A 38–0 shutout doesn’t happen by accident—it’s the result of a repeatable defensive process built on structure, clarity, and confidence. At Baldwin Wallace, Defensive Coordinator Ethan Nichol has built that system, where preparation meets purpose and players trust every step of their weekly rhythm. His defense operates with precision because every rep, film session, and meeting fits into a consistent, teachable structure.
A Process Built on Trust and Consistency
When Head Coach Jim Hilvert handed Nichol the defensive reins after 25 years of calling plays himself, it wasn’t just a new title—it was a transfer of trust. Nichol responded by building a defensive process grounded in rhythm and accountability.
Each week, the staff reviews film on Sunday, refines the scouting report, and builds a progression from recognition to reaction. Every meeting, walk-through, and cut-up connects to that same repeatable defensive process, so players always know what to expect and how to prepare.
“It’s just a repeatable process each and every week,” Nichol said. “We’ve stuck to that process from week one and will continue to do it all the way through.”
That consistency builds clarity—and clarity builds confidence.
Simplify to Amplify
Nichol believes too many coaches overload players with information that only coaches care about. His version of a repeatable defensive process focuses on clarity and cognitive design, not complexity.
“To think a kid is gonna care about the game as much as you do is asinine,” he said. “If we’re gonna help prepare him for game day, we have to control and shepherd what we’re giving them.”
Instead of flooding the film list, Baldwin Wallace’s defensive staff curates short, focused cut-ups—no more than 25 plays—to reveal identity, tendencies, and rhythm. Players also get a fit sheet showing how the defense aligns versus key run concepts, color-coded for clarity: offense in red, defense in green.
Every visual cue and teaching tool supports that defensive process—helping players process information faster and perform instinctively.
Screw You Wednesday and the Science of Confidence
Nichol’s repeatable defensive process includes intentional stress points. Wednesdays—known as “Screw You Wednesday”—are designed to test every rule and reaction. The defense faces misdirection, trick plays, double moves, and bad fits on purpose.
The goal isn’t punishment—it’s preparation.
“I give them the toughest looks,” Nichol said. “If we know we’re blitzing one way, I’ll send the ball the other just to see how we fit it up. Wednesday plays into Thursday. By then, our guys are fresh and confident.”
By Thursday, that chaos turns into control. “Perfect Thursday” reinforces correct reactions and clean execution. The rhythm from stress to success is the backbone of the repeatable defensive process, conditioning players mentally and emotionally for Saturday.
The Success Cut-Up: Seeing Themselves Win Before They Play
On Fridays, Nichol completes the weekly defensive process by showing his players who they already are. He creates a success cut-up—20 to 30 clips of the defense executing flawlessly in practice.
“I want them to see that they are capable, they are prepared,” Nichol said. “We’re trying to set a perforated edge for them to be successful.”
That “perforated edge” idea connects directly to the repeatable defensive process. Just like tearing paper along dotted lines, Saturday becomes a continuation of what they’ve already done all week. It’s not about arrogance; it’s about affirmation.
Players enter game day already believing they’ll succeed because they’ve seen it—and lived it—in practice. Side-by-side clips of practice and game reps drive that confidence home: perfect Tuesday fit, perfect Saturday stop.
Coaching the Whole Player
Nichol’s approach respects the people behind the process. He credits his wife for managing home life during the grind of the season and recognizes how demanding his players’ lives can be—balancing engineering classes, internships, and part-time jobs.
That’s why his repeatable defensive process is built for simplicity, not stress. Every meeting and drill serves a purpose: to make players’ lives easier, their focus sharper, and their confidence stronger.
“If there’s one thing to take away,” Nichol said, “it’s not to copy our process—it’s to figure out how to consolidate the information into bite-sized, digestible chunks that your guys can execute and understand on game day.”
Takeaway for Coaches
A repeatable defensive process builds clarity, confidence, and freedom for players.
When players understand expectations, absorb the right information, and grow their confidence in practice, execution on game day becomes instinctive and consistent.
That’s not luck—it’s the result of clear teaching and a process that repeats with purpose.
Track and improve your athletes progress with Tully!
Schedule a meeting to learn more about Tully today!
Related:
Defense with DC (Week 10): Adjusting to Early Calls, Motion, Coverage Variations, and Bunch Run Fits
Beyond the Film: How Data is Revolutionizing QB Evaluation- Keith Grabowski
More on Coach Ethan Nichol
Podcast transcript
John Snell (00:01.996)
Next up, we turn to Baldwin Wallace where defensive coordinator, Ethan Nickell, and his unit turned in a complete performance of 38 to nothing shut out over Marietta. That kind of defensive effort takes discipline, focus, and trust in the plan. And Baldwin Wallace had all of that on display this past Saturday. Ethan, congratulations and really happy for you and your defense to have a great performance.
Ethan Nichol (00:30.562)
Thanks, Coach. First, I want to say thank you for the honor. It’s really cool to have been selected. Obviously, not in the game for statistics or anything other than victories, but happy more than anything else to achieve that and to play our part. Want to shout out a few people, because obviously, this is a team game. And while we’re talking about the defense, let’s not forget our offense turned in 31 points. We blocked the punt on special teams, which we recovered for a touchdown.
You know, we just happened to come to play and really.
That is just a testament to the coaching that our guys received and their ability to go out and execute it. A few guys I want to recognize, first and foremost our head coach, Jim Hilvert. He passed me the baton to be the defensive coordinator after 25 years of calling the defense. And I can’t imagine that was necessarily an easy thing for him to do. And he’s given me a lot of leash and still some input. And I’ve learned a lot from him over my time here. And to be honest, he put in a great third down blitz that we used to close out the game on fourth down.
Coach Peters and Todd Fox are D-line coaches. We got a few sacks this week. And again, I think we’ve been right there on the doorstep a few times. And just to see them kind of put that work in to complete that for us was huge. then lastly, Coach Breton Miller, a BW alum. We had three interceptions all at the safety position. And again, ultimately our guys had to execute it. But the plan that we put in place, the coaching that our guys gave them, I was really happy across the board with just the outcome. It was very process oriented.
and I think our guys did a great job.
John Snell (02:04.578)
Well, there’s no question that you guys did a great job when you shut out a team in this conference. That’s, as you know, a great accomplishment. One of the things that we talk about, Ethan, as you know, we like to share an idea with our listeners. And I know because I’ve spent time with you, I know there’s an awfully sharp mind in there and there’s some really good thoughts and ideas coming from that brain of yours. So how about you share some of that with with our listeners?
Ethan Nichol (02:34.882)
Yeah, well, I don’t know about Sharp. I think my wife will laugh at you when she sees that one. And while I’m on the topic of my wife, right now being in the midst of football season, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank her too on account of the fact that we got two little boys at home. And for all intents and purposes, she’s essentially a single parent for however many months out of the year. So.
you know, that we do here is made possible by the people behind us that, you know, help support our personal and professional lives in the process. So again, I want to thank my wife, Brenna, for that. You know, I think the big thing is for us, it’s just a repeatable process each and every week. You know, when we get in on Sunday, obviously we watch the tape individually, but…
I kind of look at my board here, I’ve got a checklist of things that we kind of make sure we do each and every week that we follow in. And starting with the scouting report that we give the guys, one thing that we do is the cover of our scouting report, which we share with them on Huddle as well, is like the windshield of a vehicle. And in the rear view mirror, we have the.
you know, like the logo of our previous opponent and out the windshield we have the logo of our upcoming opponent. And one thing I attached our graduate assistant, Zach Zulwith, who should also be thanked because he’s doing all the dirty work and tagging and everything else, you know, I mean, goodness gracious, we grind on the kid and he’s putting in countless hours and, you know, we aren’t able to crunch the data without him. And so, you know, I tasked him with making each logo, putting the Brown and gold, because even though we’re playing someone like Marietta or Muskingum, it’s still about us and what we
do every week. And to think that’s an original thought, you know, again, I don’t want to seem like I’m some sort of like genius right there. I stole that from Davos Sweeney in a book I read, you know, so like I just thought it was cool for us to do and our guys really bought into it. And then when we get done with the scouting report, not only do we share that with them, but you know, for me as a player, I felt inundated with
Ethan Nichol (04:29.218)
You know we would get shared all these games and everything like that and I do think it’s valuable watching the games Just so you get a feel for game flow and everything but to think a kid is gonna Care about the game as much as you do I think first and foremost is is is asinine I’ve committed my life to this game right this sport means everything to me this guy gets to do it two to four hours in a day right and like some of that’s film but most of its practice he cares more about the practice so if we’re gonna help prepare him for game day right I think we have to really control and shepherd
them in terms of what we’re giving them, how much they’re biting off. so Tuesday I share with them a normal down cut up, first and second down, seven through 10. And it’s no more than 25 plays, just where it’s like, hey, who are they from an identity standpoint? What’s their process? What tendencies and trends do we want them to know and be able to regurgitate to us when we get out to practice walkthrough on Tuesday? And then from there, I always draw up probably 12 diagrams on a front and back piece of paper.
of our top calls against their top run concepts. What are our normal down concepts gonna be? We call it a fit sheet. And again, if you wanna look at like psychological piece of it, I always put the offense in red, cause they’re the bad guys and I always put the defense in green, cause we’re the good guys, right? And like, you know, I take the time to draw it up in my little chicken scratch and make sure that they see exactly where you need to fit on gap schemes or how it’s gonna work if we’re pressuring and you know, how might that might be tough in certain situations that we’re visualizing those things and appealing to different learners.
John Snell (05:55.054)
Okay.
Ethan Nichol (05:57.379)
You know coming into Tuesday, right when we look at how we structure practice what 20 minutes just working on normal downs But one thing we try to cover right off the bat is short yardage goal line in a five to ten minute segment To me, you know rather than wait until later in the week when you’re mostly just in shells That’s a physical play and if it’s a do-or-die situation, right? You want to know that you’ve fitted up talked about it early in the week. And so We do that then
John Snell (06:18.574)
Thank
Ethan Nichol (06:24.256)
And we only take five to 10 minutes. We don’t want to grind on the guys. But if we know we’re going to get a boot play out of a heavy personnel formation or if we’re going to do something like that, we will have reviewed it by Thursday several times. And we begin early and often on Tuesday. Wednesday is a big third down day for us. They’ll get another third down cut up from us. But we also introduced red zone that day. You know, for us, if we’re going to start to get red zone concepts, we can cover a lot of that on what we call our perfect Thursday. But we want to introduce red zones for the first time they’re not seeing it as the second to last word.
day of the week, you know? So where we hit normal down again on Wednesday, we take 10 minutes on third down and five minutes on red zone. And they get that third down cut up, which I think is valuable. But we also tell them that Wednesday is a screw you Wednesday. So I give them the toughest looks, meaning if we know we’re blitz in one way, I’m going to send Gapsky in the other just to see, hey, how do we fit it up? How do we work through it? You know, what is the tricks of the trade? How can we make that right? know, trick plays.
get double moves or reverses, double passes, anything funky that we’ve seen up to that point, we give it to them on Wednesday. We try to put them in the worst position possible. So that way, you know, number one, we’ve worked through it. But then secondly, if I’m being honest, it gives us a chance to build upon our progress on Thursday. If we want to make Thursday a perfect Thursday, there are looks we want to see to make sure we get it right. But I’d be lying if I told you we hadn’t scripted for success a few times on Thursday to make sure we were feeling good, right? So Wednesday plays into Thursday. And I think from a psychological standpoint,
leaves our guys feeling fresh and confident come Thursday and Friday. And then lastly, Thursday is when we share the red zone cut up. And Friday we do a walk through. And to be honest with you, we get about 30 cards in on a Friday morning walk through bright and early.
You know, for me, we go through every check adjustment, base concepts. We make sure we get one or two rotations of our guys in there. Goal line, short yards, all those things. But then to me, you know, that’s kind of like the cherry on top. One thing that I’ve taken to this year is putting together what I call a success cut up, right? And so we probably have 20 or 30 plays that we share with them on Friday. After our morning walkthrough, we really don’t see them. And you know,
Ethan Nichol (08:38.27)
In that moment, I sent out a cut up of 20 or 30 plays where they see their success from the week, from Tuesday through Thursday. Hey, we fit up this route concept perfect against this coverage. Or man, this run game move, the tight end really sells it on the split zone bypass. So hey, look, you didn’t fall for it. You didn’t bite it. Here’s our DN playing for the quarterback in that situation. Seeing them execute it right.
And knowing that they have the ability to do that to me is really important because I want them to see that they are capable, they are prepared. And we are trying to essentially set what I call a perforated edge for them to be successful. When you have pieces of notebook paper, right, it makes it easy to tear out.
because of that perforated edge, right? Well, we’re giving them a perforated edge on Saturday because we have showed them, hey, this is how it is. This doesn’t replicate game day. isn’t exactly just because you did it right in practice doesn’t mean you’re going to do it right in the game. You still have to execute it. But we’ve perforated that edge to make it easier for you now because you’ve seen yourself in that situation. And now it’s muscle memory, right? you know, I think that’s something that’s really cool for our guys from a psychological standpoint. And we’ve been inclined to even pull clips from last
year’s game, you if we played a previous opponent and similar offense, things like that, guys that are still on the roster that were in a position to make plays, we want them riding into the game feeling, you know, like.
They have absolute confidence, not only in our scheme, but in themselves. And then the last thing we do that we give them Friday afternoon, kind of set in their lockers, is just a front and back sheet of paper. We call it their tips and reminders. know, scouting report on personnel, but also more than anything, our game plan adjustments, tendencies and trends to be aware for in the same situations, normal down third, down red area, right? Like, you we want our guys to think in buckets. Again, I think it’s too much to just give them tape and to assume that they’re going to know everything. But if we know, tight end,
Ethan Nichol (10:30.54)
the game of this back set or no tight end and they’re spreading it out down in distance, right? Like how can we compartmentalize our thinking? And for me, right? Like, you know, have we been perfect? Absolutely not. You know, we just haven’t had a great game this last week, but in terms of our guys’ growth, intelligence, that they’re speaking the same language as us. And these are guys who at a place like BW, we think is a pretty good institution, right? Some guys are engineering majors and they’re fricking swamped with, you know, aerodynamics and quantum mechanics. You know, I got guys that are working for the Cleveland Cavaliers and have to, you know, get out of practice early.
because they’re working opening night or something. So for us, how can we put them in buckets like that so they don’t have to be over flooded with information? That’s the way. And I’m happy to talk scheme and anything else. But I think for me, we let off the, it’s a process thing. And we have stuck to that process from week one and we’ll continue to do it all the way through the end of the year, whether it’s great defensive performances or not, because that’s what I believe in.
John Snell (11:05.038)
you
Ethan Nichol (11:23.362)
We talk about the discipline side of it, that’s the discipline. And I hope if there’s one thing that anyone takes away from, it’s not necessarily copying our process, but it would be how can you consolidate the information into bite-sized digestible chunks that the guys can go and replicate or to execute and understand on game day. And that’s what I think our staff has done a good job of.
John Snell (11:45.856)
I love the idea, Ethan, of the success video. I’m interested in knowing, are you making that clip of all the different positions or just your position when you’re putting that together?
Ethan Nichol (12:01.718)
That’s for the entire defense coach. So one thing I, I task our graduate assistant with is really twofold. Number one, when he makes, when they upload and tag the film every night, one thing we do is first and foremost, we tag every scout card we have with the down and distance and the exact play number we got it from. So when we watch tape the next day, we don’t watch every single clip. We, we look at the stuff they did well, the coaching points that need to be made and things we didn’t do well, but then we also show
the exact clip that we got it from. the card, it was from, you know, an opponent they played week three and this was, you know, hey, a normal down clip, you know, our scout guys for whatever reason are on scouting for a reason. Maybe they’re young, maybe they’re inexperienced or maybe they’re still developmentally deficient in a certain part of their game, right? So to think that it’s going to get run perfectly every time isn’t, it’s just not realistic. So when we show that clip, that’s our way to not only steal film time back with them or we can coach them through, hey, look guys, hey, we see pistol. What are we thinking about?
look and here’s that play, right? Or hey, this is a funky screen, our guys didn’t exactly have the right spacing in their alignment, but this is how it should hit, right? So that’s our way to kind of talk through those things. But then when we do the success cut up, it’s really easy for our graduate assistant because in the plays that I praise any of our guys for, right? He pulls those clips and then it just becomes kind of a living, breathing playlist. And then it’s up to me on Friday morning to just kind of get it down to a more manageable list of 20 to 25 plays for them to see.
And I should mention too, you
We the culture that coach over is created here is something I love being able to reinforce every single Monday when we meet with the guys, you know, when we’re going through the previous week’s film, I always try to pull 10 clips of either. Hey, look, here was us in practice executing it perfectly. Right. And what do know? Game reality was built off of practice execution or look at this, man. This is purely a hustle play, you know, things that we talk about that reinforce our culture to be able to put that in front of them visually.
Ethan Nichol (14:04.158)
is something I’m really passionate about and that’s still true yet even in losses, right? Hey look, it’s no surprise that we didn’t get this right, look here, right? We didn’t get it right in practice and that’s not to berate the guys but it’s to reinforce the importance of the process and then too when we lose it’s also worth highlighting the things that we do really well and demonstrate, you know, that
We still are a really good team. Things didn’t go our way that day. That to me, again, we talked about the psychology of our guys. It’s something I’m really inspired by and really believe in.
John Snell (14:36.086)
think that idea of putting the clip from practice next to a clip from the game that shows the correlation between having success in practice and having success in the game. I think that’s another great idea, Ethan, because again, it helps them understand, again, the correlation and the importance and value of practice. Here is you having success doing it in practice and look how it translated into the game.
Love that idea. Great stuff. Ethan, again, congratulations. Great insight with what you guys are doing, with building your defensive guys up and helping them understand the value of the things you’re doing in practice. Obviously, we want to wish you the best of luck the rest of the way. And really happy to recognize you for the success you had this past weekend. Congrats.
Ethan Nichol (15:33.42)
Thanks again, Coach. Appreciate the time. Go Jackets.