Daniel Lyons

I am just thrust into a 5-3 defense w/o any notice as of yesterday. To stop the sweep, reverse, and bootleg what does the LB do? I know they take the opposite gap of the DT and NT at C and A. Do they have to follow the ball? I have not seen many youth teams running it down peoples throats in the middle. I see a lot of sweeps, reverses, and bootlegs. How can they not be fooled and help contain?

Most youth teams that run a 5-3, run it as a 5-3 stack so the LB's don't get blocked as often. So you have an odd front T N T with the LB's behind them. Outside the DT's you have the DE's. The DE's are in a 2 pt. with outside leg back (to prevent hooking) and do nothing but contain the sweep (a clever coach will also use them to pick up backs in the flat). It's the DE's job to stop the sweep and bootleg with the outside LB and Corner and finally the safety helping out (along with the rest of the team in pursuit). The 2 corners have outside receiver and contain as well.

Then the teams mostly have a deep safety (a wasted position in youth football in my opinion). This guy's job is usually to find the deepest receiver and stay behind him and take good angles to prevent touchdowns on runs. Why do I say this is a wasted position? Because in order for this guy to be effective he has to be one of the fastest players on the field. Your fastest player is likely your best athlete or one of them. Using your best athlete simply to save touchdowns is a waste. If it's not one of your best players he likely isn't going to be able to run down and tackle the other team's best player in the open field.

Each of your 6 inside players is responsible for one or two gaps. You can choose which gaps for each player depending on your scheme. Most youth coaches won't do this and just have the kids read the block or the backfield and run to the football. This is also a mistake in my opinion. All of the LB's will have a primary gap or 2, but they should also be scraping to the football so they should be helping out on sweeps as well. This takes a lot of drilling and time to learn for kids.

With so many teams running spreads now, you have to have a system and scheme in place for when teams go 4 or 5 wides. Be sure you account for the QB if he is a runner.

The double tight full house backfield teams will do just that try to run it down your throat and sweep when you cheat. Against these teams make sure you don't leave your corners real wide covering no one and not being useful in the run game, you will get out manned on the off tackle play inside and outside the DE.

I coach line for a team that has boys from 8 - 11 YOA. The head coach had over 50 plays in the playbook last year, none of which were diagramed for the boys. This year I got him to cut to 32 plays for the first game and I diagramed them out for the team. Now he wants to add 7 more plays and says he has plans to add 5-10 playes for each week of the season. I'm just wondering how many plays do most teams of this age have? I talked to a coach that was on the team that won the division last year and he said they had 6 running plays and two passing plays. They focused on running the plays to perfection and building skills. My feeling is that 32 plays is a lot for little boys to remember. FYI, we dominated the first game at the line on both sides even though we are smaller.

I think from the tone of your post you know that answer is that it is too many, execution beats scheme every time. 8 - 11 is a huge and inappropriate age spread. I can't imagine many 8 year old's being able to compete with 11 year old's. A great way for them to get hurt IMO.

I think 7-8 you have 2 closely related formations with 2 pass plays growing to maybe 4 as the season progresses and 4 run plays growing to maybe 8 as season progresses. You don't really need more than 6 - 8 run plays at any level, you vary them with formations and motion as you advance in age.

9-10 you can do 2 formations growing to 3 formations and you can add a simple passing tree. You can also start traps and pulls at this age.

11-12 you can do 3 formations (I never do more than 3 at the youth level, I actually do 2 with simple word adjustments for positions like invert, tight or wide) and you can add more complex plays like screens and shovel passes and deeper routes. I am coaching an 11 and 12 year old team this year we already have 5 TD passes in 2 games.