TrenchWarrior

I actually coached at Jellico years ago and we played against Sunbright. Jellico honestly has too many problems to list. If it could screw up a HS football program, Jellico probably has to deal with it. There's no money for anything there, many kids struggle to survive in horrible poverty, kids are all spread out with unreliable busses to get them to school, and it's just plain hard to literally get kids there, especially for July and early August camp before school starts and no busses run. A lot of times, kids have very legit reasons for not being at practice... but the others see that and take advantage. It's very much a "learned helplessness" thing with the kids thinking that 1 win a year is good enough, but the community and school district don't do them any favors with the politics. The whole situation is just toxic for building anything positive. As for Sunbright... the school, facility, and community is beautiful, but they're just... so... small. They're one of the smallest schools with a football team in the entire state, with enrollment around 174 when we played them (1A goes up to enrollments of around 400). That means there's only about 70-80 boys in the entire school, so it's hard to build any kind of team with depth (or even 11 dependable starters). When I coached against them, they had a good coach from the community who basically installed middle school level schemes and coached them hard on fundamentals. They weren't great, but they didn't beat themselves and made other teams work for it. Another problem that plagued all the Morgan County schools at that time was their inability to keep good coaches around or get assistants into the system. Teaching jobs are scarce and the system used NOTHING towards insurance, meaning you'd accept a job for $40k a year and then pay $800-$1000 a MONTH for insurance, so many people just can't afford to coach there and support themselves and their families.

I don't think you necessarily *have* to have a D1 QB and WRs, but it certainly helps. You need to be able to develop WRs. That's mostly about technique and coaching with the proper drills and reps in practice. There's a lot more to it than just putting some athletic kid out there and playing pitch and catch. Generally, while HS WRs are coached better now than they used to be 10-15 years ago, a lot of schools still don't do a good job of developing them. As for QBs... you can throw a ton with a "pretty good" HS QB, but you need to play to his strengths and within his limits. A typical HS QB is not going to be dropping Hendon Hooker-style dimes 40 yards downfield to the opposite sideline. He's going to need to throw a bunch of high-percentage screens and safe dinks/dunks if you want to move the ball primarily through the air. That gets a lot harder against the good teams you have to beat on the way to a championship. Personally, I'd rather play my best players at RB and QB so I can make sure they have the ball in their hands 20+ times in big games, rather than putting them at WR where they might be lucky to touch the ball 3-4 times.

As someone who has coached HS ball for a decade now, I completely agree with you. However, I'll point out that a lot of these teams trying to throw the ball all over the field in HS are doing it for reasons other than winning. A lot of coaches feel a ton of pressure from parents (and, by extension, school administration) to put the ball in the air. WRs' parents don't like to watch their kids block or ride the bench all night. A lot of coaches also fear that kids won't come out to play in "old school" offenses now, though I personally find that to be false. Then you have coaches who take over programs with lousy weight programs who feel their OL are just incapable of run blocking the opponents. When West won state a few years back running the veer, parents blamed the offense for "holding the team back" and ran off their coach as soon as they took home the gold ball. You just can't please some people and the coaches in the stands will always think they know more than the coaches on the field. That's not to say you can't win by throwing a ton in HS. If you have a very good QB or if you're just really good at coaching and developing QBs and WRs (largely by putting them in favorable spots and trying to limit/eliminate tough and dangerous throws), and at calling that offense so you have answers to heavy blitzes or 3 man rushes, you can usually make it work well enough to win... but winning it all with that offense is usually dependent upon who you've got at QB. Hampton made it to state last year by just pounding the rock out of the Power I when they would have won maybe 3 games running some "grip it and rip it" type of spread offense... but then they got shredded by a 5* Alabama recruit QB and his D1 receivers slinging it all over the field in the actual title game.

The pandemic and the fallout from it destroyed HS football in a lot of places where it was already in trouble. This year alone, about 1/3 of all the head coaching jobs in the state turned over, and that’s on top of an insanely high number in 2020 and 2021 Not all of those schools put much effort into getting quality replacements in place. Many schools are struggling with numbers and with getting and keeping decent assistant coaches now. Boone and Hampton both had strong athletic cultures and supportive administrations/communities in place already, so they’ve weathered the storm nicely. Jenkins has been the longest tenured head coach in the state for about 7 years now. Lunsford at Hampton is only around 30 years old, but he’s already surprisingly high on that list himself because of all the turnover.

School record is something like 369 by Tylee Henry in '97.

The TSSAA hasn't even announced if they're going to keep the 6 class system with the Super 32 or what they're going to next year. Volunteer is a large 4A school with about 1050ish kids year in and year out. The cutoff for 5A last time was about 1100. If it's 6 even classes, which has been discussed, they'll be 5A and competing against Boone, TN High, and pretty much the entire old Big 8, minus D-B and Science Hill. If they stay Super 32, they'll probably be a big 4A again.

It's a shame. That's getting to be what it's like in more and more places. It used to be that your studs might be All Conference or even All State in 2-3 sports. Now they don't even try because every sport has a yearlong grind. In football you have to lift and train year round to be in game shape, but I don't understand why kids can't do that while they're also playing basketball and baseball. Actually, I do, but AAU and traveling teams are B.S. and they're ruining youth athletics at all levels.

I meant they'll be running a pro-style offense, not that they'll be scoring as if they're an NFL team. Again, give them time. It's a very young group with some coaches who are doing the right things to build the program up, but they have a tough road to hoe the next year. Rome wasn't built in a day and hopefully they can surprise some people this year, but the real payoff might not be for another year or two.

He did, but then he did something stupid with his state tests in the classroom and the administration canned him over it instead of giving him some a reprimand and letting him stay. They're now on their 4th coach in the 2 years since he was fired.

They're still very young. The numbers look good, they made some great gains in the offseason program, and there's enthusiasm, which nice to see, but they are SO YOUNG. Most of the talent is in the underclasses, especially the rising sophomores. In another year or two, they'll be good, but this is still a rebuilding program with a tough schedule. The team will be better this year, but the record might not show it. People need to give them time. That said, they have a good coaching staff and a couple of stud athletes--the problem is that Maryville and the other schools just have more of them. Last year they were limited by a couple of coaches who didn't take care of their responsibilities like they should have. Those guys are gone now.

Also... apologies for hijacking this thread. I'm a coach between football jobs right now after some weird politics at my last stop, so all that itching to talk ball's come out. lol. Thank you all for humoring me.

I guess the OP's original question was "Why are HS coaches so stupid? Why can't they just let kids play like they did at the lower levels?" Well... sometimes a kid matures early and is the biggest and fastest kid on the field in 8th grade and just tears it up as a RB, but when he gets to HS he's not even in the top half of the team and they want him on the field, so they try to fit him somewhere else. Or maybe they need him to fill in somewhere else because that's where he can best help the team right now. Or maybe the other kids just catch up with him and the stuff that he could do so well against awkward middle schoolers and little leaguers just doesn't fly against 17 and 18 year old young men. Maybe that 6'1" Tim Duncan with the early growth spurt from the MS team who was 3" taller than everyone else on the court just can't play that same style of basketball against 6'7" post players in HS. Ever think of that? Also, position switching happens at all levels. Have you ever seen the amount of HS QBs who play DB, WR, or even TE/DE at the next level? How about the linemen who switch sides of the ball or all the RBs who become LBs? It happens all the time. When I played in HS, we had a big athletic kid come out to play football his junior year. Tried him at RB but he was soft as a kitten. He was very contact shy. After spring ball and a week of practice, the coaches decided to try him at LB. He said "Coach, I try to avoid contact!" and whined, but they stuck him there anyway. After about 5 plays of practice, he made a big hit and was hooked. He went on to be our conference DPOY that year, was All-State 2x, and got a D1 scholarship. He was no longer contact shy. Maybe they're not so stupid.

The best passing offenses in all of FBS were Washington St., Western Kentucky, East Carolina, and Baylor last year. They had a combined 30-21 record with Washington State going 3-9. Of the final 4, Oregon was the highest rated one at #10, followed by FSU at #14, Alabama at #29, and Ohio State was #52 overall out of 128 teams. Rushing wise, Georgia Southern, Georgia Tech, Navy, and Wisconsin were the top 4 and had a combined record of 39-14 (the top 3 were all triple option teams) and all had winning seasons. Of the final 4, Ohio State came in at #9, followed by Oregon at #22, Alabama at #37, and Florida State was way down at #98. In terms of defense (we'll go by points per game, since that's all that really matters), the top 4 teams in the nation were Ole Miss, Stanford, Clemson, and Temple, with records of a combined 33-18. Temple had the worst record, at 6-6. Of the final 4, Alabama was #6, Ohio State was #26, Oregon was #30, and FSU was #49.

Multiple formations work fine as long as the team's not doing radically different stuff. The teams who do this well recycle a lot of terminology and blocking. After a while, as a coach you realize that the offenses out there are about more than formations and the plays. They playcalling is actually the easiest part of coaching if you know what makes your system really work. What really makes an offense work is how it's blocked and how it's all packaged together so you have answers to how teams are going to defend you. Look at the old Wing-T. First off, it's a really simple system for blocking--EVERYTHING is block down and kick out up front, so kids get TONS of work on that in practice every day (or they used to, before they were limited to 90 min. of "contact" in a week). With that blocking, the Wing-T teams want to run the old Buck Sweep. They have the trap, the waggle, and the counter play(s) in there to hurt you when your guys are doing stuff that takes Buck Sweep away so they can't stop it all without just overloading you in certain spots. Then they have the Belly Iso, Belly Option, and Belly Counter in there to hit the weakside of the formation so you can't just overload those spots with people. They have answers. So when they burn you with those answers a few times and you back off... then they can run the Buck Sweep play they wanted to run all along. That's what an offense is all about. The good spread teams have answers, too. The good I formation teams have their answers. Etc. The key at the HS level is to teach it in a way that the kids can remember and get really good at doing against whatever they see on Friday night. Fulton is so good because they don't try to put a bunch of different offenses together--their stuff has a ton of carry over from one play to the next. They just tell the kids to stand in a different spot before the snap or get the ball to a different guy when they do the things they normally do, anyway. It looks like they're doing a lot of different things, when really it's the same old stuff they know how to do in their sleep, just with a little tweak to it. That's smart coaching.

A bunch of small schools run Wing-T stuff successfully at the next level. It's just not what you see in the SEC or Big 12. That offense has evolved quite a bit since the 90s. There's a new version of the Wing-T now. That jet sweep play that every college runs to their fast WRs? That was a Wing-T idea. Actually there's a ton of Wing-T influence in what Auburn, Ohio State, Mississippi State, and Stanford do if you look at the blocking and their use of misdirection and how the offense is actually structured. They don't use the old formations, but the soul of it's still there. It's like the old Wing-T was a '65 Mustang with a 4 speed and a 289 and now they're cruising around in a 2014 model with a 5.0 and a 6 speed automatic that an old timer wouldn't even recognize.

The thing with spread formations is that spreading the defense out makes it easier to run inside, but the defense spreads with you. That means there's more of them waiting to tackle you out in the flanks, unless they're just poorly coached or you're so bad at passing they know they don't need to. There's a lot to be said for packing defenses in and pinning them in while you run outside or just lobbing the ball over their heads deep. I say this from experience as a coach. A couple of years ago, I was OC at a small school where everybody in the district ran spread stuff except for one Wing-T. Care to guess what our best passing formation was? Wishbone! Defenses saw that and they brought everybody in and packed the box. We'd run it a few times with option or double iso and then lob it right over their heads off play action to wide open receivers, especially our TE. We were also only 1 of 2 teams in the district who even used a TE and teams forgot to cover him half the time.

<cough>SeattleSeahawks<cough> A lot of teams literally don't have the under center snap in their playbook. Lots of young coaches, young centers, and young QBs don't know how to do it so they don't want to take the time to teach it.

The long answer is that it died out at the college level and has trickled down to HS, where fans and players want what they see on TV and coaches want to pretend they're Gus Malzahn. The long version gets a little more complicated. In the 80s and 90s, everyone was playing 2 backs with a TE. Defenses adapted with 8 man fronts (like the 46 Bear) and things like Virginia Tech's "Robber Coverage" that let the safety play like a 9th man in the box. It got very hard to just pack guys in and run the ball against all that. Meanwhile, some less talented teams started having success against these dominant defenses by spreading the field with 4 WRs and running zone reads (which was invented as the QB just reading a DE for a bootleg). Those coaches, like Urban Meyer, Rich Rodriguez, etc. got snatched up by big time programs and really set the world on fire, so everyone started copying them. Defenses weren't ready for that kind of speed and didn't have answers for how to cover that many guys but also play good run defense on running QBs. A revolution was born. So the hype of the spread made it to HS and teams found that your simple high school 8 man front defenses who sat in old school Cover 3 got shredded just like the college defenses did. A lot of these teams really got lucky that they were doing the new, different thing that defenses either hadn't seen before, or only saw once or twice a year and had a hard time simulating in practice or preparing for it. Now you've got a lot of younger coaches who grew up in those systems or are coming down from the college level thinking that's just how it has to be done now. Spread has become the new normal. It's what everybody does. It's just what these coaches know and believe in, plus fans and administrators want the HS to run the stuff that they see on TV on Saturday. I'm on a bunch of coaches forums and you wouldn't believe how many young coaches post on there nowadays asking really basic questions like how to teach an under center snap or how to defend the old school I formation offense because they've never done it as a player or a coach! Seriously! The thing is that defenses have adapted, too. Zone read isn't shredding people at the HS or college level like it did 10 years ago when Pat White, Vince Young, and Tim Tebow were running wild on everybody. Defenses changed from basing out of 7 and 8 man fronts to basing out of 6 and just bringing extra guys into the box when the offense ads players. They figured out how to play the zone read and how to mess with it--the play works just like the veer still works, but it's not some huge mystery anymore. What I think you're going to see is a little bit of a swing back towards the old smashmouth offenses, or spread teams becoming more smashmouth with what they do. Defenses adapted to the spread by basing out of 6 man fronts instead of 7-8 DL and LBs. The new guys they put in were hybrids SS/OLB types, but those hybrids don't usually hold up too well when they have to take on big TE or FB smacking them in the mouth all night long. The game is kind of slowly going back to the old 2 back style, but from the shotgun with read elements in there. If you look at Auburn, that's pretty much what they do now. There's a TON of Wing-T and Veer influence in that offense. I think over the next 5 years, you'll see HS go back to that. You'll also see a bunch of what coaches call "RPOs" (Run Pass Options), which are borderline illegal plays where the QB reads the defense to either give the ball on a running play or throw a pass downfield (while the linemen run block it). That's going to be big in the next few years unless they crack down on illegal men downfield.

New OC came over from Unicoi County. He's very big on zone read and multiple formations and personnel packages. They'll look a lot like an NFL team on offense with read option thrown in. They've got some good coaches on staff. Bearden is now guaranteed a playoff spot next year under the new Super 32 realignment, even if they go 0-10, but they have a BRUTAL district and were 1-9 last year with a very young team that was starting a bunch of freshmen at the highest classifcation in TSSAA football. Long-term, this group could grow up and surprise some people in a year or two, but Maryville, Dobyns-Bennett, Science Hill, Hardin Valley, etc. aren't going anywhere. To the OP, Bearden has traditionally been very good in basketball and baseball, but football is up and down. They'll have good years and bad years. They've been on a downswing for a little while, but academically that school is top notch and rivals a good private school. I hope your son loves it there!

Ellison doesn't know what he's getting into at Powell. He's their 6th head coach in 4 years. None of the previous 4 guys made it for longer than a year. That program is a dumpster fire now with meddling parents and an administration that's crazy. They'll find some excuse to can or run him off after a year. Eventually, they're going to drive a coach to suicide. As for Wartburg, they brought Davis back because the folks there knew him, and they had no other openings, so their only choices were to hire someone already in the system or hire a non-faculty head coach. They had some good candidates apply and none of them even got interviews. Wartburg just wants to field a football team. The administration doesn't care if they're competitive. It's a shame because they have some tradition there and it's a nice community. Brawner was a joke. He wants to stay on as the Alt. School babysitter but they might dump him after the year. I hear he's interviewed to go to Jellico to run their defense next year. Wherever that guy's been, it's been a disaster.

The other head coach got tired of the way he was being treated by the community down there. Sweetwater fans don't realize this isn't the 90s anymore. The demographics at that school have changed dramatically and the stud athletes they were getting then just aren't in the building anymore. They expect to compete for state every year with .500 level talent.

Recruiting does go on by both publics and privates and it can get pretty sleazy in some places. However, what a lot of people overlook is that most of the supposed "illegal" public school recruiting is actually done by the kids themselves (Hey man, you're awesome! You should come play with us at ______."), and that in some places with open enrollment it's not necessarily illegal in the first place. Successful programs often don't even have to recruit: kids and parents line up to recruit them. I know some programs that have been hurt by recruiting. I went to Volunteer and every year I was in school we'd have about 4-5 kids who'd live in the Surgoinsville/Church Hill/Mt. Carmel areas driving 30+ minutes to attend (and start and sometimes even make All State teams) at other area schools. People liked to throw accusations around, and some of them might have been valid, but most of the time parents just thought their kids would get better opportunities at other schools and the kids themselves just plain did not want to attend Volunteer for whatever reason. I hear that the Greene Co. schools, smaller Carter Co. schools, etc. all have similar things to deal with.

I heard from one of the assistant coaches at Science Hill the other day. He didn't give me "the inside story" or anything, but he did give me some stuff to think about in light of my previous comments in this thread. Sorry, but I don't have any news to report on who the next coach will be. First, I still think that Scott Smith has been taking a lot of flack unfairly from both parents and the media. The guy won championships before he came to Science Hill and that's got to count for something. I'm very glad to read that he's landed on his feet. I hope he does well there. He really liked being at Science Hill and still has nothing but good things to say about the administrators, assistants, and players he's leaving behind. I thought that was classy. Second, without really thinking about it, I threw the Science Hill assistants and AD under the bus on this forum on the basis of hearsay and rumors. The truth is that I wasn't there and I don't know what went down, so I jumped to the conclusion that if a respected head coachlike Scott Smith couldn't get it done, it must be the assistant coaches' and admin's fault. What I've learned is that they have some dedicated assistant coaches there who know their stuff, want the best for these young men, and are committed to turning the ship around. It turns out that both Principal John Boyd and the AD, Keith Turner are good people who know what they're doing and are very supportive of football. If Scott Smith himself doesn't hold ill will towards any of these men, it would be foolish for me or anyone else to. So, to anyone who read my earlier posts in this thread, including coaches, administrators, teachers, media, parents, or players connected to the Science Hill program, I want to just man up and publicly say that I went off half cocked and was talking out of my butt. To the coaches and administrators, especially Keith Turner, if you're reading this thread, I want to extend a very heartfelt apology and retraction for my previous stupid comments. You've got the makings of a good football program there as well as some real talent coming down the pipeline. If it can just come together under the new head coach, whoever it may be, the Hilltoppers will be surprising some people. Good luck. And no, I don't know if Stacy Carter is actually going to be taking over there. If he has, I think it's probably the worst kept secret on CoachT. Just for fun, I might start a rumor that they're in talks with Mike Leach, though...

You mean a draw play? Steve Spurrier's whole offense basically revolved around that concept when he was at Florida. He'd run the lead draw if the LBs and S were dropping off or he'd fake the lead draw and throw if they were coming up hard to stop it. Either way, the OL would just set up for pass protection to while the back would find the hole. Lots of teams block their draws like that. I don't see what's so shocking or unrealistic about this idea... You mean an option play, like a zone read? That's WHY you run options: to run the ball without having to block 1 or 2 guys! Again, this is not an earth shattering concept... http://smartfootball.com/run-game/orego ... e#more-745 http://smartfootball.com/defending-spre ... eer-option http://smartfootball.com/run-game/the-z ... on#more-85 http://sky.prohosting.com/cbbrown/2005/ ... -read.html The offense was "practical." Smith proved that at Franklin, and he proved it when coaches from all around this part of the U.S. were hitting him up for information on the cool new ideas he was SUCCESSFULLY running there. Whatever Smith's downfall was at SH, it was not Xs and Os. Now, the execution of it was bad, though. For whatever reason, their kids just were not prepared to play football. I think the results would've been the same in any system with fundamentals as bad as what SH has shown over the past few years. If your players don't know where to go, what to do, or even how to do it, then your team is going to struggle. That's usually the result of bad position coaching, but the head coach is ultimately the one who should be held accountable for everything, good or bad. This is true, and I'll stop here. I don't know Smith personally. I wasn't at practices. I didn't watch every SH game. I don't know every detail of what was going on behind closed doors. All I'm saying is that people are looking at Smith like the guy was a clueless moron who had no clue what he was doing. That's just not right. You don't win championships or get invited to speak at coaching clnics across the southeast by being an idiot. I can't vouch for his personality or what really went down at SH, but a lot of stuff here makes me think he might have been the victim of broken promises and backstabbing assistants as well as his own hubris. I'm sure that SH promised him the world when they brought him in, but it sounds like, for whatever reason, he wasn't given the authority or resources to rebuild the program the way he wanted it once he got there. That happens to HS coaches all the time. I know plenty of coaches in other states who've lived through that firsthand, and it has nothing to do with talent, players, or the abilities of the head coach. But either way, what's done is done. I wish Smith well wherever he goes just as I wish the future coach of SH, whoever he is, a lot of success.

If what I've read about the internal situation at Science Hill over in the other threads is true, Carter would be making a mistake to jump into that situation. Everybody wants to make Scott Smith the fallguy for SH's struggles, but the following information has emerged: At SH, Scott Smith was only allowed to pick *1* of his assistant coaches when he was hired. The rest were holdovers or local youth coaches who were forced upon him and then undermined him at every stop. The OL coach was questioning everything Smith wanted to do on a daily basis in front of the whole team, and several of the assistants were angling to get Smith fired so they could take over the job. Apparently, Smith was not allowed to tell disgruntled/incompetent/insubordinate assistants that their coaching was not needed, and this showed on the field time and time again in players who just didn't know the fundamentals of their position. The next coach will presumably inherent the same staff and the same bad attitudes. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Personally, as someone entering the coaching field, I found Science Hill's AD, Keith Turner's, comments to the JC Press to be very unprofessional. In writing a story about Smith's resignation, Turner told the paper "We were looking at [firing Scott Smith] really hard,” said Turner. “We had some things that were definite concerns. In this profession it’s not just coaching, its teaching and everything else.” Now, I'm not offended they were looking at firing Smith. I just think it's unprofessional to kick a guy when he's down like that, when everything's over and the only point to those words was to be mean spirited and tear him down publically. If you see the writing on the wall and quit your job, would you want your boss to go running to the local paper and say they were about to fire you anyway, then hint that there was something very wrong with you? I don't think any of us would want to work for a guy like that. This act speaks volumes about the character, or lack thereof, of Keith Turner. Then there's the issue of tradition. People in the Tri Cities look at Science Hill like they should be the local version of Notre Dame to Dobyns Bennett's USC, but a better comparison would have Science Hill as Kentucky to Dobyns-Bennett's UT. Traditional basketball school vs traditional football school. Over the past 50 years, Science Hill has never consistently fielded top notch football teams. Like Kentucky, their basketball teams have been dominant, but in football they've had a few good years when they were blessed with a vastly superior stud to carry the team, like when Steve Spurrier was there in the 50s and when Terry Copeland was there in the early 90s. Overall their historical track record in football has always been a disappointment despite having resources at their disposal that no other program in the region, save Dobyns-Bennett, should be able to compete with. Science Hill's administration does not agree with the idea of football as a 12 month sport. They don't like to give coaches much support in letting them stress their offseason programs. Carter's "military discipline" would slam right against that. Guess who really holds the cards in that situation? It won't be Carter. Scott Smith came to SH fresh off a state title, had published influential books and articles on coaching, and was a sought after speaker at coach's clinics. The guy knew what he was doing and had a resume that was more impressive than any of the coaches now being talked about as possible replacements. We should remember that. Why would Stacy Carter, Shawn Witten, or any other local coach, for that matter, want to give up a promising career at another school to jump into this mess with both feet? Yes, they'd get paid well for 3-4 years, but they're basically set up for life where they're at now. Once they leave, they might not get to ever go home again. Some schools just aren't willing to give coaches the authority and resources it takes to build winning football programs. Science Hill looks like one of them. Carter has to be very careful about this one.