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Help With Young Small Team

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I am going to be coaching a 7-8 team and a 9-11 team starting in Sept. both of the teams are going to be on the younger and smaller size. The league I play in is 5 on 5 and there is rushing allowed from 7yd out. I need some advice as to what plays you all would think would be effective. I have been in the league for about 5 seasons but never have really had an issue like this. The league is VERY competitive so any help or advice would be appreciated.

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Coach there are a lot of 5 v 5 playbooks available on the site.

Here are few to start with. Remember to keep it simple (fewer plays run well)

3 Orange Playbooks

Rushbuster Playbook Compilation

Texas D Coach Playbook

Spring 2010 Playbook

Free Flag Football Playbooks

Let us know how it's going.

Thanks I appreciate the info. Any suggestions on how to get kids to stay in their zones? No matter how hard and what age many of them are not grasping their area to cover. We even tried marking out the area during practice but I still felt like we were getting the deer in the headlight look.

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I dont coach out there.I use to ref out there for them.I coach tackle now...I always coached older kids.This is what we did

2 Practices a week for 1 hour & 30 mins each practice.Players needed to be at the game 1 hour early.

1st Practice-Offense-We did what is commonly known EDD's or everyday drills.We had a set of common drills we did every offensive practice.

1st drill - Catching-Every person had a partner & 1 football.They stood 5 yards apart.Made the diamonds with there hands and focused on catching with there hands.We also included tucking the ball away in the drill.We would go between 5 & 10 yards constantly.The whole coaching point is catching with there hands.We would have the best catching kid with the worst and we used him to help coach that kid.We always had success with that.This drill takes up a max of 10 mins.

2nd drill - Route running-Our offense only ever had 3 routes.Drag-Post-Fly.That all the kids needed to know.We always had 2 QB's.They would throw the routes to all the kids at least 4 times each.This took about 20 mins.

3rd drill - Hand offs/play action-We would work on strictly just how to take a handoff then progress it to faking the handoffs.Our offense use to rely very good play action because it worked so good.Teams didnt know who had the ball.1 coach is working with the RB.The other is working with the QB.20 Mins

Scrimmage - We would always have at least 30 mins of scrimmage time.If i didnt have enough kids to go full 5 on 5 coaches would step in.Worst case ask some dads to come join in.

Conditioning & Break down - 10 mins - Sometimes longer or shorter depending on how practice went.Obviously we had older kids so our goal is getting the kids ready for either high school or junior high tackle.Conditioning is part of both.

I ran the offense and I use to preach to the kids we get into it what we put into it.I made sure I was always prepared & we didnt have any wasted time.We did water during drills.

2nd Practice-Defense-We started out with EDD's-We only ran a 2-1-2 & a 2-3.

1st drill - Linebacker drill-Our LB's were our front guys 2.Our middle guy in the 2-1-2 was ALWAYS are smartest kid.We would make half a mock field up.Then we would make circles with cones for zones.Eventually we would take away the circles and rely on the kids just to get a feel for the zones.It takes a lot of time but once they get it they really get it.

2nd drill - Safety drill-Our Safety's were our back guys in the zone.2 or 3 depending on what we were in.We did normal DB drills for them.Also would work on reading the QB eyes while back peddling.

3rd drill - Flag pulling-We did a 1 on 1 drill.Then we did a team drill.

Scrimmage - same as offense-30 mins-Obviously throw as many things they are likely to see.

Conditioning/break down - same as offense-10 mins

Good luck Coach.Let me know if you need anything else.

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Thanks alot I appreciate the info. It will help keep the practices a bit more organized. I have been told before not to really scrimmage much but when we got away from that during the week the kids would not play as well in games.

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One of the things that helped us get our players to understand playing their defensive positions and running the plays correctly was something I picked up from Coach Cisar's book, Winning Youth Football, - Fit and Freeze. We would start off walking through the plays and then jog through them and then run them at full speed. The same with our defensive alignments. We would set up our defense and then run through our plays. When the coach would yell freeze our players knew not move. This would then gives us a chance to walk them where they should be. This really helped our players start to understand what was expected and gave them a lot more confidence that they were doing the right thing.

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I want to thank all of you that have posted, lots of great information. I am doing a lot of the things you all are discussing so I know I am going in the right direction. It's so nice to have a forum like this to chat with other coaches to improve my teams. There is nothing better then seeing your team win a game and seeing how happy the kids are with a victory. So much on the internet people want you to pay for information. After all it is about the kids and teaching them the great game of football and teaching them to have good sportsmanship.

One thing that I as a coach need to improve on is game day. Making sure I am making the proper adjustments on both sides of the ball. Last season I learned a lot from another Dad on what types of plays to run against certain defenses. I had posted a topic before about this but did not get a lot of response. I see many look at the topics but don't post much. Can any of you give me more pointers for this? For example when playing against a man Defense running crossing routes.

I REALLY DO APPRECIATE ALL OF YOUR HELP. Thanks

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