McDonald to Appear in American Football Monthly, Training Videos

Jeff McDonald, an assistant football coach at Wesleyan, will have a trio of instructional DVDs and an article produced by  American Football Monthly (AFM) magazine, one of the premier trade magazines for football coaches in the United States.

The article will appear in the August issue of the magazine and will be accompanied by online promotional samplings of the instructional DVDs, each of which will run approximately one hour.

McDonald flew to Florida in June to help prepare the DVDs. In each he presents instruction on different techniques and defenses, including defensive schemes, unique approaches to eight-man defensive fronts, and linebacker plays against the run and pass. Film clips of the techniques and defenses being used in game situations are widely used in the presentations as McDonald instructs and narrates.

The DVDs complement the August magazine article, which McDonald describes as focusing on linebacker fundamentals throughout the season.

“A lot of the time coaches get so caught up in weekly game plans during the season they forget to make time to continue to work on the fundamentals,” McDonald says. “The article discusses what I call the six-pack concept. This is a concept that helps the coach continue to work on the fundamentals all season long. It is a concept that can be applied to all positions and I think that is why the feedback has been so positive.”

After filming the DVDs, AMF filmed a promotional interview and a segment for their web show, “Insider’s Perspective.”

Before joining the Wesleyan staff, McDonald gained assistant coaching experience in several Division I programs, including Central Connecticut St. U., Towson University, Yale University and the University of New Hampshire. McDonald is a 1995 graduate of the University of South Florida who went on to earn a Master’s degree at Quincy University in Illinois, where he began his college coaching career. He has served as a regular speaker for the Nike Coach of the Year Clinics, Glazier Mega Clinics and Coaches Clinic International. It was such a clinical presentation which gave rise to his upcoming article.

“I have been speaking at a number of national clinics for the last five years or so,” McDonald says. “Mostly these have been the Nike Coach of the Year Clinics (Hartford and Orlando this past winter), and I believe Rex [Lardner, managing editor of AFM] contacted me last fall about writing an article for the magazine. Being in the middle of our football season I was not able to complete the article until January. It’s taken a little while since then to put all the pieces together for publication.”

After the magazine received the article, Lardner asked McDonald if he’d be interested in filming the three instructional DVDs.

“The magazine staff seemed very pleased with the outcome,” McDonald says. “For me, I just enjoy the opportunity to talk about the game, especially defense. Doing these videos, writing articles, and speaking at the clinics forces me to continue to stay sharp. It forces me to constantly evaluate the techniques and defenses we are teaching our student-athletes. To me it is always important to ‘sharpen the saw’ and continue to get better as a teacher and a coach.”

Founded in 1995, American Football Monthly‘s print circulation exceeds 15,000 per month and maintains a large online presence.