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Message: [QUOTE="SUDadx2, post: 4111778, member: 8174"] If our specialists are not working on their trade the [I]full practice every day[/I], then we shouldn't be surprised our special teams stink. And any player who isn't willing to work on their craft the entire practice, then they shouldn't be on the team. During the season we only practice Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays with a walk-thru on Friday for a game on Saturday. Those three practices really aren't that much time to work on everything that needs to be done in order to be a top special teams team. There's so much that needs to be worked on here. Each of these special skills requires hundreds of hours to master. [LIST] [*]Kickers [LIST] [*]Kick offs [*]On-side kicks [*]Fields goals [*]Extra points [/LIST] [*]Punters [LIST] [*]Hang time [*]Distance [*]Accuracy [/LIST] [*]Long snappers [LIST] [*]Field goals and extra points [*]Punts [/LIST] [*]Holders - last season should have taught us how important this function is. [/LIST] A full-time specials teams coach probably won't have the help of a graduate assistant, but he will have a manager or two (every position group does) who can help keep things moving while the ST Coach is working with a specific specialist or group Back when I was coaching I read this book written by the late George Allen. It helped me appreciate the value of special teams and helped us win a couple of games. [MEDIA=amazon]0880113707[/MEDIA] Practices are usually 2-3 hours long and can get pretty boring for a lot of players. One of the things we did to break up practice and stress the importance of special teams was to put a ten-minute period in the middle of practice every day to work on a different special team and different situations. Too many teams treat special teams as an afterthought and only do special teams at the end of practice when it feels like punishment to the players who have to stay. I don't remember the exact quote, but George Allen said something like players will treat special teams as import and the coach does. So, we put special teams right in the middle of practice and did it every day. Like most things in life, the more time you put into these skills, the better you will be. By the way, several Division I programs have a dedicated specials teams coach. I looked at a few and here's some that I found. [LIST] [*]Georgia [*]Cincinnati [*]Ohio State [*]Boston College [*]Stanford [*]San Diego State. [/LIST] [/QUOTE]

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