Questions to Ask Football Coaches
For a reporter, an aspiring coach, or a parent who has a coach's full attention: these 20 questions ask how the job is actually done, from the shape of an in-season week to contact in practice, playing time calls and who has final say on a head injury.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How did you get your first coaching job, and what were you doing before that?
Why ask it
Coaching careers rarely start with a plan. Most begin with a volunteer season, a teaching job that came with a whistle, or a favor for a former coach. The route someone took shapes what they think matters, and it tells you whether they learned under somebody good or worked it out alone.
Walk me through your Monday during the season. What does the day actually look like?
Why ask it
In-season weeks are rigidly structured, and Monday is usually film, injury checks and the first look at the next opponent. If the answer comes out as one continuous blur, you are talking to someone without a system, and the players will feel that by Thursday.
How much of your week is football, and how much is paperwork, parents, buses and fundraising?
Why ask it
At youth and high school level, coaches often spend more hours on eligibility forms, transport, equipment reconditioning and raising money than on football. Asking about the split makes the job legible and tends to produce the most candid answer of the conversation.
When you took over this program, what was the first thing you changed?
Why ask it
The first change a coach makes on arrival is the truest statement of priorities, and it is usually not a scheme. It is a weight room, a study hall, a bus rule, who is allowed in the locker room. Listen for whether they can name the problem it solved.
What do you install in the first week of camp, and what waits until week four?
Why ask it
Good coaches sequence teaching rather than dumping the whole system in August: base run game and one protection before anything exotic, situational work only once the basics survive contact. Someone who cannot say what waits is probably installing more than the team can hold.
How do you decide how much of practice is full contact, and how has that changed since you started?
Why ask it
Contact volume is the most consequential decision made on a football practice field, and it has moved sharply as concussion rules tightened. The revealing part is what replaced it, since thud tempo, bags and taped angles can teach most of what full speed collisions used to.
Do you script practice minute by minute, and what makes you throw the script out?
Why ask it
Most coaches genuinely run a written script, so the tell is the exception. A specific trigger, such as a unit that plainly cannot execute the day's install, says they are reading the team. Saying they just go by the energy in the air usually means the plan was loose to begin with.
How do you teach tackling to a twelve year old compared with a senior?
Why ask it
This shows whether technique is taught in steps or by repetition and hope. Age changes fit and leverage progressions, how much speed is allowed, and how much work happens on a bag before anyone hits a person. Coaches who work with young players tend to give the sharpest answers here.
How do you tell whether a play is failing because of the design or the execution?
Why ask it
Every staff carries plays they never call, and cutting the list is unglamorous work. What matters is the diagnosis method: film, personnel splits, asking the linemen what they actually saw, and separating a play that does not suit these players from one nobody was taught properly.
When two players are close, how do you decide who starts, and how do you tell the one who does not?
Why ask it
Playing time is where stated values get tested against the scoreboard. Listen for criteria the players knew in advance, and for how the losing conversation goes, because that one conversation shapes a locker room more than any speech before a game.
What do you say to a player you are moving off a position he loves?
Why ask it
Moving a quarterback to receiver, or a running back to the line, is one of the hardest talks in the sport and often decides whether the player stays. The answers that work involve the reasoning given early, in private, with a concrete picture of what his role looks like now.
How do you handle a player whose parents are the problem?
Why ask it
Almost every coach has a story here, and the telling shows whether they manage this with structure, such as a rule against discussing playing time within a day of a game, or absorb it personally until it wears them down.
What do you do with the player at the end of the bench who will never see much of the field but keeps showing up?
Why ask it
This question sorts programs faster than almost any other. A coach with a real answer, a defined role, a job on Friday nights, an honest conversation about where he stands, is running somewhere worth joining. Vague warmth about everyone being family usually means that player is invisible.
How do you use film with players, and what do you do about the ones who will not watch it?
Why ask it
Film is where most of the improvement happens, so the practical details matter: clip length, whether players tag their own mistakes, whether it is done in position groups or alone. Resistance to film is usually embarrassment rather than laziness, and coaches who know that handle it differently.
How do you decide when a player is ready to come back from a head injury, and who has the final say?
Why ask it
Return to play after a concussion should not be a coach's judgment. A sound answer names an athletic trainer, a physician and a written protocol, with the coach explicitly outside the decision. Any suggestion that a coach can override that is worth taking seriously.
What does your sideline actually sound like when a game is getting away from you?
Why ask it
Behavior under pressure is what players remember, and it rarely matches the philosophy someone states in an interview. Asking for the sound of a bad night, rather than the plan for one, tends to produce something specific and unrehearsed.
How is authority split with your assistants on game night, and who can overrule whom?
Why ask it
Delegation in football is concrete: someone calls offense, someone manages substitutions, someone owns the clock and the timeout. Ask who has the last word, because staffs that never settled that question lose games in the final two minutes.
What is a loss you still think about, and what did you change the Monday after?
Why ask it
Coaches remember losses in detail, so the useful half is what changed afterward: a practice structure, a call sheet, a rule about when to go for it on fourth down. If nothing changed, the loss got filed as bad luck, which is its own answer.
What did you believe strongly ten years ago that you no longer believe?
Why ask it
This asks for an admission rather than a philosophy, so it usually lands on something real: water and conditioning practices, how much yelling accomplishes, hitting volume, how to handle a player who is struggling. Someone whose views have not moved in a decade has probably stopped watching other coaches.
If a young coach asked what to spend the first five years learning, what would you point them at?
Why ask it
Ask narrowly and you tend to get specifics: learn to teach one position properly, run a weight room, sit in on other staffs' meetings, get comfortable in a room full of parents. Answers about passion and hard work mean the question needs asking again with tighter edges.
Getting Real Answers Out of a Coach
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Run the Conversation
Ask in the off season if you can
During the season a head coach's week is fully spoken for, and Tuesday through Thursday are the worst days to ask for time. Late winter and early summer are when coaches will sit for an hour and talk about the craft rather than about Friday. If you only have game week, ask for fifteen minutes and keep to it exactly.
Start with mechanics, not philosophy
Opening with a question about coaching philosophy invites the answer they have given a hundred times. Opening with what Monday looks like, or how many minutes of practice are full speed, gets you a real description of the job, and philosophy comes out on its own once they are talking about specifics.
Name a specific game, season or player
General questions get general answers. Referring to a particular loss, the year they changed schemes, or a player who moved positions gives the coach something to reconstruct rather than summarize, and reconstruction is where the detail lives.
Do not ask them to criticize anyone
Questions about a rival coach, a referee, an administrator or a former player will shut the conversation down and taint everything after it. If you want a critical answer, aim it at their own past decisions, which most coaches will discuss at length.
Where the Interesting Answers Tend to Be
- Practice design: the minute count, what gets cut when a day runs long, and how much of the plan is written down.
- Contact policy: how many full speed periods a week, and what tools replaced the ones taken away.
- Playing time criteria, and whether players can recite them.
- The film system: who cuts it, who tags mistakes, and whether players watch alone or in groups.
- The chain of command on game night, especially around substitutions and the clock.
- Off season: what players are asked to do in February, and how that is monitored without breaking rules.
- Whether multi-sport athletes are encouraged, tolerated or quietly punished.
- Who handles the parents, and whether there is a written rule about when they can raise playing time.
If You Are a Parent Rather Than an Interviewer
- Is a licensed athletic trainer present at practices as well as games, and who is there when the trainer is not?
- What is the written concussion protocol, who administers it, and is the coach removed from the return decision?
- How many full contact practices happen per week, and how is heat managed in August?
- What does the season cost a family in fees, equipment, camps and travel, and what help exists if that is a problem?
- What are the academic requirements to stay eligible, and how are grades checked during the season?
- How is my child told where he stands, and how often?
- What happens if he wants to play a second sport, or misses time for a family reason?
- Who do I call with a concern, when is a bad time to call, and what happens next?
What Ends the Conversation Early
- Leading with wins, losses and records, which invites the press conference voice.
- Asking for scheme secrets an opponent could use, particularly in season.
- Pushing for a comment on a player's injury, transfer or discipline, which the coach usually cannot legally discuss.
- Framing playing time as unfair before you have heard the criteria.
- Asking a question you could have answered from the schedule, the roster or last week's film.