I attended both the Pop Warner and American Youth Football National Championships Orlando Florida December 7-13th. For the next month I will be posting some video and comments on each tournament and the 15 games I watched. While not everyone is in Pop Warner or AYF, there are many independent youth football leagues out there, plenty of data and insights on these games can help youth football coaches improve your teams.
In addition to watching and taping games, I also interviewed several of the head coaches from a number of the winning teams. It was also very rewarding to see four teams running my Single Wing system on offense and my defense right out of the box at the AYF National Championships and another at the Pop Warner, who ran our offense for a good portion of the time.
Here are my thoughts on one Pop Warner Championship Game:
Lee Summit Missouri vs Far West Jets
The film clips:
This is the 2009 Pop Warner Pee Wee Division II Title Game. Pee Wees are 9-11 years old 75-120 lbs and 12 year olds 75-100 lbs
Keep in mind as you watch this film these are the best of 1000s of youth football teams, so whatever I say here really in the whole scheme of things is nit picking. If you look at the pad level, effort to the whistle, base blocking and tackling ( you rarely see a missed tackle), pursuit angles and being in position, most youth teams aren’t in the same strata.
This was the only game out of the 15 I watched where there was a Significant difference in the size of the kids. Far West was much larger, not only as the kids went through the handshake lines, but just comparing the kids to the size of the head coaches, which were both about 5’10”. I thought the Far West team had a little more talent, but they killed themselves with a few very costly penalties, 1 was a 15 yarder deep in their own territory that gave LS the ball on the 15, 3 other holding penalties all of which wiped out offensive plays of 10-15 yards. They also jumped off-sides on a “no play”, giving LS a key first down. LS had just 1 five yard penalty the entire game. LS also play called better- see below
Another thing that struck me if you real close is Far West’s offensive line “false steps” more than any good youth team Ive ever seen. Im not sure if their 2 point stance is the culprit or not, they come off with good pad level and effort, but they are a ½ step late on most plays because they are stepping back before they step forward.
Lee Summit:
Runs a double tight straight T for all but maybe 4-5 snaps, when they were in the Power I, 2 snaps with a wideout in the T. They threw the ball 1 time, just before the half with 10 tics left. They ran power probably 75% of the time. The kids come off the ball hard, stay on their blocks, good pad level etc. They ran a handful of counters and just 1 trap. The counters where they G block the End Man on Line of Scrimmage they did real well with, 3-4 times for 7-15 yards every time. When they just base block it 2 other times, still gains of 5 or so. They ran just 1 trap and it was a nice one late in the 4th for about 8 yards. They were content to try and drive the ball 3 yards a time. They did split the end out and crack him down on 2 sweeps which worked well after about 30 powers and saw the DEs pinching. When they ran sweep to the short side with a wideout, they had angles and numbers, that was a good move. Would have liked to see them formation more. LS ran one tight end reverse to the wide side late that looked like it had potential, had they run it to the short side and not into the widened monster back.
On defense they ran a 5-3 nothing fancy, they tackled very well and their LBs played aggressively, great pursuit angles. They had an excellent onside kick and got one back at a key point in the game.
After the half Lee Summit finally figured out FW was running a 5-2 monster with the monster playing wide side of the field, or when they were in the middle of field to the offenses right. They finally started calling power to the short side and eventually a nice counter to that side as well. A simple midline count should have shown them that early. They did a poor job of running the clock out at the end of the game. FW had just 2 time outs, LS should have run plays rather than kneel and used up the entire 25 second clock before they snapped.
FW wanted to come out in a Double Tight Bone and they moved the ball pretty well early, but they shot themselves in the foot with penalties. When they grew a little frustrated with their progress they went to the Spread to throw. Later they went to the “I” with a WR and Flanker. Out of the bone they only threw 3 times, completing 2. When they went spread they completed just 1 pass, they threw another 4 incompletes and the QB got sacked several times. Out of the I they had some descent success running the ball but mixed in a negative yardage sweep or penalty to take them out of drives. Watch the FW offensive lineman, nearly every play there are multiple kids “false stepping”, they lose a split second on every play. At this level of success Ive never seen a team false step so much. While their pad levels are pretty good for the most part and the kids obviously effort pretty well, maybe their 2 point stances have something to do with the false stepping. They block pretty well for being so awful at this basic skill.
The best play FW had was the QB in an empty gun, running the ball. Unfortunately they only did it 2 times. They had some nice size in the backfield and #1 may have been the fastest kid on the field at QB. I thought they should have run him more out of the gun. Late in the game FW finally runs some split flow stuff and moves the ball. No way were power sweeps going to work against LS, I felt maybe more split flow and misdirection plays inside the tackles made more sense. The timing on their jet Sweep series was poor, it took way too long, very poor mesh and Im not sure why they ran a QB follow to the edge on that series, didn’t make much sense to me. They also didn’t adjust their defense when it was obvious LS was running away from the monster. Not sure why they had a safety at 10 yards or even 7 when inside the 5 yard line as LS passed just 1 time.
We don’t know if LS threw the ball a bunch in an earlier game. There is a ton of gamesmanship in these tourneys, guys not showing stuff until the championship game or guys trying to throw other teams off by doing a whole bunch of odd stuff when comfortably ahead in the semi games. I have no way of knowing what the scouting report said.
While both teams did a lot of fundamentally things well, I think if LS had been in a traditional Power T offense and just ran trap/power/keep out and counter, they probably could have won this one by 2-3 TDs. On the other hand I think FW could have won this of course if they cut down on the penalties but also if they would have run inside counters, traps, cross bucks and a well timed PA pass out of the base. They could have scrapped the spread or at least just ran out of it. On defense they should have forced LS to throw, either going to 6-2 Monster or 6-3. If they were going to run Jet, they should have run it with #1 or not at all and run the powers, traps, inside counters off of it.
All in all a good game with lots of contact, but frustrating. Again, my kids went 9-1, 9-1 and 7-2 so I don’t know how I feel critiquing a team that did so much better than mine, but this is what I saw. In My Opinion FW may have even been able to win the game just by not false stepping so much, that was just awful to watch and very correctable, see my blog post about false stepping.
