The 25 most overused cliches used by football coaches during interviews

When you spend a large amount of time in front of the media and cameras, certain habits are bound to develop. For coaches, that means the use, and overuse of coaching cliches when talking to the media.

You all know what I'm talking about - those boring and generic responses to media questions before and after practice, as a coach leads his team in for halftime, or at the podium after the game. Sometimes they're the only way to answer an even more generic question, while for some guys speaking in coaching cliches has become a habit.

Even coaches like Steve Spurrier, who always told the brutal truth and was always good for a notable sound byte during an interview, fall victim to using coaching cliches in droves.

The members of the media that are behind the questions and recorders hate them, and there's no way coaches are going to stop using them, so we might as well have some fun here at the end of June and mock them a bit.

For the sake of this article, I broke the cliches into a few different categories, including; cliches used all the time, after a practice, halftime / sideline comments and cliches that are shared with the press after a game.

Timeless coaching cliches used all the time:

- "...one game at a time."

- "We need to play 60 minutes of good football."

- "There are no easy games in this league."

- "We can't afford to look past this team."

After a practice:

- "I liked what I saw today."

- "I'm happy with the way that our guys performed today."

- "There was great [insert adjective here - excitement, enthusiasm, energy, swagger, etc.] today at practice."

- "We have a long way to go" or "We're not where we need to be yet, but we're getting closer."

- "We have to focus on the fundamentals."

Halftime / sideline comments:

- "We need to play more consistently if we want to win this one."

- "We have to get more stops on defense."

- Some form or variation of "We need to score more points."

- "Offensively, we need more explosive plays" or "We need to be more efficient with the ball."

- "We need to do a better job of stopping the run," or "We need to do a better job of pressuring the quarterback."

- "We have to play how we're capable of playing."

- "We have to control the tempo."

After a game:

- "I'm really proud of our guys [and how they played, battled, etc.]."

- "Our guys gave it everything they had" or "they left everything they had out on the field"

- "Turnovers were the story in this one," or "Field position really played a big role in this one."

- "We didn't make enough plays to win this one."

- "You have to give our opponent credit," or "We beat a very good team today."

- "Both teams were playing at a high level."

- "The game was really a lot closer than the final score would indicate."

- "This team showed a lot of [pride , poise, character, heart, etc.] today."

- "We didn't execute today."

Have one that isn't listed? Let me know @CoachSamz or via email at doug@footballscoop.com

About eight months ago, Weird Al Yankovic did a video mocking "Every Press Conference Ever," and since it's related, and pretty funny, I've included it below.

https://youtu.be/oXAW2qd65nA