Fake Handoffs

[mchavez01 0]

Any one have any good coaching points on how to make fake handoffs more believable?

[macvolcan 0]

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.

[mchavez01 0]

Great feedback MVP. Thank you very much.

[Coach Rob 26]

Good feedback macvolcan. I'd add that the RB receiving the fake needs to sell the fake by almost doubling over and rolling their shoulder a bit away from the los to hide. What kills a fake is when the RB is slow like macvolcan talked about and they look back to watch the play. The RB needs to run like they have the ball.

One thing that worked when we got a bit older was to have our QB (she was pretty darn savvy though) turn her head and watch the RB for a 1 count as her back was to the los. Sounds goofy, but it worked.

[Flagdad 5]

What mac said is pretty spot on. What I find with my younger kids is that the QBs generally do decent fakes more often than the RBs. Making them do a slightly exaggerated "alligator arms" clamp on the ball and buckling over a bit, really sells it.

The way I got them excited about fakes was making "Great Fake" something I tracked on the stat sheets and made almost as big of deal about them as I did touchdowns when they helped allow one. Often the kid with the touchdown is streaking down the field I would find the kid that did the fake and shout him an attaboy first. Everyone is screaming for the TD but if a good fake helped it, you singling them out helps a lot.