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Coaches,

At our last game, we ran into the "Fastest Kid in Third Grade" as my son and another kid from the same school exclaimed. And not only is he the fastest, but also the "jukiest", etc. as well most likely. I looked on the forum before posting about how others handled this situation. I ran into a post by runningeagle "Suggestions For Stopping A Great Running Back" that was started in Mar. 2010. They mentioned team contain & defensive discipline which sounds great, but my kids had plenty of chances at him and just plain missed him multiple times. Probably where we fell down was on discipline. We just werent prepared for dealing with this kid. But we have to play this team once more and so I need to come up with a better game plan. After the game I got to thinking that perhaps I should've designated one of my speedier defensive players to Spy him the whole game. Also of course, he was their Safety that nabbed a few interceptions off of us, as well as downfield tackles. So I think that I need to designate one of my offensive players to just immediately run out towards him and get on the playside of him and screen block/obstruct his movement on the field. If we can neutralize him, the rest of their team are ordinary kids. Any advice for dealing with this situation and is Spying the answer?

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but my kids had plenty of chances at him and just plain missed him multiple times.

It sound more to me that they are missing flags because of the proper tackling stance.

If you player goes at the RB to high he will miss the flag, so he has to brake hard (contain) in front of RB with his leg base open (feet at shoulders base level), knees slightly bent and hips down, eyes lock on the belly and hips, arms spread slightly out and front.

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Coach,

Yes, proper tackling form was violated a number of times. However, his running actions created a washing machine effect on the kids. Resulting in alot of different tackling angles trying to get the kid--from behind, to the sides, and only rarely a good frontal opportunity. We are working on open field tackling tonight. I guess fundamentally from a team viewpoint--the Defense was not doing its job of containing the guy. So need to keep working on that. Hopefully by our next meeting in several weeks we will become more disciplined.

ACoach

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There is really not a lot you can do in my opinion. We have a player (whom I've coached 10+ seasons) that can score pretty much any time he has the ball. This is not an exaggeration. He's scored probably 25 of the last 30 times he's had the ball the past few seasons (I limit him to 2-3 carries per game). We scrimmaged a team this season against a friend of mine. For grins--I told the defense this player was getting the ball. I even walked through the play, where/when he was getting the ball, etc... and said "No tricks. Just see if you can stop him". He scored all three times I did this.

Said differently, there will be athletes that stand above everyone else, and you just need to hope that the opposing coach shows some and class spreads the ball around equally.

With that--the times we have played teams with the "second fastest player in the third grade" what I did was develop a defensive audible for when to watch that player. In other words, when I called this audible---ALL players were to focus on this one kid. Of course, I only call this when I am 100% sure that player was getting the ball.

Having a spy doesn't work, IMO. If the kid is that good--then he is that good. All it really takes is one juke and he waves bye-bye to the spy. :-)

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Said differently, there will be athletes that stand above everyone else, and you just need to hope that the opposing coach shows some and class spreads the ball around equally.

With that--the times we have played teams with the "second fastest player in the third grade" what I did was develop a defensive audible for when to watch that player. In other words, when I called this audible---ALL players were to focus on this one kid. Of course, I only call this when I am 100% sure that player was getting the ball.

Coach,

Well that essentially was the issue as the game wore on--the other coach was going full throttle the whole game with the kid. Either he was running it for a TD, intercepting a pass back for a TD, or as QB passing and with a few miscues on ill-advised D rushes went to scramble for a TD. He was never out of the game. My AC knew someone on the other team who came up to him during the game and said his son was only playing D, while he saw our team everyone played O/D (in platoons--first half O or D, and then 2nd half vice versa) and got several touches of the ball. The opponents dad said he'd talk to the coach about getting the other kids more involved. We'll see how that turns out when we play them again.

ACoach

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We had this situation in our last game. First down, we'd get 'em. Second down, flag pulled in the backfield. Third down, they would have off to #77 and off to the races. In defensive huddle, I would tell them, "look, they've got XX number of yards. I promise you. #77 is going to get the ball".

We put our fastest guy on #77 and it did little good. The kid was just too smart. And fast. He would use random standing kids as a "screen" for him.

My best suggestion to try, for what it's worth, would be to have two kids (no rusher on the QB) spy from outside to keep him relatively contained. At least not let him get to the outside.

You could also have your one rusher (I assume from 7-8 yards out) focus on him, not the QB.

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I didn't get a sense from you how much they relied on this kid for offense. If they have him run the ball all the time then yes, key on or spy him. If not, then it would be difficult to do so. Are they mostly handing off to him? You mentioned scrambling, can the QB run in your league?

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I didn't get a sense from you how much they relied on this kid for offense. If they have him run the ball all the time then yes, key on or spy him. If not, then it would be difficult to do so. Are they mostly handing off to him? You mentioned scrambling, can the QB run in your league?

Coach,

Yes, pretty much every play centered on him getting the hand-off. I dont really recall them handing off to anybody else. No, the QB is not allowed to scramble unless rushed. Which we did a few times not by design, but by the kids tired of scrambling around with the receivers waiting for him to throw. Thus, giving him an excuse to score another TD. I know our Team Defense & Discipline fell apart, but I dont know that it will be a fortress by the time we play him again. So that was why I was thinking at least to get one guy to Spy. Or just pretty much gang attack him and box him in if possible when it looks like they are going to go to him.

ACoach

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Does your league ruling allow D player to cross Los at any time?

I do believe I got an outstanding RB and on my first two games I was scoring with him in the first couple of drives, but afterwards he was completely shut down.

They did actually spy on our Hb with two guys that where overaggressive, just after the snap they were jumping across LOS even if my back did not had the ball yet, now this is illegal, but these guys where smartly using ruling to their advantage.

Problem was we were faking to other players before handing the ball to our back, ruling says that D can cross the LOS if we are using any type of faking on the play. Now I realize these experienced teams primarily train their front guys to look at play faking first.

It´s just an idea, but probably your solution could be something similar if rulings allows it, look into the details.

Because of this I had to change my Offense quite a bit.

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Coach,

In re-reading our rules, I do not see any mention that allows for the D to cross the LOS if faking is going on, or for that matter, any mention when it is legal to cross the LOS. Except in reference to Rushing the QB which can only occur 5 secs. after the snap. But I guess the unwritten rule is that when the ball is handed-off from the QB to a RB, then the D may cross the LOS.

ACoach

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