After a tough loss to Platteville, Wisconsin–La Crosse head coach Matt Janus knew something had shifted. His team wasn’t broken, but the joy, energy, and flow they had early in the season had faded. The loss wasn’t just about mistakes — the problem went deeper. It became the turning point for a true midseason reset in football coaching, one that would help Janus refocus his team, his staff, and himself.
When Pressure Becomes Contagious
Janus admits the stress started with him.
“When you have ranked wins and momentum, the pressure starts to build around your program,” he said. “It infects the coaches first. Then it spreads to the players.”
He noticed it in his staff — late nights, new wrinkles, chasing perfection over rhythm. Meanwhile, his players began to play tight, afraid to make mistakes, focused more on avoiding errors than creating plays. The more pressure mounted, the more everyone forgot how to enjoy the game.
“I forgot about being there for the kids,” Janus said. “All I wanted to do was tell them how amazing they were. When I started doing that again, everything lifted.”
For Janus, the first step in his midseason reset football coaching journey wasn’t a new play call. Instead, it was humility — the courage to reset himself before resetting his team.
Practicing to Play Free
With injuries piling up, the natural move would have been to ease practice. However, Janus went the opposite direction.
They went good-on-good — ones versus twos, playing fast, full speed, regardless of the opponent’s look.
“We stopped worrying about what Oshkosh was going to do,” he said. “We just ran our stuff at full speed. That changed everything.”
Beyond that, he added crossover drills — offense versus defense, position groups competing across the ball. Practices became alive again. As a result, energy and confidence returned.
This change wasn’t just about toughness; it was about identity. A true midseason reset in football coaching meant returning to what made his team special — playing fast, fearless, and free.
Janus also made one more adjustment he wished he hadn’t forgotten: investing in the scout team.
Young players got meaningful reps every day. The message was clear — development never stops, even in October. That sense of growth reignited belief across the roster.
The Value of a Truth Teller
The emotional turnaround started because one assistant had the courage to speak up.
Associate Head Coach Andrew McGlynn saw that Janus was beating himself up after the loss and stepped in.
“He knew I was upset with myself,” Janus said. “He came in and addressed it. That’s hard to do as an assistant, but he did it anyway.”
Outside of his wife, McGlynn might know him best. Their friendship is built on honesty — the kind that keeps a staff grounded when emotions run high. Ultimately, that truth-telling helped Janus regain perspective and stay committed to his football coaching reset process.
“You don’t have all the answers as a head coach,” Janus said. “That’s the beauty of a staff — people you can bounce ideas off and who can tell you when you’re wrong.”
Diagnose, Don’t Defend
The loss to Platteville became a mirror.
Instead of defending his decisions, Janus chose to diagnose. He talked with his staff, re-evaluated his practice model, and owned the culture he was projecting.
“When you can diagnose what’s wrong and your kids understand it too,” he said, “that’s a thing of beauty as a coach.”
By week’s end, La Crosse had found its rhythm again. The players felt lighter, and the coaches coached with clarity. The result — a dominant 44–13 win over conference rival Oshkosh — was just the visible proof of a deeper midseason reset football coaching transformation taking hold.
Lessons for Every Coach
- Check your tone before your tactics. The program’s energy mirrors the head coach.
- Don’t over-protect. Fast practice means free play on Saturday.
- Invest in future players. Scout teams produce your next starters.
- Find your truth teller. Every coach needs someone unafraid to challenge.
- Use losses as lenses, not verdicts. Reflect often in coaching.
Janus’s experience shows that a midseason reset in football coaching doesn’t start on the field — it starts within the coach. Resetting a football program means rediscovering connection, clarity, and confidence.
“We don’t have all the answers. We’re wrong sometimes, right sometimes, somewhere in between. That’s why you build a staff that tells you the truth.”
— Matt Janus, Head Coach, UW–La Crosse
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Building Mental Toughness: Inside the “Cycle of the Snap”
Keeping the Team Focused and Motivated
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Podcast transcript
Matt Janus (00:00)
i i’m on the action you know you don’t go to the blood i i needed coach mcglen to to reset me as a head coach i think sometimes as an assistant that’s hard but
Coach McGlynn knew that I was upset about the way he played and more importantly, I was really upset with myself and I felt like I was the center of the blame there and when I say blame it’s because stress and pressure are a real thing that can consume you over the course of the season but you don’t sometimes necessarily think about it.
Right as a coach you don’t think about it, but it starts to consume you
John Snell (00:34)
Finally, we head to Wisconsin-Lacrosse where coach Matt Janis, the head coach at Lacrosse, guided his team to a 44 to 13 victory over conference rival Wisconsin Oshkosh. Great win for the Eagles. Coach, congratulations on the win. obviously, we have been watching your season and you’ve had some great wins so far. So congrats and thanks for being on with us.
Matt Janus (01:04)
No, I appreciate it. I’m obviously, think it’s crazy where the game of football can take you. And then also who the game of football can introduce you to. And really was really excited when Keith told me that I was going to get a chance to talk some more with you. And for those of you guys listening and watching, got a chance to ⁓ meet John really for the first time on a Zoom last spring. And then he was gracious enough.
When we were in our first game this year, we were on our way to Pittsburgh to let us use Baldwin Wallace’s facilities. Got a chance to hang out with John a little bit more. And I mean, you are, what a phenomenal person. I love talking with you. I love interacting with you. You are so gracious to us as a visitor and the work that you’ve done at that school is truly amazing. And to be able to go through the facilities and meet the staff with you, like just excited really, John, to be talking with you.
John Snell (02:01)
Well, we appreciate that and it was great meeting you as well as great having you guys. ⁓ Again, you know that to have the success that you’ve had, you’ve got to have a great staff. So we certainly want you to have an opportunity to give some props to your staff before we talk about what you want to share.
Matt Janus (02:20)
Yeah, my gosh, my staff was awesome.
not just on Saturday, throughout the whole week. mean, it is, you come off a really tough loss where you don’t play your best game. ⁓ There’s questioning with everything and those guys across the board got their positions ready. ⁓ I think our offensive coordinator, coach Yagy, like, you know, it’s going to be a good game ⁓ when, you’re on the headset with the offense and he’s calling touchdowns out before they, before they happen, you know, and he goes, touchdown Marco here. And then does it again in the third quarter, third quarter, goes touchdown here. And so,
You know, you’re really rolling when you have that on the offensive side of the ball and then on the defensive side of the ball coach I don’t know how you are, but I want our defensive play caller to be
pretty much the craziest person on the field. That’s how to me you call defense. You’re borderline psychotic. You’re kind of at the numbers sometimes, all the time, ⁓ yelling, screaming, ⁓ getting everybody fired up. And our defensive coordinator, Coach Weefel, was just that. He’s chirping a little bit. I come on, I’m on the defensive headset like the second quarter, and I go, Coach Z, maybe they’re doing this. What do you think about this? And he just goes, Coach, I’m
I am on it right now. I’m on it, on it, on it. And so like, I don’t know, what do you do after that as a head coach, right? You feel, you got that going on with both of your coordinators. I don’t know, like you have me out here. I don’t know what I did. I just, you know, I tried to help as his special team, some decisions, but like when you have that coming from your coordinators as the head coach, you just feel like as the game goes on and they, you just feel like you’re in such good hands.
John Snell (04:00)
Absolutely. And again, you know the importance and value of having great assistants and a great staff and obviously you do. ⁓ As you know, Matt, part of this, we ask our ⁓ coaches who’ve been recognized to share an idea ⁓ with our listeners. You mentioned making some changes in the program, essentially during the season. How about you share a little bit of that with us? ⁓
Matt Janus (04:29)
Yeah, I ⁓ I think it really starts with ⁓ our loss to Platteville, right? And we did not play very good.
in plattville played really good like so don’t like it’s not like we’re taking anything but like when you play in our league like you have to play your best game otherwise you will get beaten i think that’s the the beauty of our league at times that it that it humbles you and then it also forces you to have a really quick memory you got to really got to turn that around you got to hit reset uh… with everything there and so i think you know i i’m on the action you know you don’t go to the blood i i needed coach mcglen to to reset me as a head coach i think sometimes as an assistant that’s hard but
Coach McGlynn knew that I was upset about the way he played and more importantly, I was really upset with myself and I felt like I was the center of the blame there and when I say blame it’s because stress and pressure are a real thing that can consume you over the course of the season but you don’t sometimes necessarily think about it.
Right as a coach you don’t think about it, but it starts to consume you and so I think as we’ve kind of gone along in this season and we had some big wins and we had some ranked wins the pressure started to fall over our program and it starts it infects the coaches first.
Right like it infected us first and all of a sudden and like and you know it because then all of a sudden you just start getting a little crazy with schemes Right you start putting in too much you start all of a sudden you’re watching film You’re here way later than what you should be you’re spending all this time Trying to get guys into the perfect position every single play and if they don’t you feel like you’ve failed as a coach and so like that I think that pressure built up on Me and that stress built up on me which in turn that spread to my staff
And
then it spread to our players and it’s not like we talked about it. It’s not like we were Miserable at practice and we were just mean and yeah, like it was none of that But like you could just feel that and then so all of a sudden then I have a bunch of 18 to 22 year old kids who think they what? Without me even tell them think that they need to play Perfect all the time and all of a sudden they all of a sudden create this stress on themselves And that’s where I really screwed up as a head coach And so I I forgot and I really I lost my way
⁓ with all that and I forgot about just the
the of the coach, right? I forgot about being there for the kids. I forgot about the relationship ⁓ with them. And it’s not like I wasn’t talking to it wasn’t any of that. But all I said was at the end of the week, I’m like, we have awesome kids at UW lacrosse. Like we have awesome kids. And all I wanted to do was just tell them all week how amazing that they were. And I focused more on our relationships within the week of practice. And so I think that then in turn lifted everything off their shoulders. And there’s like, yeah, we can, we can just go and play football. And then we also
changed quite a bit of our practice habits. thought, you know, we had a, and we still do, and I think there’s a lot of teams in our, in our league that have it right now. We still, are getting a bunch of.
Injuries like we have a we’re hurt at beyond belief right now and it’s the next man up It really is that mentality it’s attrition as we’ve gone throughout the season And so I think when that starts to happen as a coach you Your initial reaction is to scale back practice and all of a sudden you’re not doing team anymore And you’re doing like jog through walk throughs, right? You’re not really doing any you’re doing, you know, just kind of talking about something. You’re not doing Skelly you’re not doing crossover stuff with the offense and so like
All sudden you start losing the improvement of your football team, right? Because it has to keep doing that throughout the whole season and you stop improving as a football team and you’re just kind of going through the motions to get through the week. so last week I think we did a really good job of being like, okay, that’s not how we want to practice. We want to play fast on Saturday. We want to run to the ball. We want to make our receiver. So guys, let’s start practicing like that.
John Snell (08:03)
Yep.
Matt Janus (08:19)
And our kids just answered the bell. I mean, it started Monday morning at 6 a.m. It’s like when you have something wrong in your football program. And I’ve done this a couple of times now and you can diagnose it and the kids understand that too. And the kids go, yeah, we’re not.
we should be practicing this way. is what we want to practice. Like, that’s like a thing of beauty as a coach. And you’re like, okay, here we go. Now we can truly improve what we need to improve on. And so our kids did that. And like I said, that’s the greatest part about last week is just the way those guys practice all week, the way they responded with everything, the way they grew closer with each other through everything after a really, really tough loss.
John Snell (08:56)
Yeah. So, Matt, would you say, were there any subtle changes in your practice this past week, considering some of the injuries that you have and trying to change a little bit of the mentality?
Matt Janus (09:11)
Yeah, I think we two big ones, right? Is we want to do more good on good and we wanted more ⁓ speed periods. So we wanted to make sure that our ones and twos were going against each other so that they could see the speed. We stopped worrying about.
Hey, whatever look Oshkosh was gonna give us. No, let’s just run our stuff, our pressures, our coverages against our offensive base plays and just see the speed. So that helped a ton. We did a ton of then some crossover drills, know, like whatever everybody kind of O line D line versity, you know, doing different drills, our skilled guys, especially doing some crossover stuff like that. So we did a ton of that. And then the last tweak that we made and I really kicking myself in the butt for this one because I told myself all spring, all camp,
all that is we turned our attention back then to our scout team. And I think that’s the hard part of coaching. I’m trying to figure out what’s that perfect balance of everything because over the last couple of weeks.
We forgot to get that we didn’t forget. just didn’t focus on getting them reps and continuing to develop those freshmen, those younger guys who now are starting to figure out college. They’re starting to, they’re playing a little faster. And so we kind of turned the clock and we went back to them. Hey, every chance we get, we’re going to try to do a team. We’re going to try to have something with them involved. We’re going to walk through, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. So that those guys are constantly coming along because as we’re continuing to find out, mean, we got freshmen playing for us right now. And so there’s going to be more freshmen that have to play it more soft.
that aren’t scouting at the point. So I think we got much, much more intentional as well as the week went on of not losing sight of, hey, we got to continuously develop our roster. And I was so good with that over the spring. I was so good with that over the fall camp. And then we just stopped, right?
You just started, okay, all right, we gotta worry about whitewater schemes. We gotta worry about Platteville schemes. We gotta worry about this. And I just stopped on that. And that’s, like I said, totally on me. And I just keep learning, keep learning, keep learning, keep learning. And hopefully I don’t make that mistake again.
John Snell (11:07)
Well, you know, you know, Matt, that sometimes it takes a loss for us to really start to reflect and try to get a better picture of what we need to do, where we need to make changes, where we can improve. And it’s unfortunate that sometimes that’s what it takes. But the reality is sometimes that’s good because it does it does help us get a better picture of where we need to go, what we need to do.
to get better. And it sounds like that’s kind of what happened with you guys.
Matt Janus (11:39)
100 % right? You don’t want to say that as a coach, right? Especially in college football, because like everybody wants you to go perfect. They want this, they want that. So you don’t think that so much. you know, we had kind of the same thing happen last year where we learned a bunch of lessons from a couple tough losses and just the ability to reset and to reflect. And I do, I don’t think I have a lot of skills in a lot of different areas, but I do have that ability, that unique characteristic where I’m able to kind of sit, breathe a little bit. Okay, what went wrong?
diagnose things, try to correct it. And like I told you earlier, like it’s so cool when your kids recognize that too. And you, and like your whole program’s like, yeah, like that was, that was the issue. That’s what, that what the issue was. So I, and I know I said at the beginning of the year, I didn’t think anyone was going to go through our conference undefeated. I think it’s just too good. It’s too hard right now. And yeah, you do need that to, to reset, to refocus and to just see some things a little bit better, a little bit more clearly.
John Snell (12:36)
You mentioned a little earlier, Matt, about Andrew coming to you and being able to diagnose ⁓ some things that need to be changed or fixed. That’s, as you know, extremely important, but also having somebody on your staff who can kind of sense where you are as a head coach and come to you and say, hey, I really think you ought to think about this or I really think you’re too stressed out. Maybe you need to settle down a little bit.
Do you have somebody that kind of you can rely on on the staff to do that with you that isn’t afraid to be a truth teller for you?
Matt Janus (13:15)
Yeah, I mean Coach Coach McGlinn is such a I didn’t know Coach McGlinn until I got here. I got here in 2017 and our friendship has just grown and that’s what it is right. It is a true friendship. ⁓ I love having him on staff. He is so loyal to UW lacrosse into this football program. ⁓ I can’t tell you outside of my wife. He’s probably the person who knows me best in this world. We have had talks. I mean we it is just constant with me and him all the time and try.
You know when you have that guy on staff that you’re just like, hey.
how can we make this football program better? And you throw out every idea in the world and you’ve talked about stupid stuff. You’ve talked about really good ideas, but like you have that person that you can lean on all the time. And Coach McGlynn’s been that for me and because he knows me so well, ⁓ he knows when something’s off and he knew that I was really upset with myself on Monday. And he knew that like me pouting about it, me being mad about myself wasn’t gonna help our team and he came in a dress.
like, like, like, like, I’m like, and that’s like that’s still hard. I didn’t think it would be hard for him, but as an assistant coach like that still there’s still that head coaching title with everything. So I know it was really hard for him to come and talk to me, but with our friendship in the line of communication that we have, he was absolutely awesome. And it’s like, oh yeah, that’s.
You’re 100 % right, let’s get that corrected and let’s move on because we don’t have all the answers as head coaches. You know that, like we don’t, like we’re wrong sometimes, we’re right sometimes, we’re in between sometimes and like that’s why that’s the beauty of a staff, right? Is that you have guys that you can bounce ideas with that can call phenomenal games, like all that stuff, like that’s why you try to surround yourself with that. And then, you know, I got to continuously and I tried to do that this week too with our staff, like make sure that they can keep using that as a platform.
Even when we’re miserable because we played our worst game and we lost the game, you can still approach me and make sure that I’m still approachable to other people as well.
John Snell (15:11)
Well, it’s great to hear that in my meeting of Andrew, he seems very perceptive. He seems very in tune with what you guys do and what you need to do. it’s, it is important, Matt, and you know this, you need to have truth tellers on your staff that can help you recognize any, any form of shortcoming that, you know, we as, we all as head coaches have. So it’s great to hear that you have that. ⁓ Want to congratulate you again.
⁓ It’s a great win. We obviously wish you the best as the season progresses. You said it, you’re in a conference that every week you better come ready to play otherwise who knows what can happen. So again, we wish you the best and appreciate you being on with us and we’ll look forward to watching the rest of your season.
Matt Janus (15:57)
Thanks, coach. I appreciate you. Love talking with you anytime. We’ll stay in touch.
John Snell (16:00)
Same here. Thank you.