No problem, ask as many as you want.You're spot on and I'm definitely headed in the direction of having 2-3 main QBs. No other way to do it without creating total chaos. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, it helps a lot. Two more for you?
I asked my kids quite a number of times during the season what was the most fun for them during practice and they almost always said scrimmaging. One or two preferred something else but mostly they loved the scrimmage. That was great for us as I wanted us to scrimmage about 10-15 minutes or so at the end of every practice anyway.Practices - I'm having a hard time throwing in fun stuff with only 1 hour to conduct a practice. Coaching b-ball and soccer at this age is a lot different. You're not running plays in b-ball or soccer, so it's easy to come up with fun drills/games that teach skills and even get a scrimmage in at the end of practice. Flag football is all about running plays and pulling flags. My tendency is to focus our time on things that we''ll be doing in the game like running routes, working on plays, handoffs, pitches, flag pulling and defensive strategy. How'd you keep it fun?
Do you have assistants in practice? I had two although with their schedules I usually only had one show up. We'd divide the kids into smaller groups so they all got a lot more reps during the practice drills. I think this kept them more interested in the practice. Also, I think if you have a fun attitude you can make it fun for them. But I do agree that football drills at least the ones I did weren't like the fun games we'd do in soccer for instance.
Actually we never lined up anyone other than the qb in the backfield. It's a matter of preference. My thought was this: Run the same formation every play without a running back. On almost every play bring a receiver on an end around faking it to him or even ignoring him on most every play. The idea is that the formation would never tip off your play. And with the receiver going into the backfield you'd never know when we'd run it to him. And here's the real kicker: When you handoff to a running back he only takes a step or two before getting the ball so he has no speed when he gets the ball. When our receiver takes the handoff he's already at close to full speed. We'd practice the exchange over and over and emphasize getting a clean handoff and making sure the kid was flying when he gets the ball making him that much harder to catch. Also, a handoff to a running back usually goes right at the middle of the defense. Our end around would bypass the center quickly and head up the sideline presumably where there are less defenders.Runs - I notice in your plays that you didn't have a lot of runs from the backfield. Seems that it would be wise to have a player in the backfield 1/2 the time to keep the defense guessing. Run some fakes to this person, handoff every once in awhile or just have them float off to the side as a safety valve. I'm realizing that you're actually playing against the other coach who's out on the field with the defense. When we put someone in the backfield for a run, he immediately starting yelling watch the run. Thoughts?
CRob
Every other team we played had at least one formation with kids in the backfield and only one or two ran an end around. I personally like my philosophy but other things will definitely work. The one thing I thought worked well with a kid coming out of the backfield was when they'd begin to the right and quickly cut back left or vice versa. That would usually get them extra yards as our guys would bite on the initial fake.
Rob, question for you. Can your quarterback run? If so can he just take off or does he have to wait until he's rushed?
