The Big Play

There is not a head coach in the country that won’t expound on the importance of having good special teams play. We all know how to say the right thing, but unless a head coach is truly committed to special teams, your players will look at the “teams,” as we call them at Michigan, as just a break between offense and defense. But most importantly, special teams must be important to the head coach. Why are special teams so important? For one, special teams account for approximately 20 percent of the snaps in any given game. With this in mind, your meeting and practice time should at least reflect this percentage. That means for every hour of meetings you have as a team, 15 minutes should be devoted to special teams. On the practice field this equates to four or five periods of special teams for every 24 periods of practice (with each period representing five minutes, 24 periods