Youth Football: Keep it Simple, Do it Well

An old coach once told me years ago when we were discussing offensive systems and how teams were changing to a more pro style spread offence at the time he said "Son, my experience over the many seasons has taught me to realize that if you cannot run off-tackle in football than you will not win". I agreed with him for the most part but I thought that he should run off tackle but maybe out of a different look so that we would not be so predictable. At the time he ran everything out of the I-formation to the Tight-End side. He looked at me and once again said "Son at the youth football level you got to keep it simple but do it well"

He paused in his thoughts and looked at me once again and said "And do it better than anybody else".

He was right. That season we were undefeated and won the provincial championship. His words have stuck with me all the seasons I have coached football. Keep it simple, do it well! It makes sense especially with young athletes. If we overwhelm them with a lot of plays, can they remember all of their assignments? Why not keep it simple, practice it a lot and like the old coach said "do it well". I remember running the off-tackle play in practice all the time out of the same look but against different fronts and defences, same play but we were coached up on how to run it versus every look that could be thrown at us.

So basically, they knew where we were going to run the ball most of the time but we did it so well, they had a hard time stopping it. They spent so much of their practice time trying to figure out a way to stop it that when we ran another play off the same look it usually was for a good gain. We had two other running plays we ran off the off -tackle play, a counter, and a pitch. We also ran play-action off the same play with a tight end out and a slot back delay backside.

Simple but very effective!

Cheers!