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HornFan

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  1. Thanks, I think I do the praise thing pretty good. I need to try not to cover too much and limit the things we emphasize. And working one on one should help. I just need to figure out how to get the head coach to go along with it.
  2. The only thing you left out is the protection issue. My son is in the 7-8 year group and they tend to step on each other quite a bit. I've only ever seen the typical football cleats that have the solid think leather high tops that protect their ankles from other players cleats. I have seen my son fall due to loss of traction in regular tennis shoes and also get stepped on and injured. Noth of these are reduced with the high top cleats he wears now. But I do agree that the cleat height is way to high for their size.
  3. I'm pretty sure in the league I'm in we're only allowed one practice per week. I wish we could do more, I'll have to confirm that for next year.
  4. I've seen this play used in Tackle football, middle school I think. In fact this reminds me of the play we did when I was in Junior High and playing a receiver. This of course works with larger teams (11 is best, but 8 might work), and a good passing QB. During the huddle send one player to the sidelines, but have him stop just before going out of bounds (or step in just before the snap - depending on league rules). Line up like normal, the Defense will likely not notice the sole player just on the edge of the field near the other players (or parents). Snap the ball and immediately throw to the sideline player, he'll have a clear shot to the end zone, and again this will only work once. HF
  5. I have 3 players that do this. How do I teach them to stop. I tell them to go full speed, don't stop, but they always stop, trying to trick the defender. I've also noted that it's the same players that get tricked while defending. My son is one of them and I want him to understand how to not get tricked and pull flags better. (as well as make the occaisional TD!) Any advice is appreciated.
  6. I coach the 6-8 as well and the look-i-loos are hard to manage. There is no easy fix and usually it's the same ones every time. My son happens to be one of them so I can talk to him about it at home, but come game time, he's back to looking around. I think it just boils down to their level of intensity, at this age is when this skill builds, it may take until they are 8 to get it, so patience is the only thing. I too use the same rule as you for the "I want this position" or "I want the ball". If you ask for it, you will guarentee you are not getting it for this play. There is also the balance of the "better" runners vs. the slower/stoppers. I want the guys who slow down or stop when approaching a defender to learn to run through it, and the only way to do it is through practice and maturity. But if we are down 18-0 I also want to put at least a TD on the board. So I sometimes run my best player every other play and rotate in the others to give them the opportunities to excel.
  7. That's how we play here too. Now whether they call it or not is a matter of which ref you get. Exactly like that here too!!! Same here, and I know the refs that will call it vs the those that don't. I try to teach the kids not to run along, but really try to enforce it with the refs that call it. It's just so hard to get these 1st and 2nd graders to stop running! ;-) How do you tell if your league is I-9?
  8. We actually have a play called "silent count" though it's not as "tricky" as your play it's similar. At the age of our players (6-8), the "Down, Set, Hike" cadence is used on every play. But when we call the silent count play, the QB will be silent and do the butt tap, the center will do a slow hike, and the QB will hand the ball back to the center - but around to side, not throguh the legs. Since that is a legal hand off the center then takes off like a rocket leaving the defense somewhat confused. Since it happens so fast the defense usually catches on and gives chase, and sometimes catches the center with the ball, but sometimes not! I would say if you are pretty far down, then anything goes and I too would congradulate you on your creativity and use that as a great training tool for my team to understand "A play is live until the ref whisltes!"
  9. I have the exact same scenario as you, the only diference is the age (I'm Def. coach for 6-8 years olds), and of course that makes a big diference in the planning and execution. I would say at your age group your Safety is #1, make sure he's vocal because he should be watching and cueing his movements off the QB, and then shouting to his teamates. 2 and 3 are your CBs, and they should be good at zone covereage and attacking the run on sweeps. Put the remaining two in LB/7 yrd point like you said. My star player is always in the center position, #2 is the safety at 7 yards. #3 and #4 are the corners, 5 is the LB. At 6-8 there is little threat to the pass, but it does occaisionaly succeed. At your age I would guess that the Pass plays are 75% of the offense. But at 6-8 the passes are short and my Nose Guard has caught more of their passes then their receivers (In 2 games he has caught and run back 4 interceptions, to 2 successful receptions on opposing teams offenses). Out of the 10 players on the team, 3 of them now grasp the concept of waiting for the play to develop before commiting to an action. My problem is all the others comit immediatly and as a result they are fooled by the reverse 100% of the time. And 50-75% of the time they go straight for the RB, which means by the time they get to him, he's now down field, in front of them, and too far to catch. If it weren't for the other 3 we would have a hard time stopping them from scoring. I'm working on new drills to help teach them how to pull flags and get in front of the ball carrier. I'm doing what one of our coaches here suggested and I'm focusing on one player during each half and that really seems to help. But I'd like to really push the "home" concept because I think it will help show them that holding in place and covering your zone is much more effective than "swarming" after the ball carrier only to get fooled by the reverse. The problem with using the "Home" concept is that the head coach constantly pushes and practices the "side-to-side" defense. Does anyone have any good advice on how to teach the "side-to-side" concept along with the "home" concept? Am I not getting the usefulness of the side-to-side deal? Thanks, HF P.S. sorry for hijacking, I started out trying to help, but that just stirred up my problems!
  10. Thanks for the input guys! Lots of good points to ponder. I too am hoping to see the "eye" some day. I was able to get one of our players (2nd grader) last fall to make it one step closer to that. He got what we called "Flag Fever". Once he figured it out, he almost became a one-man defense and never wanted to play offense. I hope to get more players to that point this season (that player did not sign up for spring football), especially my son. The whole idea of attacking the the offense, going for the flag and not being timid about it (all our players are very timid about grabbing flags and more time sthan not let the ball carrier run around them. The good news is we won our first game, our offense was on fire, more so our RBs were on fire, they were running full speed when running down field (no dancing or spinning), they jumped past defenders, they drew them off to the wrong sides on reverses, and in the end earned 45 points. Almost completely on "Hand-off Left", "Hand-off Right", and "Reverse" plays. And we held the other team to 25 points. But a lot of that was just mistakes on their part, failed pass plays, dropped balls during runs, dropped hikes. But even so, my defense did pretty good, keeping them from running down field on the first play like our offense was doing. I'm still stuck with the 3-2 defense and the head coach is pretty set on it (I hope to get more freedom with the defense as the season goes on). And he's constantly engraving the notion of "side-to-side" on the defense as a whole, but I prefer the "Home" methodology. The "side-to-side" is meant to keep the whole defense moving as a unit as the ball moves in the offense's back field, and waiting until the play develops before commiting the defense to the "swarm". I agree in it's concept, but I believe at this young age it's better to preach the "home" concept as it tends to leave a defender in place "home" and in the path of and oncoming RB (especially in a reverse) and slowing him down enoguh to let the defender, or another defensive player to make the tackle. The other thing is at this age, especially the first few games, there is very little passing going on, so the more I can preach this, the better they will be set for a zone defense when teams stat passing. I do coach with a high degree of energy and praise so no problem there! One new thing I've done this year is on each drive, I'm picking one defender and working with him/her for the entire series and trynig t oteach him how to read the play and what to do. I think this is helping a lot. I definately need to get them to be more aggresive in pulling flags. Too many times they will run in front of the RB, make him stop or hesitate, and not go for the flag. They let him through. As well as when the team passes, they wait for the WR to catch the ball and then try for the flag, instead of actually catching the ball and scoring (though I did have one start defender make two interceptions and return them for touchdowns! - He's solidified a safety popsition within my defense! :-)). So are there any specific pulling techniques you use that I can try out? Thanks all! I love this site! The more I read and see, the more comfortable I think I will be head coaching next year. HF
  11. First off I'd like to day this thread is a gold mine and Orange and Rob you guys are doing a fantastic job!!! Now on to my dilema. I'm the assistant coach for a 1st-2nd grade team (flag of course) this spring. We have only 3 returning kids from the fall team so 7 out of the 10 players have never played flag football. Our Fall team was actually 8 out of 10 new players, my son included. Needless to say we didn't do too well, we only won one game the whole season (oddly enough i was the head coach that day). One of the main reasons is we let way too many TDs through. We play 5 on 5 and the coach only ever plays a 3-2 defense with man to man coverage. There's never any adjustment for different/better offenses. These kids are also young and inexperienced, so passing plays are risky and work less than 20% of the time, and thus our defense is also ill equiped for passing offenses. With only one 60 minute practice per week, I'm trying to work in the right defensive drills to make these kids better tacklers (I'm taking over the defensive coaching this year). The only real tackle drill the coach ever runs is to setup two cones 5-8 feet apart, place a defender between the cones, and have a RB try to get past the defender. The problem I see with this drill is the space is so small the RB almost always stops trying to find a gap to jump through, and in a real game the RB never stops. It also doesn't teach the defender the "home" teqnique I've seen you guys talk about. They all chase the ball down and 80% of the time are fooled by the reverse. So are there any good basic drills I can run to teach them how to hold their position and wait for the run to come to them? And how to chase a RB on a intercept course instead of running straight after them and thus ending up behind them? Some of the boys seem real timid when it comes to grabbing flags too, they'll run along side the RB but won't go for the flag.... Any help will be appreciated. Thanks, HF P.S. I'm considering volunteering for a coach position next fall, but it will be a 3rd-4th grade group and completely different than what I'm doing now. I'm a little nervous that I will not do a very good job and want my son to learn how good it feels to win more than lose! But I definately don't see a winning season happening with the current coach.
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