The Lazy Student, The Grieving Student, The Sports Fan: make the deadline for reports a curve instead of a cliff. Each day of delay costs some percentage of the grade.

This was standard practice when I did my first university degree. It seemed to work well and while I never handed in anything late myself I approved in principle.

Interestingly in my later courses at universities that were (and are) more prestigious (at least in the traditional and Arts/Science/Medicine kind of fields) they would not consider that sort of practical system. Far too set in their ways to do that sort of thing. (And on a related note I'd never have done a computer science degree there - they teach programming primarily in C.)