How does a team prepare for the playoffs with four weeks off? ‘Less is more’

ATHENS — Athens Academy center Buck Talley knew Team 48 Day was coming. He just didn’t know when.

But Talley believes Athens Academy coach Josh Alexander picked the perfect time to unleash the annual tradition on his team.

For the second straight season, Alexander is coaching the only high school football team in Georgia with three consecutive bye weeks before the playoffs. The Spartans finished their regular season a week earlier than most of the state and earned a first-round bye in the playoffs, giving them four consecutive weeks of practice without a game.

Alexander, whose team was upset in its first playoff game last season, is taking a different approach to the unusual break this year.

And he started it with a familiar tradition.

Team 48 Day commemorates the 48th year of Athens Academy football. Spartan players run 48 “gassers” — sprints from the goal line to the 50-yard line and back — to celebrate.

The day is an annual occurrence, but it’s never scheduled. Alexander always surprises his team, usually on a bye week.

This year, Alexander held out for the first practice after the regular season, which followed a 49-46 region championship win Oct. 24 at Rabun County.

“We’re coming out here and we’re in stretching lines and stuff, and we went through the first offensive period where we run plays and we go over offensive plays and stuff on air,” Talley said. “And then coach Alexander was like, ‘It’s Team 48 Day.’ There’s people jumping up and down, screaming and hollering and stuff, and it was awesome.

“I can think of teams that maybe might have not been as successful looking at this as like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to run and stuff.’”

Alexander’s second attempt at balancing his players’ focus and rest over four weeks of practice was underway.

Four consecutive weeks of practice were brand new to Alexander last season. The 11th-year head coach knew he needed to curate a plan that would sustain long-term energy and improvement.

“There’s that fine line of staying interested, staying polished and working,” Alexander said. “Last year going into it, I had talked to some college coaches about how they even handle a bowl week or a bowl month.”

Alexander said the college coaches — some of whom have kids at Athens Academy — told him the bowl month is a time to give underclassmen more reps. But at a Class A school like Athens Academy, depth doesn’t resemble a college football roster.

“So I went into last year just saying, ‘Hey, we’re just going to stay steady, stay busy, try to go three if not four days a week, and I got to the week before the game and was like, man, I just feel it,” Alexander said. “You know your team, any coach does. The vibe was like, ‘Man, these guys are tired.’”

Aquinas eliminated Athens Academy the next week, 31-20. It was the same Aquinas team that the Spartans beat 45-22 to open the season.

Junior star receiver Keyon Standifer said the team wasn’t just physically tired. The Georgia Tech commit saw the long break hinder the Spartans’ mental energy, too.

“We weren’t focused,” Standifer said. “We thought just because we beat them the first time, it was going to be a cupcake walk, so we underestimated them.”

Standifer, Talley and other locker room leaders want a better finish to 2025. They feel more equipped to handle the month off this time.

“We’ve been talking about during these dead periods that we want to make stuff differently, and we want to keep the intensity up and keep increasing to that game week,” Talley said.

Practice intensity has been lower than usual since the Rabun County win. The Spartans didn’t practice for six days after an emotional comeback in which they trailed 43-29 halfway through the third quarter.

Alexander could have used the win as a springboard into an intense month, but he let his players rest and revel in the win instead.

“We can celebrate that, hold on to that when you get off for this long,” Talley said. “We’ve played a lot of close games. We had three games last year that were one-score. We had two one-point victories, but I still think that region championship at Rabun, it was nothing like it.”

Alexander planned several team bonding events during last year’s break on top of the regular practice schedule. This year, Alexander has dialed back the time and intensity.

“We’re still getting our running and our lifting in, so it’s not like we’re getting out of shape,” Alexander said. “But going into this four weeks was less is more. We’re going to leave them alone.”

Practices, which usually last at least two hours, have been dialed back to under an hour and a half. There aren’t any team outings to the movie theater or the bowling alley.

The schedule has relaxed to the point that some players have asked Alexander if they can do more. He said players have asked him to open the weight room or allow them to throw and catch on an off day.

“The last two practices, we have thrown and caught as good as we have all year,” Alexander said. “And it was actually shocking because last year, we get to Week 3 and we’re throwing and catching OK, but there’s a lot of dropped balls.”

The plan isn’t to keep the intensity low. The same urgency that just earned a 9-1 season and a Region 8-Class A Division I championship will soon return to practice.

For now, though, Alexander is happy to keep his team rested, relaxed and healing.

“Three Fridays from now, we feel like we’re going to be 100% healthy, unless something happens in practice,” Alexander said. “We feel like we’ve had some good practices. We hope to keep stacking days together like that.”

Alexander and his staff will also spend the next few weeks analyzing their next opponent, the winner of the first-round matchup between Mount Paran Christian and Holy Innocents’.