlm, and work out, and then Monday istheir day off. We’ll start with Tuesday.

While they’re going through special teams and doing some of the other things that are going on at the Þrst of practice, we start with our quarterbacksdoing drills. Everybody else is getting warmedup. We, as an offense, do not stretch as a group. Coach Briles has the philosophy that if you’re going to stretch, you’d better get out there early because weÕre not going to waste time on the practice Þeldsitting around, getting into a big group stretching. We’re going to warm up by doing some things as quick as we can because stretching as a group is a waste of time to us, and we don’t have time to waste.

So we start off with that. Quarterbacks are throw-ing, getting loose, doing their drills that we do, and then we’ll come together with all of the skill guys — backs, quarterbacks, receivers, tight ends, ev-erybody. We start with what we call pops. Basically, it’s just another way of getting those guys loose and getting them warmed up without getting in a stretch-ing line, but we’re still working on what we need to work on during that week. Then we work into running particular routes. We’re not calling a particular play. So as an inside receiver, we’re working on a special route. Outside receivers are doing the same thing, and we just work them across as the quarterbacks rotate through there.

If we are going to put in a new play that week, which we generally do, this is a good time for us to at least go over that because when we get into a team session, it’s easier for us to just go ahead and roll. Coach is not going to want to sit there during the team session while we teach. As we’re installing new things, this is the time we can go over that and make sure guys have at least the concept of that be-fore we get together as a group where we don’t have to waste time because our tempo is key to what we are trying to do. Whether that’s in the game on Sat-urday or practice on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs-day. Tempo is the key for us. So this is the time we can teach those things and work on the things we need to get better on. That’s what we’re doing while the special teams are going on.

Once we get off special teams, we’ll have an in-dividual session. Offensive line session, it’s really based on what we’re doing with quarterbacks and runningbacks. It goes back to coach’s background when you talk about the veer, and at Houston when he was running that, but we still run through all of

our run game during that session as quarterback and runningback. If we pull the ball, he’s going to come out and pitch it every time. If he gives the ball, we’re going to have a manager, the next quarter-back, you’re going to toss the ball to the quarter-back, and we’re going to pitch the ball on every play. You can’t have enough reps at doing that. That has to be second nature to you. You can’t think about those things, so during that session, we’re going to work mainly on those things. We’ll run through all of our run game on both sides of the ball.

Receivers are broken up into their individual sessions during that time. They’re working individual drills and getting ready for what’s next. The offen-sive line is going to go during that session, and then they’ll have some more individual sessions later on. We’re going to run through all of our off the ball, or OTB. It involves our screens. We’re going to work on any special plays or anything new that we have. If we’re changing up the tempo of our check sys-tem, we’re going to work the tempo. This is another chance for us to work on any variations to what we’re doing in our no-back check stuff that we’re looking at the sideline.

Our OTB session is a good time to bring the dummies and the shields out when we are full pads. We do that at least once a week. That’s where we’re really going to work and throw on air. When you run a screen during practice, it doesn’t work 90 percent of the time, so this is the time where we can set up our dummies, hold up shields and make sure that we’re getting guys on the right people.

We get our offensive linemen out during that time, and they’re actually throwing on the bags. The most important thing we tell our offensive linemen is that guy is a better athlete in space than you are. You’re big. You’re fast for an offensive lineman. Get out there, and just throw at it. If nothing else, you’re going to scare them. If I’m a corner, and I’m back-pedaling, and I see a guy that’s 275 or 300 running at me, I’m going to get out of the way. So get out there and just throw. Be mean and nasty and all the things coach talks about, and this gives you, as an offensive lineman, a chance to get out and be ath-letic. You don’t have to sit in there and bang heads all the time. This gets you out in space.

So this is a chance for us to work on that. We only do that when we’re in full pads. When we’re in half, they’re still going to be running. They’re going to be getting to their areas and we try to do a good job of rotating those guys in, but we’re still going to use shields on the others because as our outside receiv-ers go, we have to make sure those guys are being physical at the point of attack. The point of this: if you

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break a big play, that’s great, but if you can throw a screen and pick up four to six yards, you ought to be happy with it because if you ran the zone, or ran the belly, or ran the Iso and you picked up four to six you’d be happy. That’d be a great run play. Just because you’re throwing the ball doesn’t mean that you have to take it 80 yards. Make that a point of emphasis in your program as far as if you’re going to use the screen package to be physical. Throw out on the edge to those guys out there. You have to block for each other because you have a chance to make something happen. The point is to try to get it out there in space.

You’re trying to limit the amount of people that are in front of the athletes. We try to get the athletes in a position where they can be successful. If you’re turning around running the toss, and all 11 guys are running that way, sometimes it’s tough on that guy. But if I can stand up and throw it up here on the screen, and I can limit that to about three or four guys, let’s give him that opportunity because good athletes in space can always break a tackle and make something happen.

So, it’s a good chance for us to do that in our OTB period. You can call any special plays whatever you want to. It’s a chance for us to do that in a set-ting where you don’t have to worry about somebody screwing it up on the defensive side. You want to give those guys a good look at what they’re trying to accomplish on that play. Again, you have your check, and re-check stuff.

As we work down the list, and this is a Tuesday schedule, which is a full-pad schedule for us. We’ll have one-on-one and inside run. We do those at the same time. That way we don’t have anybody stand-ing around. One of coach’s biggest points is, “Don’t have guys standing around. If they’re out there, let’s use them.” If you’re just standing there, practice seems like forever, but if you’re working and you’re moving, you’ll have a good time. They’ll have fun. They’ll be learning, they’ll work harder for you, and they’ll stay mentally involved in what you’re trying to teach them.

During that one-on-one, we’ll have the quarter-backs working against the defensive backs and the offensive line and runningbacks will go down and work against the defense during that segment. We script it out for them. Make sure the defense is at least getting some of the look that they want to look at, and it’s just us against them. As a runningback, this is where you get a chance to work on your short yardage game. From an offensive standpoint, that box is going to be full on the inside run. You’re going to work against that eight- or nine-man box every

time, so bang your head up in there. Figure out a way to Þnd that skinny little crease in there, and pickup two to three yards. If you do that in the inside run, that’s great.

Once we get to the team segment against scouts, we’ll take a small break. If you notice those two team things, which were new to me when I started working with coach, are the best things we do. If you have a long team segment, sometimes it’s hard to keep them motivated. It’s hard to keep your tempo at the pace that you want it. You give them quick bursts and you hit it fast. If you ran anything that you had problems with or didn’t like, or something that is new that you put into the game plan that week in that Þrst team segment and it didnÕt look good, you canmake adjustments after that Þrst team. ÒWe didnÕt doa good job blocking the zone that time. We need to be sure we hit that in that second team segment.” During that break segment, that’s the time for you to go sit with your players and adjust whatever you need to adjust on the problems that you had during that Þrst team segment.

During our team segments, it’s all about tempo again. Coach Briles is not going to waste time. Once we’ve called a play, we’re going to run it. As those guys are working back, he’s already calling the next play so you better coach on the run and you better be moving. Tell him within Þve to 10 words what youwant him to do, whether it was good or bad, move on to the next play, make sure they’re lined up, and we’re going to run again. You don’t need to waste time during practice.

The other thing that we also do in scale and in team, is move the ball Þve yards every time. WeÕregoing to move it down the Þeld because we arestressing to those guys, especially to our offensive linemen, to get around the football. When the guy catches the ball, get around the ball and help him. Run to the football. You never know what’s going to happen around a ball. A ball may come out and you’re there to land on it. You may get caught up in a pile, and you can push the pile. Somebody may be standing around and you can get a shot in, but you’re not going to stand around. You’re going to work to the ball. We’re not staying in the same spot. They don’t have to work back as far, they’re not get-ting as tired. They can stay in there a little bit lon-ger. WeÕll move it Þve yards. WeÕll move it to hashes.We’ll try to keep them where they’re involved and still getting back, and we can get the next play called a little bit quicker.

After the break, we go into what we call our run session. It’s another inside hole. This is against scouts, and we’re lining those up into the defense

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that we feel like that we’re going to face that week. You go to the other one, it’s just you against them, and you need that. You need to bang heads against each other and be active, but this gives us a chance to work our run game against what we think is going to be what we’re looking at that week. So we can change that up, or we can do it as a red zone type of run game. Again, it’s probably not a situation where weÕre going to move the ball Þve yards. WeÕll staymore still, but it’s a good chance for us to really focus in on what we think we’re going to see that week.

After that, we’re going to go skelly versus our defense. They’re going to run whenever they want to run. We’re going to run our stuff. We’re not going to try to dictate, but we’ll still say, “Can we see a little bit more of this or a little bit more of that?” You run what you run, and we’ll run what we run. We just want to see good people on good people. Make those guys compete, especially early in the week. Give them a chance to really work against speed, and that’s basi-cally what you’re trying to get in this segment. You want to work against good people. You want to work against speed.

After that, we’re going to do our team pass ver-sus a defense, which is really a third-and-eight. We have worked different situations. We can work third-and-six, whatever situation you want it to be. You want to change that up throughout the week. It gives us a good chance to work against our defense. Again, we don’t care what they’re going to run. We just need to work the situation. They need to work the situation. TheyÕre trying to get off the Þeld. WeÕretrying to continue to move the chains. We usually try to break it up to where we run about eight plays. The Þrst group is going to run three. WeÕll bring

the twos in, let them get a couple, and then bring the Þrst group back. YouÕre going to get your tempo,and they’re going to be fresh, focused and moving as far as getting people on and off the Þeld in theadjustments you need to make. Once you move past that on the bottom, that’s just blitz against the defense.

Again, we’re not dictating what they’re going to run. They’re not dictating what we’re going to run. We just want to work against them bringing the heat on us, and there are times where they don’t bring anything. They show everything and drop every-body. ThatÕs Þne. We need to see those looks. Youneed to get your quarterback and your backs, as far as protection goes, where you want to get rid of the football. Those receivers need to see what adjust-ments they have to make on the ßy as far as, ÒIs thisguy coming? Is that guy not coming?” Then as those guys all drop and they get out of there, what we have

to do is make sure, technique-wise, everything is solid. You get to work against that speed that you don’t always get from your scout team or whoever you’re working against throughout the week.Then weÕll Þnish it up with a team segment, then

again against scouts, so you can go back, refocus in your group and make sure you’re touching the things that you needed to work on from the Þrst team ses-sion that you didn’t feel like you executed as well. Then continue to work as far as the schemes that you wanted to work for that week.

As we move to the next one, this is just a Wednesday schedule, which is half pads for the most part. Sometimes we’ll go full, but most of the time, it’s half. One of the things Coach Briles always talks about is keeping your players fresh, and you feel like as you get later on in the week, you just kind of have to gauge how much you want to back off and how much you need to keep putting your foot on the gas and keep pumping. So as we go throughout the weeks, and throughout the schedule and the sea-son, those are adjustments that you’re going to have to make every week.

Basically, you’re going to run through the same schedule. The only thing that we take out when we’re not in full pads is the one-on-one and the inside hole on the Þrst group. YouÕll go straight from OTB, toscale, to team, to break. We’ll do either the run ses-sion or a check session where we’re working on our tempo, working guys on and off the Þeld, working ourno-backs or whatever it might be. You’ve worked all your checks up during that segment there. Again, in a scale and team, we’ll still work the different situa-tions with the defense, and then weÕll Þnish it up usu-ally with a team or a one-minute drill type of thing. You put a minute 40-something on the clock, give yourself a timeout, go against the defense and make yourself work to put your guys in a situation. The more times they’re prepared for that, the calmer and the easier they’re going to be to concentrate and move the football down the Þeld.

It breaks up a little bit different on Thursday. Our special teams segment is a little bit longer. We’re going to make sure that we run through all of those teams during that time. We usually Þnish up thatsegment either with a one-minute drill and/or a punt block or a punt return, or both, in a live situation where we really want to bring pressure on them. A lot of times, you bring that Þeld goal kicker out, and hehas to hit that game-winner. So you have the whole team there, and you’re putting pressure on him. We started this year doing that with our punt return and especially the punt block. This is a situation where you can really put a lot of emphasis on that. Put a

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little pressure where he has to feel that in the game, where it’s one of those times you have to get a good punt off. You know they’re bringing it, we just have to get it out of there. It’s a chance to get it worked on and apply a little bit of pressure to that. We’ll do that the end of this segment.

From that point on, we’ll do our run session again. We’ll script that out on this date to make sure we hit all the run schemes we want to against the look that we want to do it. From that run, we’ll go into blitz. During that four-minute period, we’re look-ing to try to get 12 plays in four minutes. It’s not a thing where we’re going to do a lot of pointing and teaching, and line up. It’s a, “Bang, let’s go.” Try to keep the tempo live. Try to keep those guys working then you’ll work your twos in there, as you will, if they need breaks.

The run session will go through to blitz. We’ll script that out. We’ll try to get about the same amount of plays, anywhere from 10-12 plays dur-ing that segment and make sure we’re getting the blitzes we want to see. You’re not going to pick up all their blitzes. We try to narrow it down to our top three or four blitzes. LetÕs make sure that we seethose, make sure that we know how to react to those and how we’re going to pick those up. We’ll try to put an emphasis on those top three to four blitzes during that against certain formations that we think we may see.

From there, we’ll go off the ball and we’ll have a longer team segment during that because it is more of a feel-good Thursday type of thing. We want to make sure everything is working. You want to be precise. You want those guys to have conÞdence inwhat you game planned up and how they’re going to execute that against the different look that you’re going to see. We have a little bit longer look there. We’re still going to move the ball up and down the Þeld as far as moving it Þve yards and try to keepthose guys active and fresh.

Be sure to work in a little bit of red-zone work during that time. We move it all the way down, work at the Þve-yard line and go in. Then weÕre going toturn it around, and we’re going to work coming out of it. That’s just part of it as you move the ball. You work in some of those game situations as far as red-zone, coming out, in-between the 40s or whatever it might be. At the end of that, we’ll do our post-prac-tice stuff. For our young guys, we’ll put a Bear bowl in there and let them scrimmage around and hit on each other. They always enjoy doing that and have a good time with it.

Any questions on any three of those days? The question was: When the team segments are

split during the week, do you work different scripts during that?

During the season, we don’t work off any script for our team stuff. Everything is just like you were in thegame. We’re shooting it from the hip. We may have a couple of things written down, as a point of emphasis to make sure that we get called during that scene, but it’s not like play one is going to be this, play two is going to be this, play three is going to be this. We’re going to work it just like you would in a game, so we’re working our personnel groups on and off. That way, kids have to think, so you keep them fresh and keep them moving. Again, moving at Þve yards and getting them back.

The biggest thing for us is we try to use a lot of dif-ferent personnel. It allows us to have to work those guys on and off, but we don’t script during those. We’ll script our run session, and that’s really about it. We may script a little bit of the blitz just to make sure that we get some looks, but more times than not, we shoot from the hip.

Good question. Anybody else? The question was: How do you get the defense

lined up in your team settings to make sure that you’re getting the look that you want?

The biggest thing is, from an offensive standpoint, you have a general idea of what you’re going to see, especially what we do offensively. Those looks change every week, so we don’t care what you line up in. If you want to bring blitz, bring blitz. If you want to play base, play base. Make our guys have to adjust and move to what they’re seeing in front of them. We don’t want to give them the perfect situation. They have to adjust in the game. We’re going to make them adjust in practice so from a scout, defensive look, just line up. You want to blitz? Blitz. There may be a certain time where we’ll say, ÒWeÕre going to play this one as third-and-Þve.We’re going to play this one as fourth-and-short.” So we want to make sure that we get them in their short-yardage look. But, besides that we’re just going to let him call what he wants to call, let them run what they want to run and make our guys have to adjust. Es-pecially in high school, where they were playing you, they may have never run a two-deep look. Now all of a sudden, they’ve played the whole game in two-deep. Your guys have to adjust, so we’ll play some different looks and make sure that we get what we want to see but we’re not going to just script it out.

All right, guys, I appreciate the opportunity and the time today. I appreciate you coming out here. Anytime you’re ever in Waco, whether you’re from Texas or not, if you get a chance to come by, we’d love to sit down and visit with you. Thank you again, and good luck next season.