RedBaron

Sorry for the typos in the first post. My desktop internet is out and I had sent it from the IPOD. After doing some thinking on it, I have come up with a few ideas. One of our top two guys does a good job snapping the ball. I thought about moving him to to center. If they man on him and leave the nose tackle in place, as they did today, they would bascially have two guys in one spot. It might help clear out some other areas. They were more or less manning up on our two "wide outs" letting the nose control the rest of the run plays and keeping two safeties back. One safety, almost exclusively from the right side, would rush and the other would play bacl 12 yards or so. A lot of times we had the opening to hit the RB out of the backfield, but did not have the time and, as mentioned, she still is inconsistent catching the ball. Plus, we had 40 mph gusts today. I am thinking about moving my normal center to one side or using him out of the backfield, with some quicker routes, as he understand the nuances a little better.. We should be able to move the ball better, even if it takes away the "big play" chance. I also think the back safety will stay home because of the threat of the center catching it over the middle, where we had success in teh second half, and breaking it. They are well coached enough that I don't think we can continue to go to the same well, play after play, but it's a start. Any thoughts are appreciated.

we play five on five wit nine and ten year olds. No qb runs, rush from seven yards...pretty much straight NFL flag rules. We have scored thirty plus in four of seven games. The other games our defense have kept it close as we have lost by 1,6,8 and 9 points and have put up at least two touchdowns. Last year in the younger group we only saw man to man one time. It started the same this year , then we ran into some man and adjusted Now we have been seeing combo defenses. Teams are manning against our two main guys and zoning the rest. Normally we run a lot of missdirection and quick slants and drags. Today we had a team whose nose tackle killed us. He wad so quick into the backfield he was blowing up all our runs. I Need some advice on how to approach that if we see it again. Due to the perfect storm of circumstances I have only five players. Two are very quick and have decent hands, although one likes to dance to much a nd has focus issues. My center has great hands but no speed. My other is in her first year and still learning. She is actually the fastest but is a little unsure of herself yet and doesn't quite get the finer points of runnin she runs good patterns but is still inconsistent catching the nall. My qb is smart and has only one or two picks all year and none in the last four or five weeks. He also can catch the ball out of the backfield nut isn't real quick We normally go out of a balanced set wit the two best Guys split to either side and my female player in the backfield to avoid confusion and misalignment Our league had unheard of parity this year and is really up for grabs. Any advice you can give me is appreciated. We did netter the second half against them wit some center to middle passes as they tend to rush about half the time from the same spot Thanks

I wanted to pass along something that happened to me earlier this evening. I was at my oldest daughter's 8th grade basketball game. I had taken a stroll with my son, to use the "facilities" at halftime of the 7th grade game. On our way back to our seats, the mom of one of the 7th grade players, who I had coached in kindergarten, stopped me. She wanted to thank me for being her daughter's coach 7 years ago. She told me if I had not been so good with the kids and done so well with them, she doesn't think her daughter would have kept playing. She went on to say, they think about that first year she played, a lot. I've had parents thank me, before. I think we all have. I've had some go a step further and really tell you how much they appreciate you. This one was 7 years later. That meant a lot to me. I was honestly speechless for a few seconds. I started coaching before I even had kids. I've had people ask me why I do it sport after sport, year after year, sometimes taking 2 or 3 teams at once. Well.......there's the answer.

We never ran it, but I considered it. I don't think it is cheap. When you have a guy chomping at the bit, waiting to hear your QB ask for the ball so he can rush, I think anything that buys him that extra second is ok. I don't see it as any different, especially at this level, than running the snap on 2 or 3 instead of the first "hike". I am split on the hurry up. Teams in our league pretty much settle on the same d throughout the game. If they change it is inbetween posessions. We always tried to tell our D to get lined back up. If we don't tell them they are doing something different, then they are doing the same as last snap. Most teams, I don't think it would matter against. There are 1 or 2 teams, that I felt I would do it against, just to see what happened because they are one of "those teams". You guys know what I mean, every league has one or two that will do anything to win, even in a 7-8 year old rec league. There are a few teams, that we held up and waited for the snap. They were teams we were simply better than and the game was going to get out of hand, if it already hadn't. They weren't trying to stall, their kids were simply confused and didn't know where to go. As the season wore on, maybe, we didn't wait as long, but we gave them an extra couple of seconds. Honestly, I think it is a fine line between being courteous and slowing your offense's flow. I have no problem with the silent count. I think it might be just as effective to vary the cadence. Hurry up, if someone was using it because it kept their offense flowing I would not care. If they were just trying to get a freebie play on a quick snap....I wouldn't say much, but, I wouldn't do it....it depends somewhat on the age level

We played a 3-2-1 for the entire season. I think, after some experimenting in practice this week, we are switching up. We got burned REPEATEDLY last game. Pass after pass to the sideline, over the DE and outside the LB. As much as we tried, the DE would not back up after reading pass. In practice we switched to a 2-4, then out of curiosity we tried a 1-2-3. It was like a magic button. The "2" are more or less backed off DEs. Their responsibility does not change much. They simply are in a better spot to stop the sideline pass we were burned on. The back 3 are just like the middle two in a 3-2-1, just a few yards deeper. In a way, all we have done is taken the safety from the 3-2-1 and allowed him to be moved up and backed the DEs off. I like this because we can rush with one of the back 3 and still have 2 guys back, keeping everything in front of them and also control the middle with the 2 backers. Passing has increased in our league as the season went on, but so many teams still only throw 3-4 times a game. The teams that throw a little more go for the sideline area, knowing most defenses jam the middle. I like rushing with one of the 3 back guys, even from ten-12 yards in stead of 7, because it creates a run blitz almost. I think it all depends on the type of kids you. We had the weaker part of our season early on and were able to out talent most teams. Our need for change came when we got to the better teams who game plan a little more, as opposed to just running the same stuff over and over.

We were 5-1-1 going into today's game. We played a very good team. No one doubted they were good, but, so many kids in our league act like this team is made up of NFL players, or something. We got down two scores early and it started... "we can't win this game". We cut it to a one score game, then gave up another td. Guess what I heard... "This game is over". It was midway through the first half. At halftime, I had had enough. I flat out told them, if I heard anyone else say the game was over or we couldn't win, I did not want them on my defense. They could see the offensive coach about playing time and if he wanted them, great, if not, then I guess they wouldn't be playing. I then backed up about ten feet and said the first 6 kids who get to me are on defense. I got six exactly. Funny thing was, the two kids who thought we were beat, came running. I liked that. The second half was a 2 td to 1 game and one of those scores came when we all out blitzed on the first play of the series going for the safety or turnover (all posessions start from the five except ints). Even on that one, we had good positioning on the outside, the runner just made a good move. I think they realize they partially beat themselves. I looked back on the other scores, we gave up 2 on third down (which is the last down in the series) one of those came after two stops inside the five. The other came on a pass play that went right where I told the defense it was going and no one broke on the ball. We had another play where the DB and the WR both came down with the ball, the wr wrestled it away and went for about a 50 yard score....throw in a td given up on the first defensive play of the game, because one LB bit on a fake and actually chased a non ball carrier from mid field clear to the sideline and it was really frustrating. I can live with the biting on the fake, from that position, especially with the defense we were running at the time, we were trying to be aggressive and the line and other backers should have not let him get outside no matter what... I just get so frustrated when a team does exactly what you know they are going to against you, you put in the plan to stop it and the kids get that deer in the headlight look and freeze. I honsetly don't care if they win or lose, in the big scheme of things, as long as they try and don't quit...they did that in the second half, which I loved... I guess I was wondering how you guys deal with the "I can't" type of attitude? And how do you prepare them to play against the teams they all think are unbeatable.

We have 7-8 year olds. You hit dead on what we have been doing with a few of them.....We are allowed on the field,so, one coach usually stands in the defensive backfield and I stand on the sidelines, in line with the defensive line. If we have a "flincher" on the end, I put him on the side of our bench, so I can be right beside him. That was part of the reason we put the one kid at saftey, figured we could have a coach right beside him.

The play should have been flagged. I understand if it is a border line call. When it's a blatant violation it should be called. It sends a bad message to the kids nto to call it. It also opens a can of worms. Eventually, there is going to be a play like that, where, maybe you could have won and maybe you couldn't have. We had a play in a game earlier this year....tie game, we had just stopped them and were taking over from our 5, which is where non INT chang eof posessions start. Two of our WRs were a full step offsides when the ball was snapped. No exaggeration. They jumped and got a full step across before the snap, No call. The one WR actually got behind the "D" a little bit and was in line to catch the ball, but a defender came from the other side and knocked it down. Had he missed the swat and it was caught....I honestly think the Wr would have scored.

Our problem has been we have two kids we can't seem to find a spot for. One tends to let his mind wander. The other seems to have different problems depending on what spot he is in. He won't stay home as an end (3-2-1 defense)which killed us Saturday and does well at linebacker, but we like to blitz from there and he isn't very quick. When we started getting beat on plays from one of those issues we tried to switch up and it made it worse. Tonight, at practice, we just flat out told them....the spot you play tonight is where you play the next game. If you want to switch spots you need to get up big and then we'll talk about it. I think we have finally got the speed guys evenly spread out, too. The "d" got two and the "o" got two. That, and I think we finally hit on a split that can allow us, if we want, to swtich up without overloading one side of the ball and hurting the other. We decided to put the one guy I mentioned earlier at safety. I think our safety has made, maybe, 5 "tackles" and/or plays on the ball all year. Most of those, someone else was involved as well. There is so little throwing in our league it is almost a waste to leave him back in the secondary anyway. We may leave him about 10 yards back (we can blitz from 7) and let him blitz, thinking he won't get to the QB, but may clog up the quick passing lanes and provide a "speed bump" for the ball carriers...we have the Thursday "Prime Time" game this week, so we'll see how it goes...

Welcome to my world...lol. Saturday, I had to take a timeout (our only one of the half that we get) to get everyone lined up on defense, BEFORE THE FIRST PLAY OF THE SECOND HALF. I think I heard "coach can I play here" and/or "Where do I go", 27 times in ten seconds. We had two guys in the general vicinity of the LOS and the other 4 were standing in a mini huddle at the middle fo the field. If we had let them snap the ball we were toast.

THanks, It is something we are going to continue working on. I can see the potential in it, especially against certain set ups. Our problem on shorter stuff like this has been we've gotten the rep as being a "throwing team" and teams are starting to blitz a lot. By a "throwing team", I mean we may throw 7 or 8 times per game. In our league, that is like a run and shoot. It is not uncommon to see a team go an entire game with only 3 passes, all coming at the end when they ar elooking for a miracle way to make up 3 touchdowns. THat or they only come in the no run zones. I like the idea behind a play like this to hit teams who tend to rush from one side. The idea being to hit the gap they aren't rushing from and leaving one less guy, in the secondary, for our man to beat. Then again, I may be over thinking again.

It will depend on a few things, as far as what it looks like. We really sell the pass fake. We have the QB drop back and cock his arm like he is going to pass, which gets the secondary concerned about the players running routes. It also gets the guys upfront looking around for receviers. We have the RB standing right behind the QB. I honestly think some people forget he is there or can't see him once the QB drops back. I guess the big difference would be where the runner starts from, as opposed to having someone come from the end of the formation. I think cocking the arm might sell the pass a little mroe, as well. WHat I really like about it is there is no one running across the formation to possibly alert the "d" to an end around. It is really good against the blitz, as well. If you can time it and get the "handoff" right as the rusher gets there, you can take that one or sometimes two defensive guys out of the defensive equation. If they send two guys and your back gets to the otuside it only leaves the one safety or linebacker (depending on the defensive formation) for him to beat.

Every time we have ran it, it has been from our own 5 yard line, which is where our change of posessions starts, except INTs. The last time we ran it, I caught a glimpse of the other coach doing one of those "What are going to do" poses. I don't think it can get any more deflating that giving up a 1 play, 65 yard drive right at the half.

Thanks for the advice. I really like the offesne so far. Our point total has increased every week, so,I don't want to mess with it to much, just, maybe, a little tweak for certain situations. I agree with the halfback pass. It is not something you can do in just any situation. I think we have decided to save it for conversions, where the turnover is no big deal and we only need a quick five yards, and in the end of game situations, if we have a good lead, just to let some different kids throw and let the QB catch some passes. We tried a C handoff at practice tonight...let's say, um, it was interesting. The first time, he ran backwards and the second time he kind of shuffled, like he was playing basketball defense...it was odd, because, like I said, he runs well after he catches the ball. IDK if we will try it in a game or not. We may with a different C. Perhaps, at the start of the game when the other team won't notice a change at the C spot and suspect anything. It was interesting you mentioned snapping the ball on "down". There is another team in our league that is good at bliting when they hear "hike" instead of actually seeing the ball move. We play them in a couple of weeks and I was thinking about putting in a quick snap or, maybe, snapping on the second or third "hike", so long as we make sure not to jump offsides. I agree with the "overplanning" if you will. The more and more I thought about it, the more I was leaning toward just doing what we do. We may try to hit the nose/end gap a little more and tailor our passes to the middle, which we tend to do anyway.

THanks for the replies. We have been toying with it and might use it this week. We normally face a 3-2-1 or similar set up. The team we play this week, plays a 3-3 and we are looking for something to hit the gaps quickly..