Groundhog Day

During the course of fall camp football teams submerse themselves in self-study. Camp life is a monotony of drilling footwork, timing, execution, and all the other facets to a position-specific, football work out. The drills concluded in a morning’s practice are watched on film that same afternoon by the player that executed it. How can I improve myself? That’s the question asked every day in two-a-days. How can I make my game better?

Offenses and defenses work ‘best against best’ running only the basic plays in the book. No scout teams to imitate the upcoming opponent’s game plan or formations. Just football. This is contrasted in the depths of a season when teams tend to lose focus on the details that make them great. Those details are traded for slight changes in personnel, trick plays, fancy blitzes, plays that focus specifically on the weakness of one opponent.

Quarterbacks work on shovel passes and the timing of new routes, while defensive backs work on new disguises for a coverage. Defensive lineman work twists, stunts, and folds; and running backs begin to perfect counter steps, wheels routes, and, spins. For the offensive lineman, sadly, there is no ‘flavor of the week’. There are no new tricks, no ‘new hitches’… only sleds, chutes, and, combination blocks.

As receivers catch passes thrown from quarterbacks who are faking a hand off to a running back, offensive lineman are separate, working alone – often cast to the the corner of some practice field in which all of the sleds and chutes have been stuffed. Forced to trot massive frames dozens of yards only to hit each other on a new piece of grass. Coaches refer to this time of the season as groundhog day…every day, the same routine.

For those of you unfamiliar with the way college football practices are formatted, practices are broken up into 5 minutes segments of time called periods. A practice’s intensity and duration will of course change the closer a team gets to game day, but a usual practice will run approximately two hours or twenty four periods. Coaches receive daily schedules of practice, which are broken down into periods that let them know when they need to gather with other position groups for specific work. I found an old Arkansas State practice schedule to show the repetitive nature of the offensive line. While QB’s, RB’s, and receivers work “play polish”, “air review”, and “route review” the offensive line is all by themselves working chutes, sleds, and, combo’s (fig 1).