Very hard to coach, but very important. And to mau's credit, some kids DO have trouble ever picking it up, regardless of coaching. But a coaches job is to help maximize this IQ. I think jay wright may be the best. That read and react type motion of his is beautiful. He coaches offensive "concepts" like a savant
I'm a college coach in a different sport and it is very difficult to teach sport IQ. Some kids understand the game where it's much more fluid, other kids just can't do the little things that make a very big difference. That IQ just doesn't come naturally it's an indication of how they were coached from when they were young - if a kid has never been taught to find and move into space, it's very hard to get them to grasp that concept on top of all the other things that are being thrown at them when they get to school. They get it intellectually, but it's not natural for them to do so they're a half a step slow. Some guys are looking for a playbook to tell them to go x distance and do y, but that's not reality for most sports as most sports are much more fluid than football.
You teach the theory and 10,000' view of what's we want to happen (here's the strategy and how we're looking to exploit X and here's animations to show it), then when it comes to putting it into practice the athletes with the good foundation of coaching get how things need to be finessed when a defense is present and active. They know things like understanding how to use your hips to manipulate the defense and how a defenders head will tell you when to cut and how to fill space to create opportunities.
I spend plenty of time shaking my head and yelling WTF are you doing we just went over this two minutes ago.
