Team Management Archives:

When Your First Youth Football Game Goes Poorly Many youth football coaches panic when their first game goes poorly. Some panic and make massive changes in scheme and personnel, while some add in lots of plays and stunts and still others stick their head in the sand and do nothing. Maybe none of those options [...]

Co- Head Coaching in Youth Football In a handful for youth football programs instead of having a Head Coach, the organization head assigns co- head coaches. While it can work, in most cases it is going to be a disaster. Assigning co-head coaches is usually the result of the commissioner not being able to make [...]

What Your Your Clothes and Appearance Says About You When You Are Coaching Youth Football What should you wear at practice and games when you are coaching youth football? Clothes need to be functional but they also say a little about who you are. In youth football you have many audiences, your players, fellow coaches and parents. At [...]

The True Story of Injury Risk in Youth Football Some people, mostly the proverbial “soccer moms”  have a fear their children will be hurt if they play youth football. Even Lombardi/Outland winner Ndomukong Suh’s mother wouldn’t allow him to play football until he got into the 8th grade, she required him to play soccer. Mr [...]

 Daddy favoritism is one of the most common and deadly team killers in youth football. Almost all of us have seen it, the average player who is put into a no-win situation by a well meaning but selfish or delusional father. The average baseball player who would make a pretty good outfielder is made the [...]

Misplaced Priorities When Coaching Youth Football  The biggest mistake poor performing youth football coaches make are misplacing priorities. I communicated with a youth coach last month who had struggled the last 2 years. He was not using our system and was looking to change schemes. He was putting hundreds of hours of research in coming [...]

Competition When Coaching Youth Football To many of us coaching youth football get caught up in measuring ourselves against the competition. When we win a game by 1 point, somehow that is confirmation we are doing something well and often times when we lose by 1 point, that is somehow confirmation we are not performing [...]

You Get What You’re Coaching in Youth Football When I attend coaches clinics where college coaches speak, I often come away with little I can apply to my youth teams. I don’t have world class athletes and the ability to practice nearly year round. But I was able to take away several things I could [...]

I love doing coaches clinics, wherever I go, football is football. We were in Atlanta last week and did a large public clinic and a small private clinic the following day. I’ve done nearly 80 of these now and I can safely say, I’ve pretty much seen it all. Many of us youth football coaches [...]

Getting Youth Football Players to Play Assignment Football  Many youth football players fail to understand the need to play “assignment football”.  This can be one of your biggest headaches when coaching youth football. Too often many players abandon their base alignment, base technique, base read and assignment to pursue their own selfish interests. In many [...]