Winning Youth Football

Game 6 Results

Age 7-9 won 25-6 in a game we trailed 6-0. It was great for the kids to feel a bit of adversity as we led just 12-6 at halftime. We lost just our 2^nd turnover with this team as our fullback fumbled on a nice 12 yard gain at the opponents 20 yard line on the first possession.

Age 10-11 won 22-0 in a game we led 22-0 with 7 minutes left to go in the half. We let off the gas and we made a few minor mistakes that are easily correctable. A nice defensive effort against a team with quality backs and size.

Age 12-13 lost 30-6 in a game we trailed by a TD at the half. We had an INT returned for a TD and the only time we punted it was blocked at our 8 yard line, as our punter aligned at 7 yards instead of 12. We gave them 2 TDs and had 4 turnovers. So we stopped ourselves in a game we didn’t deserve to win. Having just four 13 year olds and losing 3 of our starting 4 backfield kids before the season started has been challenging.

Copyright 2008 Cisar Management, all rights reserved

Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

For 350 Free Youth Football Coaching Tips or to Subscribe to Dave’s free Youth Football Coaching Tips Newsletter go to :

http://winningyouthfootball.com

This Weeks Youth Football Practice

As the season progresses while we continue to stress fundamentals, we do move ahead each week with more advanced concepts. What is important when coaching youth football is to pay attention to the coming game but plan for the end goal. You have to plan to have in place what the  kids need to play to their true potential.

This week we added in a few new drills or at least twists on existing drills. Having all 3 of my youth football teams practicing on the same field has been a huge benefit. With all 3 teams we have no running backs even remotely close to being close to the “striper” weight and 2 of the 3 teams have just 1 striper. So when we do drills or even scrimmage in our highly competitive “compete” drills, we aren’t practicing against the size kids we will face in real games. In fact when we have our first team defense in “compete” against the remainders, the running backs are not only about 30-60 pounds less than what we often face in games, they don’t have near the speed or athleticism of the kids we are trying to emulate. Meanwhile getting pummeled by the first team does little for the backups as well.

This week we went to having the “compete” session set up so that the age 10-11 backups defense went against the starters for the age 7-9 team while the age 10-11 starters ran offense against the age 12-13 backups. In both cases the matchups were very even and gave us quality reps while building the confidence of all involved. While none of the teams dominated the other, the idea of being able to compete gave confidence to all involved. While this “compete” session was going on, the age 7-9 backups were doing tackling circuits and the age 12-13 starters were running team offense on air.

As the season progresses, it’s important to mix things up a bit and challenge your players to prepare them for the post season or a big game. Often you can’t do that by doing the same old same old against a scout team of backups. Make sure and do not over match your teams or put them into a dangerous situation, The matchups we made were just enough of stretch to be a big benefit for all 4 squads.

We also worked our 2 minute drill a bunch this week. We have had the “spike” play in a practiced it along with, hurry up, out of bounds etc. but we have had to use it just 1 time so far in 18 games. It’s something you never know if you will ever need, but by this time in the season you need to have down. If you get into a situation in a real game where you need it, who will the parents be blaming if you don’t have a 2 minute system in place?

Copyright 2008 Cisar Management, all rights reserved

Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

For 350 Free Youth Football Coaching Tips or to Subscribe to Dave’s free Youth Football Coaching Tips Newsletter go to :

http://winningyouthfootball.com

Youth Football Parents Say the Darndest Things

Sometimes youth football parents say the darndest and in some cases the most revealing things.

We pay to have all of our games filmed by a professional videographer. We do a year end video for each player, we add interesting and amusing text comments and set the entire video to contemporary Christian music.  We add a very cool case cover and laser the disc with a team picture as well. This ends up being a great keepsake for the player and saves the parents the hassle of having to film every game for those that want to archive the memories their kids are getting from youth football. Our videographer is not connected to our team, doesn’t care who wins and never wears any Eagle gear, so no one really every knows who he is. Since his microphone is always on, we get to hear a variety of comments from the fans in the seats. Some of them are interesting and even amusing.

Last week at a game my team was dominating and looking exceptionally crisp, you could hear one of the opponent’s parents deep in conversation with one of our parents. Our parent was telling him how little we hit, how little we scrimmage etc the other parent says somewhat incredulously, “How much DO you guys practice?” probably thinking we practiced 4-5 times per week or something along those lines. Our parent replied “we are down to 90 minutes twice a week now”, the other parent said in a nice but almost fawning way “you are kidding me?”. My guess this parent was aleady thinking, well we only practice 2 times a week that’s why we aren’t doing very well, I bet these guys meet 4 times a week.

Fans perceptions can be far from reality but at the same time many players, parents and even coaches think “Practice Makes Perfect”. I’m not so sure of that, if you practice the wrong technique hundreds of times no matter how much it’s practiced, it’s not going to be effective. A more common youth football problem is that players aren’t held to a perfect standard within specific techniques, the player is not corrected every time he does it wrong. The standard is there is no standard, the technique is taught, then it is hit or miss from that point forward. Kids will only perform to the standard the coaching staff sets and enforces.

Another huge problem is priorities and pace. Many youth football coaches waste so much time on non football stuff that has little to do with true player development and team development. If your team is in it’s 8^th week of practice and you are still doing 30 minutes of “conditioning” every day, are your kids not in football playing shape yet? Keep in mind my last 11 teams have run not a single wind sprint or done anything resembling a “conditioning period” we get all of our conditioning done within the context  for our normal very high paced practice.

Even teams using my system often fail to understand what the pace of practice should be like in order to maximize the efficiency of practice which allows you to practice less but allows you to get more done than your competition. Every team clinic I’ve ever done in the last 2 years the pace has been significantly slower than I would ever allow in my own youth football practices. We always aggressively guard our precious practice time and always have a sense of urgency about our practices, not just during the month leading up to the first game, but up to that last practice before the last game.

 In the last 30 days I did two team clinics in Los Angeles and Indianapolis. Both teams were VERY well coached by coaches that knew the material inside and out, chapter and verse. However, their pace was predictably about half as fast as we go. For example; in our dynamic warm up angle form/fit tackle drill, we do one rep about every 5-6 seconds, these teams did one every 12 seconds plus. When running our football plays on air we run one play every 12 seconds or so and that’s with subbing in every rep, they were at about 25 seconds. We try and do everything at a pace that has out kids just on the edge of breathing hard.

In the end if your priorities, pace and have a consistent high level of urgency,  you won’t have to practice as much as many people think in order to execute well in youth football. When you practice less, the practices become important and focused and of course the parents love it as well.

Copyright 2008 Cisar Management, all rights reserved

Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

For 350 Free Youth Football Coaching Tips or to Subscribe to Dave’s free Youth Football Coaching Tips Newsletter go to :

http://winningyouthfootball.com

Sportsmanship in Youth Football

Last week I got to experience both good and poor sportsmanship in a youth football experience in  the span of about 10 minutes. As I walked to where my players were congregated prior to our game last weekend. The kids were just off the sidelines of another game going on and a very loud head coach for the game in progress said very loudly, “That’s the team I want to play, lets line it up and play right after this game”. He did it in the most arrogant and nasty tone one could imagine. I had no idea who he was, I had never met this man before or ever played his team, yet he felt like he needed to talk smack to me and a bunch of impressionable kids. I didn’t say a word, smiled and took my kids beyond the endzone.

After we grouped for our pre- warmup discussion, I noticed one of my weakest first year players, a 13 year old minimum play player did not have his pants on. We were 75 minutes from our home field and he has no pants, he had left them at home. Mind you,  were going into a game I thought would be a tough game, as we were coming off a tough loss the previous week. We would be more competitive had he not played in the game, but that isn’t the way we do things. I went to the opponents head coach and asked him if by chance they had an extras pair of pants we could “borrow” for this game, They obliged in the most sincere and friendly manner imaginable, even finding a place for our distraught player to change. Mind you they had no clue if this was my best player or not and with just 23 kids it wasn’t like we had lots of depth at every position. So in the end we both were doing something each of us thought would put us in a competitive disadvantge, for the right reason, so a kid could play in a youth football game.

The game turned out to be a hard fought battle with 3 lead changes. While it was a very physical game, both teams players were consistently were helping each other up and patting each other on the back during the whole game, not just after he game had been decided. The parents of one of the opposing players even took the time after the game to come up to tell me “Thanks, that was the best sportsmanship team I’ve ever seen”. The only way I could reply was to say, that “You guys started it, obviously your kids are well schooled by your coaches to be great sports”. One of our players Moms came up to me on Monday at practice and said “I’ve never had X, tell me how great another team treated him, that was a real fun game, great sports”. Hats off to coach PW, a class act in every respect of the word.

The moral of the story is you can play physical, “knock the snot out of each other football”, respect your opponent and be great sports, they aren’t mutually exclusive goals. In fact they make the game much better for the kids, the parents and even the coaches. I’ve always been a proponent of being “overt” sports. Even in my High School playing days, we had nasty rivalries and “fun” rivalries. The nasty rivalries were against teams that had very little respect for each other, the fun rivalries were those were we got to play against kids we had played with in youth football and baseball. We always hit our friends just as hard or harder than we hit those teams we didn’t like very well. For most of us we enjoyed the wins and games we played against our “fun” rivalries far more than the wins against the teams we had little repect for.

 My guess that goes double for kids playing youth football. As a coach you are in a position to put your kids into nearly any mode you choose. They will follow your lead and example, you decide what your team will be remembered for.

Copyright 2008 Cisar Management, all rights reserved

Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

For 350 Free Youth Football Coaching Tips or to Subscribe to Dave’s free Youth Football Coaching Tips Newsletter go to :

http://winningyouthfootball.com

Game 5 Results

My age 7-9 team won 34-12 after being up 20-0 in the first quarter. For the 3^rd week in a row the first team defense was unscored upon. This could have easily been a 50-0 game, but we subbed early and often as 4 different players scored touchdowns. The execution was very good with this team in nearly every aspect of the game, our offensive football plays looked very crisp. This teams record now stands at 5-0.

My age 10-11 team won 34-12 also after being up 22-0 in the first quarter. In order to keep the game from being mercy ruled in the first quarter, we employed the sportsmanship inspired  “special play” as we did in game 1 to allow the other team a score. For the 2^nd week in a row the first team defense was unscored upon. For the second week in a row, this team could have been up 60-0.  We were hoping this team would end up at .500 but is now 4-1. We have just 1 “striped” player on this team and just 6 players that have played before. This team is coming together nicely.

My age 12-13 team won 38-20 in a game was just 22-20 with 45 ticks left to go in the first half. Right before the half we went 50 yards in 45 seconds, scoring on a pass as time expired in the half. We made a few minor defensive adjustments at halftime that allowed our defense to pitch a shutout in the second half.

 This was a very odd game in that our QB/1 back went down in the first 3 minutes of the game and my backup 2/3 back was out with the flu. My backup QB/1 Back is my starting 2 back, but I couldn’t move him to 1 Back because my backup 2 back was out with the flu (same kid) and my 3^rd team backup 2 back is my starting 3 back, whose backup was the flu kid as well. To make a long story longer, we had to play our 3^rd team QB/1 back (rookie player) and he is believe it or not our starting right guard. So we were very limited in what we could run, to about 7 plays or so. It was a great lesson in making lots of moves on the fly, which is typical in non-select football when you have 22-23 players.

We were on the 2 ready to score again when time expired. We had just 1 penalty whistled against us. The positives were we found out something about our team and we played the best sportsmanship team I’ve seen in the last 5 years, it was a great game. The head coach for this team used to coach for me in Omaha, more about that later.

My age 12-13 team has just 1 “striped” player and only four 13 year olds. While we have a nice nucleus of  3 and 4 year vets on this squad, we also have an unusually high number of rookie players in this group for a team in this age grouping.

As mentioned in earlier posts since the teams in our league religiously check this web site, we will disclose the details of the season ( stats and scoring plays) and adjustments we made at seasons end.

This Week in Practice

As we head into the meat of our schedule our practice plans vary just a bit. Like you all, we are losing daylight and it’s getting dark here by 7:45, so our practices have been shortened to 1:45. While our competition nearly always practice more than we do, the practice methodology, priorities and pace we utilize more than make up for the differences in practice time.

While we continue to hone the basics, this is the time of the year we start adding a few techniques to those groups that have a strong grasp on the fundamentals we have taught to date. As mentioned previously we are also doing a lot of cross training now.

Monday we worked both offense and defense but the emphasis was on defense. The defensive backs again worked a bunch on reading their receivers then responding with their correct responsibility and technique. We worked extensively at beating the stalk block and open field tackling. The defensive tackles and bearcrawlers went though their normal progressions and the linebackers worked shedding and open field tackling technique. We did about 10 minutes of very intense 3 level Oklahoma drills (search the blog here for that term the drill is in there) for each team. We also did 10 minutes of “Compete”, again those drills are here in the blog.

We added in a new series of football plays, one that our oldest players have been running, but that now seem to make sense for where our age 7-9 and age 10-11 kids are at.  I used my “varsity” kids as a template to demo these football plays to the younger coaches and players. Since we use the very same blocking rules and tags, the linemen had to learn nothing, while the backs had to get down a very simple backfield action to make this series of football plays work.

Defensively we worked just 15 minutes of team defensive recognition on air and finished up with about 20 minutes of offensive team on air with no helmets on.

Thursday again we worked both sides of the ball and special teams as well. Individuals for the line was back to the basics, wedge, crab blocking and pass blocking mirror drills.

For the backs we worked stalk blocking with lots of mirror drills and about 10 minutes of live, working in our defensive backs into pass recognition. We have also had a problem especially at the youngest age levels of players getting caught from behind. While we realize we don’t have the fastest kids and are going to often get caught from behind, we have kids with 15 yard leads that are getting walked down from beind like they are standing still.  To improve their concentration and acceleration I designed a drill we call “Pylon” which I will detail in a later post.

We did 10 minutes of “Compete” on offense. On defense we are now putting all the remaining players on defense to defend against the first team offense. To make it even more interesting we are telling everyone the play, both the offense and defense. First of all this allows us to run many more plays, about 1 play every 15 seconds and secondly it makes the offense work that much harder and gives the scouts a chance to make plays. I got this approach from a High School coach and it has made this period much more competitive.

We did about 15 minutes of team defense on air and added a few stunts and alignment adjustments to take advantage of our strengths and hide our weaknesses a bit. We closed with about 30 minutes of special teams work. Our special teams have been outstanding so far. While my age 12-13 team has only punted 1 time in 5 games due to the fact we have been moving the ball very well, we may have the best punting team in the league. My age 10-11 team PAT kicker is 8-10 on PAT kicks ( we let other kids kick when we are way up) and our youngest team has been lights out as well.

 Game 4 Results

Age 7-9 won 46-12 in a game we led 20-0 at the end of the first quarter. We let off the gas very early in a game we dominated from the opening gun on both sides of the ball. Both touchdowns by the opposition were gifts as we had 10 different ball carriers carry the ball. We had 4 different kickers kickoff as well. While this team was not a very good team we were able to see progress in several areas we were working on like: better open field tackling, playing to the whistle on both sides of the ball, more precise pass patterns and excellent first and second steps by the offensive line. For the sesond week in a row we had just 1 penalty whistled against us. We looked sharp, even the back ups.

Age 10-11 won 36-6 in a game we led 36-0 at the end of 3 quarters. While the opposition started 4 “striped” players on the line compared to our 1 striper, we were able to dominate the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. We made a few minor lineup changes on our offensive line that seemed to do the trick. We used several of the base adjustments in this game and they worked very well. On offense, one of the backups we have cross trained got some playing time at 1 back and seemed to get some confidence we had not seen in practice. This week he gets some reps at 2 back. We were more consistent on defense this week as well. We allowed a gimme touchdown in the 4^th quarter to a team that traveled about an hour to play us. Nine different ball carriers got to tote the rock in this one as in the 4^th quarter we ran nothing but power and wedge. In the last 2 weeks this team has had just 3 total penalties whistled against us.

Age 12-13 we lost 40-14 in a game we were leading 14-12 and trailing just 20-14 at the half. Four second half turnovers turned the game around for us including 2 that were returned inside the 10 yard line. We tackled atrociously and on every TD but 1 we had defenders in position to make a play.  Our little team never gave up, but we didn’t execute well on defense, while the offense never punted. We really missed that defensive practice on Thursday we cancelled due to rain.

I’m the only youth coach out there that I know of that has instructional DVDs and books for sale and leaves it all out there for your view. You have every score of every Fall Tackle Football game I have ever coached with this system as well as breakdowns of my weekly practices and games.  Many of the guys in this nitch arent even coaching youth football anymore or havent for some time.

The “Compete” Drill for Youth Football

One of the many things youth football coaches have a problem with is having their team ready to play on game day. Many coaches tell me they see their kids coming to games lethargic and not ready to play. I’ve even seen some of my own teams in very early morning games maybe being less sharp than normal. This can cost your team, you can get down early, have a few breaks go against you and before your team finally wakes up out of its funk, the game can be out of reach.

We are blessed to have a 7 year NFL vet on our coaching staff this year. He is a very humble guy who has been an absolute joy to coach with so far, He hasn’t tired to tkae over or pushed to get the kids to use techniques or schemes that non-select kids can’t do, He has however been very helpful in helping us get ready in areas we probably needed help in. One of those areas was early morning games, making sure we were sharp from the opening gun.

This player played for Bill B and believe it or not they had some of the same issues, In order to solve the problem they used to do a drill called “Compete”. At any point in the day, anytime, this NFL coach would blow his whistle and yelled “compete”. The team would run full speed to the 10 yard line and go full speed, full contact for 10 minutes, with everyone yelling and whooping it up the entire time. During our offensive days, we do it with our first team offense against all the rest, with 24 kids that is 11 vs 13. Our kids know where to line up on offense and defense when we yell compete, they sprint to the predesignared area and we get after it. We no huddle with wrist bands and go all out for those 10 minutes. We don’t take time to put scrimmage vests on or anything like that, when “compete” is yelled, everyone, players coaches etc run full blast to the designated area.

The key is to run this drill when the kids least expect it. In the middle of individual instruction, in the middle of a water break, in the middle of our first little talk at the end of cals/warmup and even after they thought practice was over. We never tell them when or even if we are going to run the “compete” drill. What seems to help is to be able to get the kids mentally conditioned to compete at a moments notice, anytime, anywhere. While this is our first season using this drill, so far so good, I highly recommend it.

Copyright 2008 Cisar Management, all rights reserved

Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

For 350 Free Youth Football Coaching Tips or to Subscribe to Dave’s free Youth Football Coaching Tips Newsletter go to :

http://www.winningyouthfootball.com/booksndvds.php

This Week in Practice:

We practiced on Monday but heavy rains on Wednesday and Thursday and a home High School Football game on Friday night meant a perfect storm of events that led to us practicing just 1 time this week. A Saturday game for my age 12-13 team combined with a home Nebraska game and our age 7-9 and 10-11 kids playing on Sunday made it impossible to practice another day. This is the first time I remember practicing just 1 day in a week in September. I can’t image what all you hurricane area coaches do in these circumstances.

While we will practice in the rain, there was plenty of lightning in the distance that precluded us from practicing on Thursday and the school gym was already booked with school softball and volleyball teams. No matter how bad we needed the practice, it’s never worth the risk of practicing when lightning is visible. Just last year a 14 year old girl was struck by lightning and killed on a soccer field less than 30 miles form here. I would not want to be responsible for any life changing event for any of the kids or families under my care, I hope you think in those terms as well the next time you see lighting in the distance. A youth football game means nothing when comparing the possibilities. In hindsight we should have practiced both offense and defense on Monday with any threat of rain, it cost us in the game.

Since the Monday forecast said light rain and clear on Thursday we went with our normal offensive heavy practice on Monday. We did our normal 8 minute now cals and angle form tackle fit.  Since we are getting into the meat of the season we don’t abandon teaching fundamentals, but we do start to work kids into additional positions, IF they have mastered their base position. This helps them develop, stay interested and helps the team by developing some depth. You never know what may happen in game 10 or 11, the time to prepare is now. We also work on some more advanced techniques for those that have mastered the base techniques.

We split our backs and line and had the line work on first two steps, double team blocks and also coming off of double team blocks to take away linebacker blitzes. While many if not most youth football teams that have no splits like we do and utilize a base blocking rule like we do, do not have to learn this skill to be successful, our more advanced kids are learning it. We diligently work the double team blocks to the second level, but once we have movement and control of the block we teach the inside player can come off the double team if a linebacker is shooting inside of him.

The backs are working on open field blocking much like an offensive lineman would learn how to pass block. It’s all about the feet, getting a good push upfield, breaking down  and then mirroring the defender on stalk blocks and attacking the defenders inside shoulder and maintaining contact and good knee bend on kickout blocks. At this juncture on individuals, we are also doing a ball protection and read react cutting drill as well.

On team offense, we are working not only our backups into every other rep, a number of our starters are learning a backup role at another position. This will allow us to shuffle players into alternative “best mix” teams if we have a player go down. An example” our starting Right End is also our backup Tailback, he is now learning the fullback position, While he wont be proficient with the entire playbook, he will be competent with the “Sainted Six” for sure.

We worked all of our plays on offense on air and included 10 minutes of “Compete”.

We now have all our base adjustments in as well and those are repped thoroughly. The pace with my younger teams seems to have reverted back to one without urgency, with one play getting off every 15-20 seconds, while the team I’m repping plays with is at the 12 second mark. You have to be vigilant to maintain a rapid pace all year long when coaching youth football.

 Coaches,

I’m getting a ton of e-mails and even phone calls with happy coaches these last 2 weeks. While I usually wait until the seasons end to put them on the testimonials page, here is one I got from a coach I’ve been corresponding with since he went to my St Louis clinic. Remember I do answer all e-mail questions in 48 hours from those that have bought the system. Dave,

Just dropping you a line to let you know I finally got my first win as a  head coach, and my team owes you and your system a gigantic THANK YOU!!   My players floundered last year with an 0 and 7 record. I as head coach felt responsible for not having them properly prepared. I felt bad for them , not letting them know what it feels like to win a football game. Since then, I attended your seminar last winter, surrounded myself with good assistant coaches,  implemented your system as closely as I possibly could. I did have some resistance to this funny looking offense for a short while, but eventually everyone accepted it.  Today we travelled to

I feel my players are properly prepared this year, and they know what it feels like to win.  I am so happy for them. Also, I feel like I am no longer “THAT COACH” that no one wants there kid to play for.  Thanks again Dave, we owe it all to YOU!                                      

                                     God bless you         

Dan Walde—–Washington, Missouri   

Coach gives me way too much credit, but thanks just the same. Great Job Dan! I love these kinds of stories, tunarounds where kids and coaches that didn’t think they were any good but are now able to compete and enjoy this great game.   Looking forward to seeing how your team does and how much more your kids will be enjoying the game after this season is over.
DC