The final 48 fours leading up to kickoff is when you are winding down your heavy practices and fine tuning the nuts and bolts as you prepare for Saturday Night’s Game. All coaches vary their schedule a little bit due to personal preferences, but for the most part I think we are all pretty close in what we do. Thursday night’s practice is usually a lighter one. We have done our install on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as most of the heavy banging with the big boys in the trenches. By Thursday we are getting more work in on our pass routes and usually working our red zone offense. As the season progresses you may even do this practice in just helmets and shorts. It is also very important that players are really getting on their pre-game diet right now. It takes a while for water to synthesize through the body so just hydrating on game day isn’t enough. So this is when your athletes need to start hitting the fruits and getting on the water hard.
Friday is usually either a travel day, or this is when you have a walk-thru. And I mean walking. Young coaches sometimes try to do too much too close to game day and I can say that from experience. My first year as a head coach in Raleigh, Friday’s would turn in to an extra red zone session and about halfway through the season our player’s were saying they weren’t getting enough rest leading up to the game because we were trying to cram too much in too late in the week. Friday’s, we have “call-outs”. This is when our special teams coach calls out all the players and every player’s backup for the upcoming game. We run this situationally, by that I mean going from the offense, to a field, goal team, to a kickoff team, etc. We put out the itiniery for the next day and tell everyone to be smart leading up to the game.
Now, it’s gameday! At home you probably don’t see your team until the pre-game meal. Away games, we didn’t want our guys in bed all day so we get them out in the sun a little bit about 11am or noon on Gameday. Freddie Biletnikoff Jr, when we were together with the Central Valley Coyotes in af2, would call this “Cardio with Steven G.” But all we did was take a three or four block walk and make sure everybody is awake. After about 15 minutes we would stop in a parking lot and do our call-outs we were unable to do the day before because of travel. The players are then released and have some time to relax before we meet for the pre-game meal bus somewhere between 2pm and 3pm. You then head for the team meal, and then it is off to the stadium for what I think is the worst three or so hours in football. From when you get to the arena to kickoff. The waiting drives me nuts! Next week we will talk about what all needs to happen at YOUR arena on gameday.
Steven G. Folmar has close to 10 years experience in coaching in arena and professional indoor football including stops with the Buffalo Destroyers of the Arena Football League, the Bakersfield Blitz and Central Valley Coyotes of the arena football league 2, and head coaching stints with the Raleigh Rebels of the American Indoor Football League, and Johnstown Riverhawks and Erie RiverRats of the American Indoor Football Association. He has coordinated offense, defense and special teams, been a General Manager and Director of Football Operations. It you would like to comment on this article or drop Coach Folmar a line, send it to coachfolmar@zoominternet.net, just keep it clean!
*Photo Courtesy of Paul Pennington from 3/12/11 Canton Cougars at Johnstown Generals UIFL Game
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