Football Defensive Linemen Keys and Tips

Defensive linemen are often the forgotten group in youth football. For the most they are usually the left over offensive linemen that are too slow to play offensive line and so are thrown out there with the "just hit somebody" philosophy. There are however simple keys and tips that you can give your defensive linemen that will make them effective run stoppers.

The most important key is that they need to know what their role is as a defensive lineman. Depending on your philosophy one of the roles you could implement for then is that above all and everything else they must be effective run stoppers first and foremost and they must take pride in this role and do it well.
The second key is alignment. They must know where to line up either right on the offensive linemen or on his outside or inside shoulder or even just right in the gap. Whatever it is they must know what they are to do, based on their alignment. Do they control an offensive linemen by aligning right over them and therefore have a two gap responsibility on either side of the offensive linemen, or do they control the offensive linemen's outside or inside shoulder and by doing so control that gap? Again, it depends on the defensive system you are running but they need to know what their assignment is on all alignments.
The third key is their eyes. After their alignment they need to know where to look and place their eyes. On a zero technique or straight on alignment, their eyes should be right on the linemen across from them. On the snap they should jam the offensive linemen with a two point punch technique in the arm pit area with thumbs up, lock out the arms to gain separation and then look for the ball. On an outside or inside shade alignment their eyes should be on their shoulder assignment of the offensive linemen and on the snap of the ball they attack the shoulder, with one hand shooting into the mid breast plate and the other hand on the bicep of their shade assignment. Again, they lock out the arms and only them do they lift their eyes up to look for the ball.

By simply giving them their assignment, whatever it may be, it makes it easier for your defensive linemen. By understanding what their role is each and every play it gives them confidence and makes them a more effective football player!

Football Coaching Tips: Roles and Responsibilities

Starting out as a new youth football coach you'll soon realize that there are many responsibilities and roles that you'll need to fulfill while organizing the infrastructure of your football team. Here are a few tips:

Get yourself organized as try-outs will be soon and you want to have all in order prior to your training camp. Surround yourself with good and knowledgeable people. Select yourself a good team manager that is organized and reliable and most of all will have your back. Select somebody that is a good communicator as a lot of their work will be communicating practice times, game dates, tournaments, schedule changes, co-ordinating parent volunteers, etc. Understand that your manager will be as busy as you are coaching so it's important that they are as motivated as you are. A good manager will complete the package as far as what it takes to run a good and successful program and take on a lot of duties that are necessary to run a program. This will free you up to do what you love to do and that's coach football.
Secondly, surround yourself with a dedicated and knowledgeable coaching staff. Explain to them your philosophy and give them their coaching assignments. Allow them to have input within your philosophy and system. No input and they will lose interest! It's important that they offer you another point of view especially when game adjustments are a factor.
My experience with assistant coaches was to let them do what they do best and that was to coach. Challenge them to be better but never in front of the team. Face all challenges as a team, trouble-shoot together, debate scenarios, and support each other. Ultimately, there will be times that you will be challenged as the Head Coach to make the final decisions. But if your coaching staff has input it can be a lot easier.

Cheers

Football Team Player Evaluations: Key Elements

Try-outs or Training camp can be a complicated process. Football team player evaluations can be tough at times and stressful for both the parents and players involved. But it is part of the process needed in order to choose and shape your team and your practice plan should reflect this as well as cover key elements during the player evaluation process. Meet with your coaching staff and manager prior to the first practice. Assign one or more the job of running the practice sessions. Plan to either sit up in the stands or on the bleachers with your pen and clip-board.

Pay attention closely to the each player's skill level by evaluating them when they do drills emphasizing fundamentals. Evaluate how hard they work in drills. Pick out the ones that seem to struggle in the different individual skill drills that you have scheduled and make a note of them, as well as the ones that do the drills with ease. Watch them closely during team drills when they have to work in tandem with other players. How do they respond? Does it appear that they could play within a system or do they struggle? As well, note their effort in drills where they are pressured and have to battle, do they battle hard, or do they shy away?

This will measure their character.

Finally, after practice, meet with your staff once again and discuss each player individually. Some will stand out immediately while others will have you wondering what they can do. Talk about their strengths and their weaknesses and what they would bring to the team. In the following practices pick the tempo up and evaluate them once again. You should soon start to see the separation begin and you will start to get a pretty good idea of how the team will shape up. Keep a log of your players during this process. This will help you in the end with your selections. Also, if you are challenged by a player or parent on your selections you can refer to your log on the player in question. Usually, o a challenge once you dig out your log this puts an end to any sceptics.

Cheers

Receiver Route Adjustments versus Zone or Man Defence

One of the rules that I have adopted and it's easy to remember is: "Run away" from man and "Sit down" versus zone coverage. In other words, when adjusting football passing patterns versus a man coverage system, call crossing patterns or passing routes whereby your wide receiver is running away from the defensive back. Look for the mismatches where your wide receiver is basically a better athlete than the defender and is out running them. A lot of teams when up against a man coverage football system will isolate their best athlete versus a weaker defender and let his athletic ability get him open.
Versus zone coverage, the adjustment to make would be to get your players to "sit down" or stop and set up in the seams between the zones. Basically your wide receiver would run his route and look for the opening between zones, stop, set-up, while the quarterback would scan and find him open in the seams.

The key to all your football systems depend a large amount on your personnel that you have to run them. Based on that, you design or adopt a particular football system that your players have the means to thrive in. In other words you don't run a system that your players don't have the tools to operate.
Once you establish that system and your players thrive within it you will be able to make game adjustments within that football system that will be easy for players to adopt. One of the things that you will probably do at some point is to adjust your passing patterns based on what kind of football pass defence that you are up against whether it be man or zone defence.

Rule of thumb: Run away from man and sit down versus zone!

Cheers!