How Denton Ryan Builds a Weekly Defensive Game Plan with Coach Will Cockerill

Will Cockerill has gone 25-5 in two seasons as the defensive coordinator at Denton Ryan High School in Texas. His defense finished number one in scoring defense in the Dallas area at just over 12 points per game and has held a 70 percent third down stop rate back to back. The Sons of Ryan are not just a good defense. They are a program built on culture, structure, and a weekly process that leaves nothing to guesswork by Friday night.

In this episode, Coach Cockerill returns to the pod and walks through the full system. How he collects grades and sends a game summary to his head coach Saturday morning. How he uses position-specific Google Docs to structure his Sunday staff meeting before anyone walks in the room. How he sequences practice Monday through Thursday, buckets film by scheme instead of play name, and builds a call sheet that already has the answers to problems before they show up in a game.

This one goes well beyond X’s and O’s. It is a blueprint for how a coordinator runs a week.

0:00 Introduction and welcome back to Coach Will Cockerill, DC at Denton Ryan

2:00 16 years in Texas, a 25-5 record as DC, and the three keys to success at any program

5:30 Defensive metrics, stop rate, havoc rate, third down efficiency, and the Sons of Ryan identity

9:09 Game planning philosophy: target their best, attack their weakest lineman, make them go left-handed

12:00 The Friday night to Saturday routine: grading, player stats, and the game summary to the head coach

15:30 The defensive awards system: BGO, Honey Badger, Ball Hawk, and building the templates to save time

19:54 How the sideline trash can dunking tradition changed their takeaway numbers

21:00 Saturday scouting: bucketing run schemes as zone or gap and how that simplifies the whole week

26:00 The staff Google Doc: four position-specific questions that structure the Sunday meeting before anyone walks in