Broncos

We started breaking up into groups in practice to focus on individual skills with smaller numbers of players and this has made a huge improvement. With smaller groups you can focus on individuals needs and then after 15 minutes we switch and get a new group of kids from the other station. We had an offense station where we worked on handoffs and securing the ball as well as qb and rb timing. the other station was with receivers and running crisp routes and catching and then defense station. Defense we worked on flag pulling, getting in front of the runner and swarming to the ball. I evens had time to sneak in some zone coverage work. If you are concerned with amount of time you have then try this and make sure you know exactly what each coach will work on before you even hit the field. Those quick coach conferences are rarely quick and are rarely specific enough to accomplish what you want to. Stations even work with plays. Most plays have only two to three key players so you can break off with the Qb, Rb, and a specific receiver and quickly run through 4 or 5 plays to get timing and execution down and then rotate them out and you other rb, and wr. After stations we group up and run a flag pulling exercise to end with. Hope this helps someone, it has really helped the Broncos.

The exact opposite happened to us. I coach 7v7 9-11 year old coed team and I ran a zone defense in our second game and we were scored on easily. We only practice once a week so we had only had three practices before this game. The three practices we had were mainly devoted to offense and the other team had a good quarterback who could find the open man. We quickly switched to man on man with my two safeties playing zone. This shut the qb down in passing and they had to start running the ball. My advice is to start game man to man in front let your corners and safeties play zone and quickly try to figure out their offensive strategy. Than adjust, adjust, adjust. No teams will play similar so teach both defenses as well as you can and then try to adjust accordingly. We normally run two on the line, line backer to rush two corners and two safeties. Looks like a 2-3-2. If you can rush in your league let your corners alternate rushing occasionally, especially if you are up against a good quarterback.

Thanks. Good advice. We try to squeeze so much into an hour that I feel like we are just spinning our wheels. I do remind myself that this is a fun league so we make sure everyone handles the ball, I am still very competitive so I want to see those break away runs for scores.

My first post. First thing to say is that I think the site is awesome! I enjoy reading all of the posts and find myself shaking my head in agreement to just about everything I am reading. This is my first year coaching 7 0n 7 flag football. We are a church league and have about 6 teams in our 9-11 age group. My biggest problem is lack of practice time. We only practice once a week. We just had our second game and were held scoreless except for a safety we intercepted in to. We started out with an offensive scheme and then after our first loss we tried to make changes and adapt. Now we are 2 games in to a 6 game season and I haven't even had time to work on defense in practice. I told my other coaches that we need to just teach them the fundamentals and then just let them play because we are wasting time trying to teach 3-4 plays in one hour. What about the rest of the game once we've ran those plays over and over. Any good advice. Forgot to mention the next team we are going against is a team that was formed for at risk youths as a afterschool program so they do practice everyday.