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Thanks again for the input. A little update...It turns out I wasn't struggling as much as I thought. Just a bit of growing pains and frustration over the excelled progress other teams seemed to have over my guys. But after complaints by other coaches and parents, the league did in fact discover a few teams breaking the age rules by having Older players participate in this league. Those teams were forced to get rid of those players of course, but the difference in competition is night and day. Now I understand I am right where I should be with my team. The league overall has a healthier vibe, and the kids are also enjoying and learning more. After a few games and practices we now know our players strong suits. Although we are rotating all players to have a hand at all positions, we do have a core rotation with kids playing mostly at where they excel. We do have one solid QB, several solid runners. A couple decent pass catchers. Though not many of them really grasps the routes, aside from the QB whom seem like understands the plays best. probably why he has come around as the better QB. Because of this I have kept the offense relatively simple and it has helped a lot. First off, moved the QB into a shotgun (more pistol) to allow for the play to develop before the rush comes in. PLaced the RB right next to the QB so as to minimize twisting and turning on simple handoffs. Same with Reverses coming off the WOs. Simple handoffs. The simplifying has allowed the kids to really just get the play off, the rest is up to the athlete to finish it off. Offense is doing well. WEll enough that I will need ti impliment a few more pass plays...just need simple ones. Defense is doing OK, but one thing they need help with is containment. are there any drills to teach the defenders from letting the ball carriers take the sideline all the way to the endzone. We instill in their minds to force the in because that's where the rest of your team is to help...I just don't have a great drill that puts that in action.

First off, Thanks for the reply Hollad. I apologize for the delayed response, but wanted to give an update. We had a set of games this weekend, two a day. The players that showed up to the game were the ones that showed up to practice. I think the players and parents that want to play are they ones settling in. I don't think I'll have problems here, but have addressed it with the families that the more involved the kids are in practice the more involved they will be in the game. Seems to be a good understanding there. The games themselves were a pretty big mess. We were pushed around by bigger and faster boys.I might even say they got away with a lot of illegal rushes and holding, possibly because the more experienced coaches know what they can get away with with the volunteer High School refs they have. But we still want to play our game, but unfortunately it was no where near good enough. I know we are out there to have fun, but even our smallest kid knows when we are getting a beat down. And it's hard for them to have fun when our offense can barely get the ball to the ball carrier before the qb having their flag pulled, or the opposing offenses printing down the sideline every single play. I'd still like to see if there is any input on effective formations that can be useful in this age group with a rush and blocking allowed. Should I go shotgun. SHould I run an empty backfield? Should I play everyone close to Center for maximum blocking opportunities, or should I spread them out to spread the defense? I will say the opposing defense ran a 4-1 zone, often sending 2 downlinemen to rush. WE could barely get the ball out of the QBs hands. On our defense I want to run a 3-2. 1 rusher, 2 safeties. I need the safeties to be our faster mature players because with the way the opposition breaks for the sideline and down the field, I need someone to run them down. I'd like to put them on the line, but the team has issues "swarming" and even though they are better players, the big kids do not do well 1 on 1. As safeties they swarm better than the little ones. Had practice a day ago, worked on teaching the to stay home. Stay in their zone. I don't know if I should tell them to wait until the carrier crosses the LOS, ideally I want them to swarm when he does, but they aren't getting there quick enough, so the runner ends up having way too much space to fly up field.

Happy to have found this place. Just reading some of the things on the forums have been very helpful. I'm a NEW coach for my sons K-2nd grade flag football team. I wasn't expecting to be coach, but was handed the reigns at half time during our first game and had to go from there. The team itself got off to a late start, the old coach perhaps wasn't fully focused on leading them, I ended up with a completely lost team and completely lost coach. Because of this I felt I needed to start from scratch, however I may be regretting it, because the ideas I brought into week 2 were pretty ineffective to the team come our second game. So let me ask if you can help me with a few of my problems. 1. Formations. Old coach had them running out of a twins on one side, single wr on the other. No RB, shotgun. He implemented motion to draw the ball carrier nearer. A few problems I had week 1 was that a) the snap from center to QB was often unclean, resulting in dead plays. Quite a few of them. b ) Not everyone understood "motion." c) Nobody really blocked. Blocking is allowed in this league. d) when motion did work, it was quite obvious who was getting the ball. My solution, start from scratch. To eliminate missed snaps, I brought the qb under center. To simplify, I got rid of motion. To get past defenders, instead of blocking I spread the wr somewhat wide to draw defenders. To make it less obvious who was getting the ball, we used a single RB to take hand offs or have the WR come across for a sweep. Problem. The qb being under center did not give him enough time to receive the snap, turn and make the hand off. The rush was too quick getting to the qb before he can get the ball off. The qb could work on his drop backs a bit, but another element to teach in such a short period. The WR runs also take too long to develop. Blocking still an issue, but we are working on it. In the middle of the game this week we scrapped all our plays, and went on the fly, drawing them up in the huddle. We did twins with a single rb. Pulled the WR in tight to lay some blocks on the rushers and also give us a quicker hand off when running to those WR. My question about formations are, is there an ideal formation/plays that keeps it simple, yet leave minimal holes for the defense to sneak by. I also want to know, should I be running out of shotgun and using motion? 2. Defense. Containment is a big issue. we were burned way too much on the outside. One play drives, where they get to the outside and streak up the sideline for a score. Any drills that can help with this? We are running a 2-3. 3. Rotation. We have about 14 kids on the roster. But I've only met 12 of them, the other 2 "threaten" to come on game day which I fear because the last thing I need is to have to teach football on the fly during a in game play. Happened week one, I accepted it since it was week one, but we should be moving past that. Also, even though we have 12 that I have met, only about 8 are regular practice attenders. I would love to have at least 10 that came to practice regularly, that way I can use two squads, rotate the extra couple in when needed. But I don't know who I'm going to get on any saturday, and I feel compelled to favor those that show for practice. I also have only 3 older kids, guys that are picking up on the game much quicker. Should I feel bad that I am playing those 3 and the regulars SIGNIFICANTLY more than the others? 4. Play types. Is deception more effective than blocking? When I have a run should I be sending the WRs on routes to draw defenders or let them put their hands on the defense. When I'm running a pass, should I do the same and just pick one route to throw to? I'm sure there is more. I am just looking for some advice as new coach.