MAKE YOUR SYSTEM FIT YOUR PERSONNEL – FOCUS ON THE PLAYER AND NOT THE PLAY

Coaches love to talk about personnel. In fact once someone identifies you as a defensive coach, you can almost guarantee the next question is going to be “What do you run?” The person who is asking the question is looking to see if you are a 4-3 guy or a 3-4 guy.  Now there are other defenses but the majority of coaches fit one of these two molds. While I think that having a system in place and being consistent is very important, I think that you are making a big mistake if you overlook your players when putting together your scheme.  It does not matter if you coach high school or college, you will have years where you have certain players that need to be on the field because of their ability, regardless of where you put them (even if they are out of position). There will inevitably be times when those players do not line up (position wise) with the scheme that you are