In the middle of the offseason there is no game scheduled for Sunday, but Bills offensive coordinator Curtis Modkins will still be talking football. A lot of it in fact as he will be delivering a presentation at the Football Canada Coaches Association Convention in Burlington, Ontario Saturday and Sunday.
"It's a good opportunity to share and talk football," said Modkins. "I understand there will be some Canadian football presentations, which makes it unique."
The FCCA convention is much like the football coaching clinics that are run all over the United States. They're designed to help young coaches develop their coaching techniques and football philosophies and effectively applying it in the practice and game setting.
Modkins remembers attending those clinics as a young coach himself.
"I tried to go to every single one I could," he said. "I know I have a ton of notes on how you approach the business. How you become the best you can become and how you develop players. I know all of what we do (with the Bills)I learned from somewhere."
The coordinator's presentation is going to focus on offensive systems.
"I've got it narrowed down to the Bills run game, accountability and flexibility," he said. "I'm going to talk through some of the base principles of our running game, how we get our stuff installed. I'm showing how we tag and how we change up stuff while still being able to practice different variations of what we do by tagging certain words for the O-line and we'll see how it correlates to their game."
Modkins aim is to show that teams even at the highest level of football don't need several hundred different run plays to be effective. There are ways to vary offensive looks while running vastly similar plays and still keep a defense off balance.
His presentation is scheduled to go an hour and a half and he intends to make use of film clips and open it up for questions.
"I'm still learning more about the game every day," he said. "If you ever stop learning or ever stop looking for opportunities to grow you're basically done in the business. So I'm not on the teaching side only. I think it's an obligation to invest back into the game and continue with the growth of the game. It's been good to me. For me it's a way to invest back into it and help keep the game going."
