The Board Drill Podcast

We prepared for this one for about three minutes, which is roughly the correct amount of preparation for bold takes. The only rule was that picking the favorite does not count. Matt has UTRGV making a run in year two of the program and multiple first time conference champions across the FBS. Kyle takes the field against the Dakotas and Montana in the FCS, a bet that has only paid off twice since 2011, and puts first year FBS North Dakota State in the playoff as the group of five representative. The NFL section is where it gets uncomfortable, since Matt is a Dolphins fan picking Buffalo. Underneath all of it is the take we actually believe: football is back Thursday, and if you are complaining about what is on TV, you are not a football fan.

The Hall of Fame game gave us the first new football of 2026, and once we started tagging clips there was really only one thing to talk about. The Cardinals ran outside zone over and over, the Panthers ran their share of it, and by the time we finished cutting we had twenty seven clips of the same concept from two teams.

So we sat down and went through all of them. Matt handles the O line side, working through who takes over a shade versus a two eye, why a lineman’s shoulder pads pointed at the sideline is the tell that a block is already lost, and the coaching point he used with his own linemen about not coming off a double team until you can smell the linebacker. Kyle takes the defensive view, including a stretch of tape where a shade occupies two blockers to keep the linebacker clean and a six technique played about as well as you will see it played.

It is backup and third string tape, and neither of us pretends otherwise. It is also some of the clearest teaching tape you will find on a concept that now shows up at every level, with the same mistakes and the same fixes you are already coaching on Tuesday.

Georgetown OC Jarrell Flores Breaks Down the Boundary and Field Glance RPO

Coach Jarrell Flores, offensive coordinator at Georgetown High School in Texas, joins the Board Drill Podcast to break down the RPO concept that has become the foundation of Georgetown's explosive pass game. Coach Flo walks through how reading the boundary safety on the glance route opened up the offense, why it pairs directly with their wide zone run game, and how they have adapted it across personnel groupings, formations, and coverage shells for the last two seasons.

Inside this episode, Coach Flo covers the origin of the read, the pre-snap and post-snap process his quarterback goes through, how the concept holds up against one-high, two-high, and three-high safety structures, and how Georgetown layers motion, bunch, and stack formations to protect it from disguised coverage. He also gets into the program's culture, coaching lineage, and what has made Georgetown one of the most consistent offenses in Texas for over 20 years.

Timestamps are estimated from the raw recording and may shift slightly once the final edit locks.

0:00 Introduction and Coach Jarrell Flores joins the show

4:01 Georgetown culture, coaching lineage, and GT DNA identity

10:53 Installing the boundary and field glance RPO: reads, pre-snap keys, and route detail

17:57 Bunch, stack, and split variations to protect the concept

26:08 Beating one-high and three-high safety shells, marrying it to wide zone

33:24 Handling the overhang defender and the levels concept answer

39:59 Run game numbers, offensive line staff, and explosive play examples

48:29 Answering two-high shells with checkdowns and bunch concepts

55:50 Formation variety: ace, 12 personnel, and empty sets

1:00:44 Live Q&A: quarters coverage, the dart run, and layering the offense

1:05:30 What makes Georgetown unique: staff development, velocity-based training, and community

1:09:54 Book recommendations and closing thoughts

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Most coaches treat quarters as a set of rules that react to what the offense does after the snap. Chad Broadrick treats it as a way to decide, before the ball is ever snapped, which two players he is going to take away.

In this episode, the Head Football Coach and Athletic Director at Centennial High School in Tennessee walks through his Cover 7 film and the single question that drives every call in it: how do we double the two guys we are worried about on Friday night? Everything else is built backward from that answer.

Broadrick lays out the four buckets he lives in out of Cover 7, which are cones, brackets, triangle concepts, and box concepts, and shows how each one is really just a different tool for getting a double team on the right player. The star and the money carry outside leverage, the safety plays the aggressor on any in-breaking route, and the Mac takes the back. From there it becomes a language: ink and orc to set the corners’ press, Seahawk to wall and midpoint a vertical, Connie to keep from getting picked on the rail route, stump and smash rules to the field, cut and buster to trips. For coaches who want a cleaner way to organize their quarters answers instead of memorizing a hundred unrelated checks, this is someone who has done that work.

He is also honest about where the coverage lives and dies. Cover 7 can look rough in seven-on-seven, where isolation routes get exposed and there is no rush to bother the quarterback. In a game, with a four-man rush and a plan for who you want doubled, it is a different picture. That is where Broadrick gets animated, because the real value shows up when you build pressure out of the structure. He shows how the same bracket calls turn into simulated pressures and creepers, tracing the back, VTeching the center, and getting a hit on the quarterback while still doubling the vertical routes behind it.

The conversation closes in the red area, where cut becomes a two-man concept with trap rules and the corners play as waterfall defenders protecting the goal line, then moves into Turkey and Clifford and when it actually makes sense to dial them up. Matt jumps in from the offensive side to compare it all to Palms, and makes the case that Cover 7 gives a coach more pre-snap structure and control over exactly who gets doubled, without the practice cost that Palms demands.

The film gremlins were out in full force during this one, so a few clips fought back, but the ideas came through clearly. If you run any form of quarters and want a smarter way to take a team’s best player out of the game, this one is worth your time.

This episode is presented by Sideline HQ.

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Some coaches collect plays. Coach Shawn Cooley collects ways to run the same one.

In his third visit to the Board Drill, the East Ridge offensive coordinator makes the case that you do not need a thick call sheet to be multiple. You need one play your kids believe in and a hundred ways to show it. For Cooley, that play is counter, and over the course of the episode he takes GH counter from its plainest form all the way out to the edges of what a defense will let you get away with.

Along the way he gets into GT and split-flow counter, a first-level slice RPO he calls emo, counter quick borrowed off the college game, and a long-trap ISO wrinkle he is half convinced should have gotten him fired. From there it turns into a quarterback run clinic: a center-turned-quarterback lowering his shoulder between the tackles, jet and empty-formation keeps, a guard-tailback counter, and a shovel pass he simply calls Tebow. The thread running through all of it is the part most offenses skip. The offensive line barely changes a rule, and the defense never gets to tee off on your base.

If you run gap scheme, this is an hour well spent with the whiteboard open.

This week on The Board Drill Podcast, Kyle sits down with Coach Wallie Kuchinski, Associate Head Coach and Defensive Coordinator at the University of St. Thomas, for an hour-long install of what Coach K calls the king of all blitz patterns.

On tape it looks like the NCAA pressure everybody runs. It is not. It is a single five-man zone pressure built on reading offensive linemen instead of assigning gaps, and that one distinction is what makes it hold up against every run scheme and every protection a coordinator can dial up. Coach K teaches it the way you wish every clinic taught it, all the way down to the footwork: the flat step, the pound-step head fake, the lean off the snap so you never tip the pressure, and the term the Tommies use instead of box or force, splatter.

From there it builds. How the front cuts the field in half and turns pulls into tackles for loss. Why a bunch of single teams gets extra hats to the ball. How the pattern beats outside zone, power, and RPOs, and the three-man loop that asks a center to do something he simply cannot do. Coach K also shows how the whole thing travels from a 3-4 into a 2-4-5 nickel, so the 4-2-5 crowd can run it too.

It is a heavy install with a ton of drill tape, and it closes with Coach K on what 19 years with the program has taught him about teaching defense, plus the story behind the Tommies’ jump from Division III to FCS Division I.

If you coach the odd front, or you have ever written NCAA pressure on a call sheet and wondered if there was a better way to read it, this one is worth the notebook.

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Intro and tonight’s topic, the king of all blitz patterns

01:11 Sponsor, Sideline HQ

01:59 The 3-4 front and kicking into a 2-4-5 nickel

05:00 Non-pressure run fits, scrape, spill, and splatter

08:40 The scoop technique and the arrow-to-contain player

11:00 Drilling the line, flat step, point the toe, pound-step head fake

12:30 The trace technique on the tight end and the five-minute install

16:00 Force and scrape in space

18:50 Why this beats the NCAA pattern, cutting the field in half

23:02 Defending outside zone and mid zone from the pistol

26:00 Run-throughs that turn pulls into tackles for loss

29:56 Splatter and why phone-booth tackles win

35:50 Denting the tight end and the second-step climb

40:49 Falling back across the formation versus zone

42:01 The C gap power counter

44:00 The no-tight-end catch-all and attacking RPOs

47:02 The power of simplicity

50:00 Protection beaters, the half slide and the hot throw

52:35 Three-man loops and the center who cannot pass it off

57:00 Running the same pattern from 11 personnel in a 2-4-5

59:55 The closing question and the jump from D3 to FCS

Stump coverage does not get talked about enough. Most cover 7 teams run Stubbie as their three by one answer and stop there, but the moment a good offensive coordinator figures out you are in Stubbie, the double in from three becomes a weekly problem. Stump is the answer, and Coach Colin Lark from Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas, Texas breaks the whole thing down.

Coach Lark walks through every position rule in the coverage: the corner in mod technique, the in call and what it triggers, the nickel reading three to two, the safety’s vertical tracking rules, and how the three by four push changes linebacker responsibilities. He then puts it under pressure against trips concepts you actually see on Friday nights, including dagger, sail, and stick, and shows spring film of the coverage working against each one.

Kyle and Matt bring their own history with the coverage into the conversation, from using Stump almost exclusively as a high red zone answer to beat the double in corner, to the linebacker communication nuances that made it difficult to run full time at the high school level. The result is a real coach to coach conversation about not just how the coverage works, but when to use it, how to teach it, and what it takes to make it stick with your kids.

Coach Lark also demos Football U, his interactive playbook tool that lets players rep coverages from their phones and gives coaches accountability on whether their guys actually know their assignments.

This one is worth a full listen.

Coach Nathan McPeek has built Frederick Douglass High School (Lexington, KY) into one of the most consistent programs in Kentucky 6A football: a 2022 state championship, a perfect 39-0 record against city opponents, 27 playoff wins, and five players currently in the NFL. In this episode, he breaks down the player-led leadership system behind it all, from the core values that run the locker room to trust sessions, the game-day beast lift, and the branding that gets his kids recruited.

If you coach high school, youth, or small college football and want a blueprint for developing leaders instead of just managing talent, this one is for you.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome and meeting Coach Nathan McPeek

01:44 Building Frederick Douglass from 13 players to a 6A power

06:31 Living the core: the four values that run the program

11:31 Leadership as influence and why tradition doesn't graduate

17:04 Beating Instagram culture with a real value system

21:44 Player-driven vs. player-run: getting the team out of neutral

26:16 Trust sessions: small groups, captains, and 6 a.m. accountability

29:29 The game-day beast lift, velocity training, and five NFL players

36:59 Branding and social media that gets the program noticed

40:01 Process over outcome: starting 0-3 and finishing 8-5

45:44 A recruiting one-stop shop and final thoughts

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Subscribe for more coach-to-coach conversations on scheme, technique, and program building. New episodes drop regularly. For more from the show, visit www.boarddrill.com.

Modern linebacker play lives in the tweener space: guys who can fit the run, play in space, and rush off the edge without being a true safety or a true edge. In this episode, Kyle and Matt sit down with Coach Nick Vagnone, linebackers coach and recruiting coordinator at Lenoir-Rhyne University, to break down how he develops modern linebackers inside a 3-3-5.Coach Vagnone gets granular on the Sam, Mike, and Rush roles, the read step versus pop in place debate, how he teaches block destruction and tackling, and the exact Indy drills he uses to build it all. If you coach defense at the high school, youth, or small college level, there is a lot here worth stealing.SIDELINE HQStop running your equipment room out of a spiral notebook. Sideline HQ lets you check gear in and out in seconds, track what every kid has, and knock out end of season inventory in minutes instead of a whole Saturday. The first 30 days are free, no credit card, no catch. Try your free trial at www.sidelinehq.coCHAPTERS00:00 Welcome and tonight's guest, Coach Nick Vagnone06:00 Why Lenoir-Rhyne moved from a 3-4 hybrid to a 3-3-509:41 Building a player-led defensive identity14:21 Defining the modern linebacker: Sam, Mike, and Rush23:40 Read step versus pop in place30:53 The five movements and five core skills of a linebacker36:54 Stance and start: the first drill every linebacker runs42:04 Coaching pass drops, angle pedal, and head on a swivel51:10 Change of direction and linebacker ball skills1:00:10 Walking run fits with the scout line1:03:09 Block destruction: taking on half a man1:10:33 Living on the sled and the dip and rip1:14:38 Tackling with the donuts1:18:58 Circle chase: forced fumbles and ball security1:26:35 The closing question: 828 Day at Lenoir-Rhyne

Coach Kurt Hines has spent 29 years on the sideline and 32 in the classroom. He has been a head coach in New Hampshire and at Coronado in California. He has been hired and he has been fired. Through all of it, he has settled on one belief that drives everything: programs are built on people, not schemes.

In this conversation, Coach Hines walks Kyle and Matt through how he hires assistant coaches (no resume, no football talk in the first interview), why his early failures with delegation made him a better head coach, and a turbulent flight to Mississippi that changed how he leads when he is not in the building. He shares the discipline story from his first year at Coronado that tested everything he believed about being a man of his word, the viral video that put his program on national news, and what he has learned in the months since being let go after his most recent season.

This one is for coaches who care more about the long game than the next win.