Things that good coaches do.

[narg]

I think here people mix up a bit being a good coach and having good manners. For example a good coach who sees the opponent's star player at the feet of his dirty player would always try to take him out; but if you have good manners you would think yeah I can take him out but I already killed one of his players, injured another three, I'm winning 2-0 and it's turn 14 - let's cut him some slack - especially as I'd like to play another game against the same coach next week...

Here I think that instead of giving general advice that may be hard to interpret it would be better to be precise, for example by showing a case study, maybe in the form of a puzzle. For example, "the ball carrier is in two tackle zones, it's turn 16, how can you get to score with at least an 80% probability", the solution being that you have to bring two players and do a chain-push to get out of the tackle zones without dodging. I haven't really tried yet to use the BB editor but a simple graph and a short text should do the trick.

On top of that I think that sometimes it's really more of a judgement call. A real life example from my last game: you're playing norse, it's nearly the end of your turn, your berserker with mighty blow and piling on but no tackle is the last player you have to play, you already used your blitz, he's one of the players forming a loose cage around your ball carrier, but he also happens to be next to the opponent's one-turn scorer, a gutter runner with ST3 MA10, sprint blodge and side-step. If you take him out it's potentially a game changer and even if you use piling on your ball carrier is still fairly well protected; however if you don't take him down then because of side step he might end up right next to your ball carrier and with a bit of work your opponent could then get a proper block on your ball carrier. You still have a re-roll and thanks to guard assists you can get 2D on the first and second block on the gutter runner wherever he goes with side step. So the choice is basically to block or not to block. What do you do?

[DoubleSkulls]

On top of those I've seen...

A good coach loses graciously
A good coach doesn't cheat
A good coach learns
A good coach knows knowing your opponent is important

[Spaceman_Spiff]

A good coach understands that his very favorite newly dead player is, in reality, nothing more than a scribble on a piece of paper, or a handful of pixels on a screen, and doesn't let it affect his game.

[nick_nameless]

A good coach understands that his very favorite newly dead player is, in reality, nothing more than a scribble on a piece of paper, or a handful of pixels on a screen, and doesn't let it affect his game.

Bang! Quoted for truth. It's like crying over losing a magic item in a D&D game.