Coaching Tips:When Football Goes Bad!

Let's face it, it happens. After all the drills, practices, team building, reinforcing systems, etc, it's bound to happen. You're going to have a bad day! If you are involved in sports long enough you'll soon realize that there will be good and bad days and sometimes there's nothing you can do but to try and get your players to play through it.

Sometimes nothing can go right!

It can be frustrating as all the work comes unravelled. But don't give up ever and throw the towel in. Now's the time, more than ever, to reinforce team play and your systems. Go over it and over it again, even when it's going bad. Your team will need something each and every time they go out to compete. Look at it as a character builder and try to learn something from it.

Emphasize to your players the importance of battling and competing through it within the system. Bad days will test you as a coach and it's important that you lead your team through the bad weather. At the end of the day re-evaluate your team. Ask yourself are you asking your players to do too much within there limit. The main thing is don't panic, chances are it was just a bad day and nothing else.

Cheers

Youth Football Groom Your Role Players

Within your system you will have players that are naturally stronger or more talented than the others. They seem to play the game with ease, have good athletic ability, and contribute without missing a beat. The game is easy for them to play. This group would be identified as your core players and you will rely on them to carry a lot of the load during the football game. Most teams have their core players and the more core players you have the more depth you have on your bench. Usually the larger programs have more core players as a result of the higher numbers.

Does this mean that the smaller programs will not be able to compete?

Not at all! Every team will have their core group. What's important for the smaller programs with less depth is to surround your core players with solid role players and give them assignments that they must do within the system. For example, the less offensively talented players will be assigned a defensive role whereby each and every time they are engaged in play their role is to play tough defensively, be physical and pressure the opposing team into creating turn-overs and make mistakes that could possibly generate a score. They would have a primarily defensive role and when they get their time on the field, they know their role which is to be defensive first, play tough and not give up any points. This would be just as important to the team as scoring and if they fulfill their assignment each and every time, they will limit the scoring of the opposing team's core players.

These role players are important to have on any team and usually play against the top core players. For the most part if your role players are stronger than the opposing teams, than chances are you will have a good day. My experience with the role players is that once you explain to them their specific assignment within the system that they thrive within it, and become confident and key contributors. Remember, in the tightest of games it's usually the role players that determine the outcome.



Cheers

Youth Football Middle Linebackers

In youth football they're probably your most aggressive and best tacklers on the team that go side-line to side-line making tackles. Their attack is relentless and they are a big part of your defence, and no doubt, during the regular season they rack up the tackling stats.
But there's a problem developing among the many tackles that your youth football player is making. A problem that is lurking and waiting to be exposed, by the right offensive co-ordinator. You probably won't notice it until play-offs when the teams you face are better.

Now what's that lurking problem? It's called misdirection!

I have seen it a hundred times. Linebackers biting and bailing on plays, only to be taken advantage of by misdirection. All of a sudden your all-star linebacker is invisible and your in trouble in a hurray.

At the youth football level the misdirection would probably be in the form of a sweep reverse play or quarterback bootleg.

As you try to settle your linebacker down another problem usually follows. You soon discover that with your middle linebacker staying home that you have contain problems. Probably never seen much of it all year as your middle linebacker went side-line to side-line, but now it's there and at the worst time, and it's not an easy fix. Practice time is when you fix it, but it's a play-off game and you might not be practicing on Monday.

All in all, your linebackers need to be familiar with the terms misdirection and contain. They need to understand their assignments from within these terms and how things can go wrong if these two areas are ignored. It starts in your first linebacker group practice and is reinforced every work-out through out the season. They have to do respect it and most of all, they have to think it! If they have a contain responsibility then that's what their first and foremost responsibility is, making the tackle is secondary. If they are playing in the middle, then they are taught to stay at home on plays away from their side and to think of misdirection back their way.

Cheers!

Youth Football: Implement your System

A big part of your practice plan in youth football will be system implementation and doing it without sacrificing working on fundamentals. The best tool to begin introducing your system is to use your chalkboard or dry-eraser board in the locker-room or classroom.

Start off with your defensive system. Draw it out on the board for them and explain each and every assignment position wise to each player. Reinforce it over and over in practice time. Don't be afraid to blow the whistle, stop the play, and explain the do's and don'ts of your system, and start again. Give your players hand-outs or playbooks, something that is visual, that they can take out again and again and look at.

Repetition is the key.

Drill it in them and ask them to buy into your system, make a commitment to it, and make good decisions within it. In the coming football practices, go over and over it again. Challenge the players who veer out of it, and go over the importance of team play. You'll soon see the results and for the most part the majority will get it. Be patient with the slow learners; again, reinforce it until they get it. A good team has good systems and your better players will thrive in a team orientated system as they will get more support compared to a run and gun system. Your average players will gain confidence within the system and become better football players that in the end will make your top players perform better.

Praise their efforts at all times and when you get your wins, praise the team system!

Cheers!