macvolcan

Looking for what you have your players communicate while on defense between each other when running a zone defense. Obviously there is: "pass pass pass" on pass plays "run run run" on running plays "ball ball ball" when its a pass play and the ball is in there air. (I personally prefer saying it 3 times quick vs an elongated "pppaaaaaaaaaass") Perhaps they even yell out "reverse" when there is a reverse (although this is probably coming from the coaches). Do you have kids yell out anything when offensive players have traveled through their zone and they aren't following them? (seems valuable from re-enforcing what you want that player to do more so than the other player hearing that someone is passing into their zone). Anything else you use to help your defenses communicate?

I personally use a wrist-coach for every player (I personally use the X100 colored wristbands, and each position is taught as a color instead of the position name ie: QB=Purple) that has a look up sheet from A-Z and 2 or 4 columns of colors. (so either 52 or 104 combinations depending on which I am going with, which really is way more than I need) that compartmentalizes each assignment. Last page of the 3 page wristband I have a compartmentalized diagram of what their assignment is (route number and run plays they have for their position). I just yell in the combination, on the 2 column sheets (for younger teams) I have an alphabet of superhero characters and 2 colors, I just yell out the name and color IE: "Batman Blue". For the 4 column sheet I have just the letters and kids know just to go off of first letter, IE: Apple Blue and Alligator Blue are the same play. I mainly do this for a couple reasons: 1. I have very limited actual practice time with kids before games start. 2. I like to be able to move them around for the experience. 3. in practices I have them run no huddle to maximize the number of reps they get, and I really prefer to not have the defense know what the play is coming. 4. I am always trying to tinker and I can do this without having the kids relearn the playbook, I can just adjust a couple assignments or where I want a couple kids to line up. It works great for my purposes, but I also find its a lot of upkeep, given a couple practices my defense starts to memorize some of the call sheet or they start trying to guess my plays and I end up needing to change it up or I see them start cheating on their assignments. Disadvantages though are like Whiskey mentioned it is a bit of a crutch as kids become very dependent on it, it is a lot of upkeep, and if you mess something up on the playsheet before a game you are kind of stuck with it, not to mention if you don't laminate the sheets prior to putting them in the wristband you get some of the ink rub off on the plastic and is a pain to clean. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- f you don't want to go that route, a Singular wristband is a nice option and put it on the QB, have them quickly huddle and you yell in the number of play, QB finds play and rattles off assignments, label your run plays something fun or have kids name them and they will remember them better. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you don't like the wristband route I think you go with a more traditional route of rotating players in with the play while simplifying the verbiage, cutting significantly down the fat on the playbook and increase the memorization. Hope that helps and good luck.

I'm not sure that telling you "build your offense around these 5 plays" is going to help you, its really going to come down to your own personal style and the kids that you have on your team. Some of the material I have read recommends boiling what you do down to its simplest form, or 1 play, or one thing that you intend to do really well, then putting the building blocks around that to compliment it. In Tackle football this is often broken down to: The Power, Zone run, Read Option, jet sweep, or something similar, or it could be just a fundamental belief of Speed, spreading teams out/getting ball to fast guys in space, or we are just going to out power you. I personally start my offense with: How will I get everyone the ball? For me, my smartest kid (and hopefully one of my better athletes) is typically my QB (he touches the ball every play, and in my league he is allowed to run so really don't want him devoid of athleticism), often my best Athlete (if its not the QB) lines up at essentially a TE slot as almost any route he runs will start closer to the QB (so the QB can get it to him easier), and on handoff plays it hits very fast and gets one of my faster athletes to the edge, My play that goes off this is a counter that after the QB fakes a handoff to TE he then hands off to running back going in the opposite direction (even on handoffs to the TE the QB then does a fake to the RB so the defense gets used to seeing the QB doing that). So to get your first play consider the following: You say you plan to build primarily on the run game, have you given thoughts to where you will put your best athlete? Think about how your opponents are likely to line up against you, what is a play that you feel pretty confident going against most defenses that is built on solid fundamentals of the game, particularly a play that works well with the type of kid you plan to put in this position. For your Second play, consider how if you were on the defensive side of the ball, what would you do to stop play number 1. Lets say you have a TE around or a Jet Sweep as your first play, because of how quick of a hitting that play is, defensive players may vastly over compensate on the handoff motion, that a counter to the other side would be very difficult to stop. For the entire team both of these plays look identical, only difference is who gets the ball. I would keep adding the other plays in this manner of thinking who you want to get the ball to and the areas of the field you want to attack. If defense spreads out and leave middle open you want to be able to take advantage of that, if defense condenses you want to be able to attack on the perimeter, etc. As far as your passing plays go, sounds like you know you don't want to pass that frequently, have you given thoughts to the actual frequency? 10%, 20%? If you are going to only pass 20% of the time, i would structure your practices in the same manner (that you aren't practicing passing more than 20%) and that for every pass play, you have 4 running plays. _________________________________ For me personally when planning out the offense i tend to try to compartmentalize the plays as much as possible. If I point to "billy" and say block, then point at "johnny" and say Spiderman, all billy is worried about is blocking the closest guy, while Johnny knows he executes the one play that he gets the ball. On next play perhaps I tell Billy "Flash", and Johnny "block", In this manner my plays are bottlenecked by the QB, which tends to be the smartest player on the team (or atleast the one that will practice the plays at home). ----------------------------------------------------- I hope this makes sense and helps. Sorry not more specific but I feel what you need isn't "here is 5 plays run them", but rather a methodology of how to narrow your already existing system/playbook down to 5 starter plays. As a side note, I completely disagree that "handoffs are simple" at this age and strongly agree with cazador suerte around exchanges, getting kids to remove false steps and taking the handoff w/o hesitation and at full speed is something I spend a LOT of my practice time on all year long and even by the end of the year I still don't feel it's as crisp as I want ideally (granted I work with pretty limited practice time). Also a "simple handoff" right up the middle can often get some huge yardage against the right defense w/ the right runner, forces the defense to adjust which helps open up passes and runs to the outside, and it can also be a good play to help spread the ball to some of the kids not quite as quick, while still lulling the defense to sleep for the next big play.

Beginning preparations for this years upcoming season. Kids will be 5th grade this year (bound to have some new kids as some have moved up to tackle). My biggest goal for this year is to try to really simplify passing game down for the QB to make it easier for progressions. There are 6 eligible receivers in 7 on 7. so I have elected to break the reads into 1/2 field reads. The receivers consumption of the play will not change, they will still get the number of route that they are to run, the QB will instead digest the information as 'concepts'. I have broken it into 5 passing concepts that I plan to install this season (1x at a time until I feel they have it, may not get to all of them but gives me a good foundation), in addition I can call 1 read passing plays (QB reads 1 guy and if not open takes off running). I will deliver the play to the QB simply as "Pass-Concept for left side/Concept for Right side" or IE: Pass- Slants/Smash, to keep it as simple as I can there will be a reference on his wristband that covers what each concept is, he will choose at the line of scrimmage which side he will go with (for now I am not including any additional logic other than to visualize the routes against the defense and go with what they have more confidence in. 3 step drop they look at first read, if not open, move to read 2, if not open read 3, if thats not open take off running. Feet should tell when they are going to next read (or atleast that is the goal). Concepts I decided on (and their names): Smash - Outside receiver runs a "0" (smoke), TE/Slot receiver runs a "6" (corner route), receiver in middle (RB/Center) runs a "9" (go). Slants- Outside and inside receiver run a "3" (slant route) RB or center runs to the flat. Follow- Outside receiver runs a "5" (IN/Dig route) slot/te runs a "1" (drag), RB/center runs to the flat Scissors- Outside receiver runs a "7"(post), slot/TE runs a "6" (flag route), RB/center runs to flat. Verticals- outside receiver runs a "9" (go), slot/TE runs a "9" (go), RB/Center runs to flat. The goal of all of these is to create a Horizontal/Vertical stretch to stress any zone that we might be playing, while still having the flexibility that if they are playing man coverage we have a good opportunity to beat our man and complete the pass. In theory at least these reads are similar enough that I should be able to get it programmed into young 10/11 year old minds, while still staying relevant enough that it translates if they decide to take it to the next level (tackle). Attachedfootball plays.pdf is a copy of what QB would have reference material wise on their wristband (stripped down to the passing plays). Any feedback/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

For the teams that I coach, the QB is by far the toughest position as they have the largest amount they have to remember, and I limit that spot to only a couple of kids (1 plays one half, one plays the other half, and another one as an alternate that steps in if one of the first two aren't there), aside from that I tend to base it off of the kid. Most of the kids I felt fine limiting them to two positions on offense and two positions on defense, there are some kids that really get out of their comfort zone and I limit them to just one position, and there are other kids that will take a copy of the playbook home and work on it w/ mom and dad, and for those kids I tend to move them around a bit more to keep them challenged. That being said I have an approach similar to 'cazador suerte' in that I set up the plays to spread the ball around and therefor don't need to move the kids around to get them the ball. As far as whether or not you should be in the huddle, I think if your league allows it and its the norm for other coaches to be in there, I would go ahead and continue calling your plays from the huddle, it allows for more coaching opportunities and for you to constantly give feedback in real time (encouragement, on the spot corrections, and re-enforcement on what their assignment is). I also think if call plays from the sideline and do not go a wristband route, you will find yourself shrinking your playbook in half atleast, with those concerns aside 4th grade is the age group I would consider doing it and not any earlier.

I think a lot of it is going to come down to how much time you have with the boy. If you only have a few minutes with him, giving him a bit of advice/direction probably will have little to no affect. If one were to have a lot more time to work with him, emphasizing why it is important for him to learn how to take a snap, perform a dropback and utilize his feet to tell him when to go to the next read. He has to understand the benefit of learning the mechanics or else he won't spend the countless hours to build it into his muscle memory. He will have to begin to learn timing of throws to different routes in the tree, as well as begin to introduce a few passing 'concepts' (such as: smash, sail, levels, slant/arrow, curl/flat, etc). I think the most important thing though for him at this age whatever you do is try to keep the game fun, he will need to put work in to get to progress properly, but you don't want to put much pressure or overwhelm him too much with critiquing of his throwing motion or game all together. If the game isn't fun he very well may burnout and quit before he ever even begins to touch on his potential. One resource I keep finding myself going with developing QB's is: video of Jim Harbaugh's coaching clinic from when he was younger, he touches on a ton of things about mechanics, on what really hammer on (making sure the arm doesn't fall below the shoulder) while still understanding that not every successful QB is going to throw the same way (and thus be careful to not over-coach the throwing motion).If he is primarily working out with himself and has little mentorship in his solo practices, you will have to just emphasize on the 'why' he must work on the things he is weak at, and what it will do for him (throwing with his body will allow him to throw farther and more accurate than just using his arm, utilizing his feet will help him know when he is supposed to move from 1st read to 2nd read, etc), then hope he actually spends time working on it.

If the referees are all agreeing that you aren't violating the rules I don't see an issue, if you are concerned about the rules I recommend you reach out to whoever is the commissioner of the league for a rules confirmation. But one of the biggest reasons for coaching flag football is to give kids the skill set and confidence if they decide to move on to tackle football. While you cannot teach "blocking", what you are teaching them translates very well when they move up to tackle (finding someone to block, don't stop until the whistle blows), not to mention the benefits of team work and wanting to help your team mate succeed.

The one thing I would be a bit worried about and might casually mention to the refs is him disrupting the snap count. Most leagues have rules against that sort of thing (or perhaps I mis-interpreted what you said). As Charlie above mentions, your best bet is to tell your players to tune him out like he isn't there and just focus on what they are supposed to do.

Biggest things for me are: 1. Make the handoffs/fake handoff exchange, as fast as possible, always need to work on making the action quicker, try to remove any false steps in the QB's action on the handoff. You don't want to give defenses any extra time to react, and the faster the action the more the mind inserts what they want to see (that the ball is in the runners hands). If the runner takes the handoff at half speed, or doesn't look like he is trying to protect the ball, no one will believe he has it. The mesh point needs to be legit, if on handoffs the runner is getting lazy and stopping at the meshpoint on real handoffs to try to keep space to run laterally (bad habit that I see some of my faster kids start doing) it will kill your fake handoffs. 2. You want the fake and the real handoff to look as similar as possible to the fake action, In my league the QB is allowed to run, so every handoff I have him perform some sort of bootleg or other running action (atleast 4-5 steps) pretending that he still has the ball (that corresponds to another play where everyone does exactly the same action except QB keeps the ball). I want defenses to be used to seeing the QB run down their backside after a handoff, so that when I do a fake handoff my guy is past them before they realized they pulled the wrong guy's flag. If your QB can't run, think about what you would have him do on a fake, and make have him do that on the real handoff as well, whether that's pretending to do another handoff, getting set to throw.

Couple of different options. IF I was going to hand off the first time, I cleared a way for my runner. If I was going to fake the hand off, I sent my receivers opposite of the player next to the center. The reason this usually worked is we played against 2-3 zones quite a bit. Most of the time they sent the middle of their 3 as a rusher leaving the other two DB's to defend against pass plays. The run, then the fake a few plays later usually would get the DB shifting just enough to allow my receiver to get behind them. See the attach. Hope it makes sense. The FLOOD play was already on that sheet so I left it. Curious if you have any problem with the QB scrambling to his left and making that throw or is this kind of a shovel pass? (mute point if QB is left handed)

I think Coach Rob covered this pretty good, but couple things to add: "How Many Plays do I plan on running?" As Coach Rob mentioned, keep it simple on players, I would go as far as only have 1 formation at this age group (personal preference, easier to focus on little things if they only have to remember 1 place to line up) and very few plays for them individually. Compartmentalize the assignments so they only have to worry about doing their piece, and I wouldn't give each kid more than 3-4 different assignments to memorize. If you are allowed to be in huddle make sure you have a visual reinforcement of what you want them to do (preferably color coded). "What should I spend the most amount of time on in Practice?" Fundamentals/execution (as mentioned above). Keep each drill short, with as little of standing in line and verbal instruction as possible. The more they are moving the more they are learning at that age. Have multiple drills ready, if it isn't working be flexible and move to next drill. "Organized Chaos". If it all possible get help so you can keep groups small and wait time between reps at a minimum. If they are standing in line you will lose them. "Favorite Drill for this age group?" Sharks and Minnows, Tag, scrimmage, pretty much any drill that they can learn something while having fun as you will keep them doing something positive and not thinking about something more exciting than your practice. "Biggest Issue to Plan for?" Attention span of less than 3 seconds and spreading the ball around.

I do use a coaching call sheet of sorts, more of my own creation at the moment. At the moment my thoughts are that I really don't need a different play for 1st and 10, 2nd and 6, 3rd and 2. Realistically any play in playbook has potential to get atleast 5 yards. I do have some plays set aside that I feel have higher potential to pull me out of a 3rd and forever. For me the situational gameplan given the length of the games we play and my goals of the game, are going to make things more complex for myself than they really need to be. That being said I try to think about the various plays I have in my playbook, what do I want to attack with each one? What are the strengths and limitations of each one? As a coach I find myself constantly at odds with how complex my playbook should be, as I don't want to sacrifice tools that I might need, and I also don't want to sacrifice execution of a play and try to do too much. So when installing the playbook that I intend to use, I try to put the plays in that I feel will best match the talent level I have (modify them as needed), but ensuring I have the main tools I feel that I will need given the defenses I expect to play and the likely adjustments/overadjustments/ and mistakes I anticipate the defense to make. To kind of walk though what I do, I have a list of 10-15 plays for each half that are planned around the kids I plan to have on the field. Out of those first 10 plays I have written in 7 plays (1x for each player) and 3 other plays that I want to run, put in an order that I will hopefully attacking defense, as well as seeing how they are responding to some of my different looks. So Play 1. I go in and already know what I am going to run. If it is successful and we have a good positive play, (or even if we don't) I tend to go to the second play, unless I see something unbalanced or unsound about the defense, in which case I jump over to my packaged group for what I want to attack. If things just flat out don't work on first or second play and its 3rd and forever, then unfortunately have to try to jump to one of my plays that I have a high confidence in both the player and play to potentially get big yards and get offense moving again. If things are working and I have no compelling reason to jump around, I have on some games just ran through my script in order, when things are working playcalling is easy, its when the team is asleep at the wheel that playcalling becomes much more challenging. My reasoning behind doing this is a variety of reasons: 1. I put a lot of thought between games on how I want to attack the defense and how to try to get each player the ball, I trust my judgement of the time that I spent working on it in which I am not rushed and can plan it better than I do for my judgement of just grabbing first play that comes to my head. 2. I really want to put all the kids in the best chance to succeed as well as give them as many opportunities as I can. I feel by trying to get the play in faster, we can get lined up faster and at the end of the game that might amount to more offensive plays that we get to execute as the game goes on, also delay of game penalties are real drive killers and 99% on the coaching to prevent. 3. It is much more relaxing to call a game when you already know what you have a play ready, often times things come up on the sidelines to distract you, or you want to re-enforce a behavior or correct a behavior that you saw moments ago in the game to a player. Your mileage may vary, ultimately do what makes sense to you, if it isn't working don't be afraid to change things up.

Also to add: I experimented some, with some good success, of having a few different groupings of 5-6 plays to exploit certain looks I was getting from the defense, sometimes can't anticipate everything but I had a list pregame of: 1. What I wanted to do if they were playing man to man, 2. What I wanted to do if they crowded the middle. 3. What I wanted to do if they didn't adjust to a trips formation (we play 7 on 7). 4. What I wanted to do if they spread out to match up with our alignment. + some other things I could think of. The point is that I could get the next play in quickly as I already had the next play ready to go.

What I like to do is similar to Coach Rob in that I like to plan to try to get all my players atleast a touch. I have a tendency to call my initial plays in a way that probe the defense and are giving some of my players that are not world beaters a chance to make a play. I gameplan ahead of time the order in which I HOPE to have the game go. I also have a list of plays that I feel very comfortable about that I look to choose from in situations in which I need a play to keep the offense going. At 9-10 years old I am perfectly fine showing them the real play then showing the defense the fake version on the next play, although I usually only like to do that when I either A. See defense is overcommitting one way, B. Defense is fundamentally playing unsound and/or not adjusting to my different formation looks, or C. We have had some good success on the "regular" version of the play, if defense sees you are having success at a given play they want to "shut it down" and usually opens the alternative options (fakes) up a lot more. When things are working, playcalling is simple, I just run through my script (in our league a whole game ends up being around 25 total offensive plays or less) or focus on who hasn't gotten the ball yet. If things are not working for whatever reason I start trying to get the offense going with some plays I feel we can execute well to start getting some kind of rythm to the offense.

For QB mechanics, I have been a big fan of this one: Jim Harbaugh doing a coach clinic when he was younger, covers a lot on what to coach and not over coach on throwing motion. This one isn't probably one you can expect the kids to watch and absorb like the ones you put up there, but really good for coaches to watch.

You hit the nail on the head with how much there is to cover and can't get it all. I think I was doing well with the taking the handoff at full speed emphasis for a while, but may have slipped to focusing on running forward (not backwards), not stopping to see if they got your flags, and other coaching points. One of my RB started to gain confidence and started to take the handoff stop reverse field and get big yards becaus of his speed, my other RB would see him do that in game and think they could do that as well (but obviously not have the speed and would get stopped). My WR were doing good at the End around taking it at full speed till a couple of them got a ball in the gut, then became more instinctively tentative and would slow down prior to the mesh point. Basically a lot of factors that happen throughout a season. I guess the stumbling block I was trying to get to was that with the kids beginning to see success I think they were thinking "we have got this down" so when I was trying to re-inforce it, I didn't have their attention in the same way as I did earlier in the year.

Finished my second season coaching in rec league (which is 7 on 7, QB can run, rush is 5 seconds or if QB leaves tackle box or hands ball off can rush immediately), age group was 4th grade. Coach is NOT allowed in the huddle. This year only had 3 returning players (including my son, there were several players i had last year that were scattered among other teams), had 13 players on the team. All in all had what I feel was a very successful season, all kids improved, had fun, contributed and most of all played well as a team. In the end we finished 2nd in the league, barely out of standings of the first team. Some successes Made a real point to reach out to parents early and get their buyin and support. I was able to recruit 3 assistants which helped out immensely. I did find it to be extra work on my end to properly manage the 3 parents to assist (giving them enough kids and a drill/task that was well within their comfort zone, while still hitting all of the critical drills I felt were needed), but in the end vastly paid off as I was able to keep a very fast pace practice that kept the kids doing something different about every 10 minutes or so of each practice. I kept the fun drills for the end of practice as something to strive for, although there was the occasion that we didn't make it there for various reasons (often times would get some late arrivals at start of practice that pushed what I needed to work on farther back), but I attempted to compensate this at some of the other practices. Most fun drills: the drills the kids had the most fun: 1. Punting/receiving punts -- while we are allowed to punt by declaring to, it is not something I made a priority of, at one of the last practices before the first game I had "auditioned" anyone that wanted to punt, with anyone that thought they could catch it spread out as an attempt to return it back. Immediate hit with the kids, and several practices where I let them vote on what they wanted to do, I was shocked at how often they voted to "practice punting". 2. Sharks and minnows -- Still a big hit, although interest not as high as it was in 3rd grade. 3. Ultimate football -- Much bigger hit this year than last year, and they really seemed to enjoy "players vs the coaches". 4. Tag -- still a big hit. Some other lessons learned: 1. In the passing game, progressions at this age can be difficult to teach, QB's at this age very much like to "scan the field", and it doesn't help that all of the receivers call for the ball. Once they begin to get it though, passing game began to take off and defenses fell apart. I did have to reign in my ambitions and simplify the passing game down to a few plays to allow the QBs to get the progressions right. 2. Never underestimate the importance of the center exchange. While I spend a lot of effort attempting to make sure snaps are included pretty much every drill, I did find that there are certain snappers that the QB just works better with, and does not seem like something you can just "insert player x". A different snapper can completely throw off the rythm and timing of the entire offense. There is also a huge obstical to overcome at the beginning to get kids to overcome the fear of touching the rear end of another player. 3. Moving players around from position to position creates a lot of uncertainty and loss of confidence, even if the the move should be very simple. I would find that I would take a player very comfortable at playing Left WR and move them to Right WR in a scrimmage and suddenly they would begin to panic "I haven't practiced this spot before, I don't know what to do". This seemed pretty uniform across my team, although there were a couple of kids that had little problems transitioning across several positions. Something to keep in mind though when building your offense, if you move your players around too much you will throw off their confidence and rythm. 4. The athleticism between 3rd grade and 4th grade players is HUGE. I found that some of the things it took me to teach kids that had never played at 3rd grade took me significantly longer than teaching the same tasks to kids new to football in the 4th grade. The amount they were able to grasp really shocked me. I over grasped a couple times, but for the most part felt that I really needed to work to challenge them. Where I need more answers: Hit kind of a plateu at some point in the season in which the kids had a string of success, but still needed a lot of work on the little things to take it to the next level (IE: taking a handoff at full speed, emphasizing the fake, catching the ball with their hands, etc etc). Reached a point where I really wanted to work on little things but kids felt they had it down pat, so scrimmaging against each other, or some of the drills I was doing, the practice ran a bit stale. Managed to get through a lot of it just by the sheer bribary of "if we get through these drills we can do fun drills at the end", but it still doesn't feel quite right. I did try to get a higher grade team to scrimmage us, but had difficulties convincing the coaches of the older grade to see the benifits of scrimmaging against a lower grade. Curious if anyone else has had this problem and how they dealt with it? How big of jump is the athleticism from 4th grade to 5th? I intend to coach again next year, but curious how high I should reach in my season plan for next year? I am thinking if I get a good group of kids to explore more in the passing game and introduce some option (see how it goes).

Small update here. I ended up taking the advice not to add this agenda to my practice time, have plenty of other stuff that needs refinement anyways. But I did have a talk with the parent of the boy in question (as well as the boy directly) and told him some reasons he wasn't able to run very fast and that with some practice at home he would be able to run faster. I don't know how much they are practicing at home, but the boy is a lot faster now (still one of the slowest on the team, but no longer THE slowest) and seems to be much more engaged and trying harder. Mechanics definitely look to getting better already (still a long ways to go though) thanks again for all the advice!

Great story! thanks for sharing, really sounds like you did everything the right way.

Couple things to add as I have been experimenting as the season went on. 1. Teaching the route tree to 4th grade kids is pretty easy, even though I had almost none of my returning players and on limited practice time, they all grasped the tree pretty easily. They at times will still struggle with 'depth' of the route, and cutting crisply, they will more or less run the route you want. 2. Teaching kids to run and catch at 3rd grade is difficult, 4th grade becomes much easier for most of the route tree (only have a couple of kids able to do a go route successfully), the stumbling block for me at 4th grade is catching on the run IN TRAFFIC. some kids get it, some kids takes a lot of reps to start seeing success, but when it come your offense really starts to explode. 3. Teaching the QB's progressions. This was and is the biggest challenge for me so far. I ended up stripping down the playbook into 4 pass plays and a lot on reps and progressions with the QBs. I even went as far as putting the passing diagram on the QB's wristband and giving the reads a unique name. This seemed to really work for the kids, I now have 3 QBs that are going through 3 progressions on these plays (if no one is open taking off running), and trying to coach up a 4th. Granted it helps that defenses can't rush for 5 seconds (which actually works out to be 3 seconds time). A drill I have been using kind of on the fly (not sure if it has any official name): Center, QB and 2 receivers vs 2 defenders. I then tell each receiver what they are doing (defense can know it as well), IE: Outside receiver does a 'go' route, inside receiver does a corner route, Center snaps and runs to the flat forming a triangle of reads, QB reads deepest route to shallowest. (The QB knows this only as "Sail") As there is only 2 defenders vs 3 receivers someone will always be open if executed right. I still see some hesitation in throwing the ball, but this seems to have really helped with building the QB's confidence in this area. ___________________________ If I were to start over, I would probably remove the quick out from my route tree as that is a very difficult route for QB's at this age to throw accurately, and I don't feel I would lose anything by removing it. After this season is over I am going to go back to the drawing board on building 'combo' routes to make it easier on the QB, but still feel that limiting the passing plays that the QB has to manage is the right way to go. While I can theoretically run any combination of routes, if I expect to have the QB get past the first read it definitely needs to be practiced with about the same amount of reps that a Handoff type play would to be executed correctly (after of course kids are running the routes as they should). In some ways I feel what I am trying to do is a bit of an over-reach at this grade level, but its all foundational sound, we are primarily running into either Man defense or Cover 1 zone (at 7x7 this works out to be in effect a 1x5x1 zone), some sort of high/low read that puts one of the corners in a bind becomes pretty high success with some practice. Other things that might be done that would be simpler and easier to manage. 1. HB swing pass, seen other teams do this as a high % play, often won't get huge yardage, but even short completions help spread the defense out a bit. A stick or snag route might be easy to handle for the kids if you are willing to take some other routes out of your tree. 3. I think if I were to start all over with new kids I would stick with naming the routes by their name instead of by a number, easier for kids to visualize, although in some ways I like the numbering as I may start allowing the QB's to occasionally change some routes, particularly if they know the receiver is in a "smoke" route (0 in our playbook), as I have been teaching the QB that if the defender is anywhere next to the receiver you will need to look at your second progression, need to decide if you are throwing smoke before you take the snap as it needs to be out quick. This is an important route for us because most of the teams in the league have all of the kids on the line condensed, we are the only one that is able to line up in multiple different looks and spread the defense out, if the defense comes out and doesn't align properly a quick "smoke" route to the outside is a good/easy pickup. I am still open to any suggestions if anyone has them, I am always trying to make it as easy as I can for the kids to handle, the more they can handle the more complex we can be and the more creative ways I can be to getting different kids the ball in successful means. (Simple is complex).

Sounds to me like you are doing the right things, encouragment, giving him plenty of opportunities. Sorry that I am not all that helpful, but keep up the good work, it sounds like you are doing a great job. Sometimes you can lead the horse to water but can't make him drink.

Can you cover some of your coaching points for proper running technique, or point me to some sort of reference material that is applicable to 9 year olds. With limited practice time I have to be very selective with what I pull out of my normal practice for any kind of speed/agility training, but I do think there could be a place for it if I can keep it fun.

Have a player this year that given his age and size I would expect to be able to run a lot faster than he does. His FULL speed run looks that of a quarter to half speed jog. (he is 9 years old almost 10). Mechanics wise, he takes very short hard pounding steps and doesn't swing his arms at all, as an experiment I asked him to try to swing his arms more rapidly and take bigger strides. For a single 15-20 yard run he seemed to run at almost double the speed I had seen from him previously. Of course next practice all was forgotten and he was back to his slow trek, pesumably reverting back to muscle memory. From past experience for me it seems to take either a LOT of reps to re-train established muscle memory, and unless the player has a strong desire to do what you want, you will have to use a lot of time in practice to get them to break the bad habbits. I certianly have better things to do with limited practice time than have players run sprints up and down the field (aside from our occasional games of 'sharks and minnows' at end of practice). Curious if anyone has any experience with this, is this something I should keep pursuing? Is there a good reference somewhere that discusses proper running mechanics?

The biggest thing that makes this open-ended and difficult to answer is I don't know what age group you are talking about. I am not sure I am filled with a bunch of advise or any magical bullet to give you, I haven't coached 5 on 5 and have never been in this exact spot. That being said I think you are doing the right things. Usually the keys to beating a team better than you are: 1. Shorten the game (ball control) 2. Increase the variance (take a lot more risks, add some trick plays etc) 3. Gamble on defense, figure out what they like to do in a circumstance, gamble and take that away (make them beat you outside of their standard gameplan). Offensively it sounds like you have the right plan, dink/dunk, with some increased risk (maybe add some trickery) Defensively, I think you may need to try to mix it up a bit, if you rush change up where the rusher is coming, or don't rush and gamble on what they like to do. Maybe also have some pre-snap movement to try to confuse the offense. I think zone is likely your best bet as it isn't reliant on your kids being the better athletes, on plays that you are not rushing, I think I would have one of my players follow around their best player to try to force them to go to options they aren't as comfortable with. All that said, try not to get too caught up in winning/losing. The most important thing is all about trying to let the kids have fun, spread the ball around, keep it light and fun, if your likely to lose at least have the moral victory that everyone on the team got a chance to either catch or run with the ball. One of my favorite stories I have read on this board so far is Coach Rob talking about one of his basketball teams, he told them if they passed the ball 100 times the whole team would get some sort of prize. When they played they got absolutely destroyed on the scoreboard, but when the kids hit 100 passes you would have thought they won the championship. Your victory on the field doesn't have to be on the scoreboard.

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