When we were teaching some forecheck(FC) pressure principles this summer, things didn’t start out great. For my futbol readers, a forecheck is similar to a counter press situation where you apply pressure in the offensive 3rd of the pitch.
Instead of getting upset, I found out where the team was at.
When we got into the classroom later that day, I wanted to see what they knew.
I asked the group, what is the main job of F1? (closest defender to the puck)
To my surprise, most players who were called on said, “to come up with a turnover.”
When we don’t think we can get a turnover by ourselves, we don’t go that hard was the general consensus on why F1 wasn’t applying hard pressure consistently.
Not great, but that was my starting point. And I needed a way ‘in’ and fast.
Being in Texas, I figured an American football analogy might work.
I polled the room and asked how many of them played football. A few hands.
How many have played Defensive Line?
1 hand.
So I asked Bryce, “what is the best outcome you can have individually on a passing play?”
He responded with, “Getting a sack.”
“Okay great, now if you can’t get a sack, what is the next best thing you could get?”
“A QB hurry?” He said hesitantly.
“Yes, now explain to the group what that is.” I said.
He explained to the group that a QB hurry is a sort of subjective stat where if the stat guy believes the QB was rushed to throw in any way because of oncoming pressure, he gets a ‘Hurry’ point in his stat column.
Then I told the players to simply reframe their job as to ‘get hurries’ which is a less daunting task than getting the turnover yourself.
When you get a ‘hurry’ in football, you make a linebacker or safety on your team look better because the hurried throw might be off target and your buddy could get an interception.
The hurry increases the odds that something good will happen for your team.
The same idea applies here, let the 2nd and 3rd layer of the forecheck ‘eat’ because you made the defenseman pass before he wanted to.
But coaches get caught up in their stats sometimes and only track turnovers. If you’re going to track interceptions, you better track what leads to them… Hurried throws.
If F2 and F3 are the only ones scoring points on FCs and F1 gets nothing for it, he’s going to stop doing it and soon you’ll have 3, F3’s on every forecheck because those are the guys that ‘score points’ on coach’s excel program.
To make it easier, don’t even track turnovers, simply track what leads to turnovers.
A bit outside the box, I know…
Leave with this idea in your subconscious…
Reframing or using different stat categories with our players like Mike suggests here, might be a good experiment to run this year with your team. (click tweet to open video)
If you want the forechecking game to change in front of you, find out the game your players are playing and change or reframe it to illict new results.
Where else can we reframe inside or outside of the game?