I’m standing at the front of the meeting room, all eyes are on me, and I’m rolling.
You know that feeling when you’re just on.
Heads are nodding, pens are working hard in notebooks.
Then one of my veteran players pipes up.
“Hey Coach,” he says. “What about…”
And he hits me with a great question.
What if they do this?
Oh wow, I think. Why hadn’t I thought of that? We’ll need a plan for that.
I take in the question, nodding to myself.
Then I give my answer…
The Best Answer
The best answer to give is the correct one.
That is to say, the correct answer in the context of our system, of our plan. The answer that we’ll end up going with.
Maybe I’m reminded of one of our rules that would come into play here. Or maybe the situation matches another situation we’ve planned for.
If I’m lucky enough to have this moment of clarity right as the question is being asked, I might be able to come up with the answer on the spot.
It doesn’t always play out this way, but it’s nice when it does.
The Second-Best Answer
The second-best answer to any question like this is “I don’t know”.
Period.
I’ll praise the player for coming up with the question. It tells me they’re dialed in.
And I’ll be honest that I hadn’t thought it through yet.
When it’s a really good one, I know I’ll need to sit at my desk, probably brew another coffee, and really get into it. Draw it up. Go through all the variables.
In this situation, I’ll tell the players they’ll just have to wait.
But I won’t make them wait too long. By the next meeting or the next practice, I’ll get back to them with a plan.
The Worst Answer
As a younger coach in this situation, I would have strained harder to find an answer on the spot. I would have forced something that wasn’t there, hesitant to admit I hadn’t thought it through.
I still would have gone through that second part. That is, going back to my desk and working through the scenario.
After all that, though, if I had ended up with something different, the players would have had to re-learn everything. They would have had to erase the notes they had made in their playbooks, and start over.
If I can limit this re-learning by simply admitting when I don’t know something, that’s what I’m going to do.
Final Thoughts
With each year of experience, I discover there are more and more things I don’t know.
I guess that means I’m moving in the right direction.
All the best,
Jon Svec
Defensive Coordinator
St. Francis Xavier University
X-Men Football
IG: @jonsvecx
Twitter: @jonsvecx
To read more, check out the Canadian Football Chalk Talk e-books series, which includes: Defensive Basics, Linebacker Toolbox, and Modern Pressures.