Defense Archives:

How Should You Teach Your Youth Football Players How to Recover Fumbles? When you are coaching youth football, should you teach your kids to scoop the ball on the run and take it the other way or to safely cover? In the 20 plus seasons I’ve coached youth football, I’ve only seen 5 scoop and [...]

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 [...]

Reacting to Blown Calls When Coaching Youth Football On June 3rd Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Gallarraga was one out from throwing a perfect game when a ground ball hit by Jason Donald went for a single on the 27th out. The problem was Donald was mistakenly called safe at first base by umpire Jim Joyce, replays showed [...]

What to Say to the Local High School Coach, Pressuring You to Run His System? I love going to places where football is important. The Bay Area has good football and there are plenty of good youth football coaches I’ve met over the years from that area. My wife and I had the good fortune [...]

Holding seems to be an evolving “penalty” at all levels of football. Did you know that the rules in the NFL, College and High School game have NOT been changed to allow defensive linemen to hold? That goes double for youth football, where 48 of the 50 states us NFHS rules, while Texas and Massachusetts [...]

In youth football, it’s important to think through your constraints before you choose an offensive or defensive scheme.  That is the case for small High Schools as well. I recently conversed with a head coach from a very small High School that only had about 30 players in their entire program. He was milling over [...]

Simple Defensive Back Reads  When you are in man coverage there are some simple reads your defensive backs can use to determine when a receiver is going to break his pattern off. Most youth football receivers do not have the body control or training of a Jerry Rice and are usually fairly simple to read. [...]

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 [...]

Parent Problems in Youth Football  I’m seeing a flood of posts on youth football forums and even getting a few e-mails from youth football coaches complaining about “player agents” also known as parents. Most of these unhappy coaches are dealing with parents that have non-issues, have an agenda, are misinformed, don’t know much about the [...]