The Best Play in Youth Football
The answer may surprise you. Many youth football teams attempt to emulate what the
coach has seen on TV the past
week or what the head coach ran
as a high school player 20 years
ago. Unfortunately what works at
the College or Pro level on TV
often doesn’t work very well at
the youth level. The coach’s high
school system may have worked
well for his team 20-30 years ago
with 6 days a week practices and
fleet running backs, but fails
miserably at the youth level.
At the youth level our job as
coaches is to teach the kids how to block and tackle safely and effectively. We teach
them how to get into good athletic stances as well as the base rules and strategies. Our
most important job should be to make football fun for the player and coach our teams up
to their full potential.
You can have fun and win at the same time. In fact most players that play on perennial
losing teams lose their love of the game and quit. That is one reason I developed these
coaching materials for my own 400 kid organization, so that our coaches would be
competent enough to coach the kids to their God given potential and play competitively
so the kids would stay engaged in our program. In fact my materials are filled with how
to make practices both well organized and fun.
Most of the plays or schemes the typical youth coach has in his playbook are not
designed to the talent level of most youth teams. I see teams with no speed often trying to
run sweeps, I see teams with kids that can’t throw or catch throwing (trying to throw) 20
yard passes. I see teams running bootlegs with very slow quarterbacks. I see teams
running a dive play with no lead blocker into the heart of youth defenses. I see teams
trying reverses against well disciplined teams for huge losses. I see pass patterns with 3-4
and even 5 receivers. I see team trying to get a 9 year old to read two different defenders
on option plays etc etc etc.
I rarely see: good lead off-tackle plays, one or two receiver pass patterns, optional run
and pass plays, trap plays, pulling, double teams, wedge blocking, designed plays to draw
the defense off-sides, unbalanced formations, motion, and great sportsmanship.
In youth football each year is different; you will not always have a big team or have a
very fast “feature back” that can outrun everyone on a sweep play. Unlike the colleges or
pros you don’t have 100s of kids form all across the country to chose from or 20-40 hours
Copyright 2007 Cisar Management all Rights Reserved
a week practice time. In my mind that team that wins because they just happen to have
the fastest kid in the league and he outruns everyone on sweeps and kick returns is a joke,
a luck of the draw thing. Football is a team
game and a well coached team won’t give
up sweeps for touchdowns or ever kick
deep. My first team defense has not given
up a sweep for a score in over 5 years.
I’ve coached youth football for about 15
years and one play that we have always
been able to run effectively regardless of
the size or talent of the team I’ve had is
the lead
off- tackle power. It can be run by out of
nearly any formation, I love it out of the Single Wing with 4 lead blockers and a double
team block at the point of attack. While it isn’t a terribly sexy play, it gets you 4-5 yards
every down in most cases and sets up “home run” complementary plays like the trap, play
action pass or wing reverse. Most youth teams are set up to stop the sweep, the “holy
grail” of most youth teams. Others try to shut down the “dive” in the gaps next to the
center. Very few are set up to stop even an average off-tackle play.
If the other team gives you the off-tackle, take it until they over-commit, then run the
home run play. In our Championship game in 2003 the other team was so concerned
about taking away our inside “wedge” play, they left open the off-tackle. We started the
game with 7 straight tailback off-tackle plays to our strong side and scored. The very next
series they moved out to our off-tackle hole and we ran wedge for a 65 yard score on first
down. Then they tried to stop the wedge play and moved everyone up and we ran the
wedge play action pass for a 60 yard score. We were up 46-0 in the third quarter when
they finally just gave up and tried to run the clock. Both the wedge and off tackle plays
can be run well by very average skilled kids.
In other games teams were set up to stop the sweep and wedge plays but again were
giving us the off-tackle play. We run no-huddle so we get many more snaps in than most
youth teams. In that game we had 71 snaps, of which 51 were off-tackle strong plays. We
were getting our 4-5 yards every time, nothing real big, but we did get some very big
gains and touchdowns from blocking back traps, wing reverses (2 TDs) and TB run pass
option (pass for TD). So we scored 5 touchdowns and out of the 5, 4 were in excess of 20
yards, we were only stopped on downs once and we fumbled once too. We were 2-2
passing for 56 yards and a TD. Now how much fun was that for our 3 tailbacks that
shared duty at the tailback position that day and for our pulling guards? They had a blast,
so did our place kickers, and the 4 other kids that had TDs playing non-tailback positions
not to mention our defense that could play with abandon since we were moving the ball at
will on offense.
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The net is, the off-tackle play at the youth level is the hardest play to stop, yet few teams
try and perfect it and it takes little talent to run the play. In my offense with the Single
Wing we practice that play more than any other. We block it a variety of ways so we
know it will work and we will run it, regardless of what kind of defense we face. Our kids
can run it in their sleep, We often start our practices with the “Power Hour” as Steve
Calande calls it. We run our off-tackle strong power for 30-40 minutes on air, fit and
freeze and then with players holding hand shields going 100%. Yes just one play often
makes up half of our offensive practice time.
If your team is doing poorly, you don’t need a trick play or new offense ( what most
coaches panic and do) you need to get perfect at running the off-tackle lead power play.
We know we are playing a good team when they come out and tray and establish the
off-tackle play. Of all the videos I’ve seen form youth teams all over the country,
regardless of the offensive set or personnel. The best teams always have a good off-tackle
play. It isn’t sexy but it does the trick and it sets up everything else in your offense.
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Copyright 2007 Cisar Management all Rights Reserved