Key Elements to Football Defence

As a youth football coach when you begin to plan and put the dynamics of your defence together you should consider the following: Pressure, Contain, Filter, Force, and Cover.

With these elements in mind and within your defensive system make sure that you have these areas or keys covered and that your players know their assignments within the keys. Let's cover each item: Pressure- it's important that you pressure the offence into hurrying in order to take away their time and space and possibly put them in a position with your pressure that they make mistakes and as a result create turn-overs.

Contain: - its important that within this pressure that you have good contain so that they cannot get outside the pocket or the box and that everything is contained or bracketed inside. Filter- it's important that within the Pressure and Contain that every play is filtered back inside where you have your strength and more help. Force- it's important that within this filtration that you have solid run support and that your players come in force, aggressive to the ball, some coaches refer to this as gang-tackling. Finally, Cover- it's important that within the keys of your football defensive system that you have good downfield coverage.

Regardless of the front or defensive football system that you want to play these elements are the keys and your players should know their assignments within the defence.

Cheers!

Football Playbooks and Spring Cleaning

Spring is almost here and like any good youth football coach its time to evaluate your football systems and do some spring cleaning and get rid of some clutter. Time to go through the playbook and evaluate plays that you ran the previous season.

For the most part your play evaluations should be based on the football players that you have returning and how they fared in your offensive system last season. Perhaps they struggled in a particular look or formation, or they just weren't ready to do what you asked them to do from within the football system.

On the other hand, they have a years experience under their belt , are probably a little bigger and stronger, and more mature than they were the previous year and maybe now this play that failed you so bad last season might be a "go to" play this season.

 It's up to you as the football coach to determine that as nobody knows your players better than you do.

As you do your football spring clean-up, you may as well evaluate your football drills, practice plan, special teams,and even your assistant coaches. As well, evaluate your own performance as we all can improve in football somewhere.

Cheers!

How to prepare your Football Team

A coach for the most part is like a salesman. They have to sell their systems and motivate their team to perform and make them feel that they are getting the best deal in town. A coach likes to be in control of the game and if you're in control you usually are having a good day.

But, what about the uncontrollable?

For instance, how talented, big, and good is your next opponent?

How do you prepare your team?

Well, you have to emphasize to your players the controllable. Like, be disciplined, play the system, limit your mistakes. Don't take bad penalties to give them any extra advantage and most importantly choose to outwork and out hustle at all times.

Talented teams play the game with ease and if you let them have time and space they'll hurt you. But when you force them to work for that time and space it can close the talent gap and keep things close and give your team a chance.

Finally, emphasize to your team, that you cannot control how good the opponent is, or their size, or their team record. You can only control how hard you work, whether or not you choose to execute your assignment, and the fact that hopefully,their talent will challenge your athletes and will bring the best out of your players.

Cheers

The Coaches Chair

Hi, my name is Dave and I have been a youth and minor coach for over twenty years. I have always been passionate about coaching kids at the minor and youth level as well as High School, and I have learned a lot along the way through my mistakes,and experiences. I was always particularly committed to being organized and I wanted my players to get my best effort and have a great experience. My commitment to them was to have them prepared,physically, mentally, and teach them good team systems so that they could play at their best. I only asked them in return to be committed, be open to my coaching philosophy, and to work hard. I love to coach and watch kids develop and go on to contribute at a higher level. My blog " The Coaches Chair" will give me a chance to talk about coaching in general, give advice and tips based on my own experiences. Perhaps my thoughts and ideas in the coming blogs can be helpful to you or at least give you some insight from a different point of view.

Cheers

Dave