Head Coaches and Coordinators Need This Skill!

Kyle Shanahan was a Wide Receiver by trade, even playing at Power 5 schools Duke and Texas. Toward the end of his playing career, he realized he would not be making it into the NFL as a player, so he transitioned to coaching. After a graduate assistant stint at UCLA, Jon Gruden brought him to Tampa Bay as an offensive quality control coach with the secondary reason of being able to gain insight into Mike Shanahan’s offense. In 2006, he went to Houston with Mike Shanahan’s former assistant-turned-head-coach Gary Kubiak to be his Wide Receivers coach. A year later, he was transitioned to Quarterbacks coach, and another year later, he was promoted to Offensive Coordinator. He has been calling plays ever since - for Houston, then Washington, Cleveland, Atlanta, and San Francisco, and is two seasons away from having called plays for 20 years in the National Football League.

Obviously we believe in his system as Wide Zone Warriors, but there’s more to it than just that. One of the ways he has been able to connect with players is by being able to coach them. This is not a “meet them where they are” discussion. The Why is Everything revealed discussions with former players that Kyle Shanahan is able to coach all 11 players on his offense.

I believe this is a vital skill for any coach that wants to have a leadership role on the team, particularly in high school football. The best coaching staffs I have been a part of have had fantastic chemistry and camaraderie amongst the coaches.

Here’s a scenario. You’re a head coach, and you have an opening on your staff to fill. You call the plays and have coached the quarterback the last few seasons, and your opening is for an Offensive Line coach. You get two applicants. Applicant A is positive, motivated, and easygoing. Applicant B comes off negative and abrasive. Which one do you want to hire? What if Applicant A’s only experience comes with quarterbacks, but Applicant B, according to his references, knows the Offensive Line. As the head coach, can you get the better coach on staff and plug the gap yourself, or are you forced to hire a worse staff fit because all you know about blocking is putting the T in front of the circle on the diagram?

Another scenario. Now you’re an assistant coach looking to get to a different school. What if their opening is a position you have no experience coaching? In that interview, can you prove to the coach that even though the resume doesn’t show it, you know how to coach the position, you just haven’t had the chance before? An assistant that can coach all 11 (or all 22) has many more options for employment.

My first time as an Offensive Coordinator, I coached the Offensive Line. When we would join the skill players for group periods, I realized they weren’t where I wanted them to be. I pitched a new practice plan to the Head Coach, who called the defense. I would take the linemen for offense while he did defense with the skills, then we would switch. He would come work with the linemen on defensive line play while I went to then work with the skill players. Then we would come together for offensive and defensive team periods to finish practice. I had some help with Wide Receivers, but I was basically the position coach for the OL, QB, RB, and TE once we switched like that. It was only possible because I could coach all 11.

Having coaches that just want to be a position coach for their position and don’t care to climb any higher than that is extremely valuable, but if you are a position coach that wants to become a coordinator, one of the best things to do is to learn other positions. That doesn’t always mean bouncing around position groups on the same team or taking different jobs. Sometimes, it just means studying on your own such that you’ve been a WR coach for a few years and a head coach interviews you for an OC position and maybe the only thing they need to offer you the job is to see that you understand the run game in addition to the pass game, or vice versa for OL coaches. Coordinators and Head Coaches that are able to coach all 11/22 allow for getting the best coaches on staff and filling the gap wherever it presents.

If you don’t currently have the capacity to coach outside your position group, my hope is that you can get what you need to do so by following Wide Zone Warriors!