Football Drills - Team Drills for Offense

Introduction

Drills are an essential aspect of football practice. Not only do football drills establish a firm foundation in players, they also prepare players to succeed during games.

While many football drills are focused on individual positions, team drills are important in improving techniques in situations encountered in team play. The following drills have been created to hone the necessary skills in a successful offense.

Hustle Drill

For this team drill, start by spotting the ball at the 40 yard-line and huddling the starting unit for the offensive side at the midfield. The quarterback calls the play as signaled by the coach. The starting unit then lines up and executes the play.

When the ball has been thrown or the ball carrier breaks through the line, the entire offense (not just the starting line) runs to the endzone and huddles around the ball carrier. The ball carrier breaks the huddle by calling "1-2-3" and everyone responding "score."

The drill then repeats from the endzone to the 40 yard-line. The coach should rotate the players frequently and either keep track of time or the number of plays completed to ensure hustle.

Unrecovered Receiver Drill

This drill was created to help the quarterback and wide receivers recognize when they are not being covered by the defense and take advantage of the situation with an automatic pass.

Begin by forming the offensive formation to be worked on at the line. Back-up offensive players can play defense.

The defense lines up with the coach signaling for one defender to be out of correct position. The quarterback and wide receiver then assess the defense and execute the uncovered release and automatic pass accordingly.

Triple Option Mesh in Chutes

This drill combines a quarterback and fullback mesh drill with a line chute to simulate a game-like scenario for midline and triple option plays. For a play to the right, line the center and quarterback on the left side of the chute, the center under the chute (with the right guard and right tackle) and the quarterback just behind the chute.

Scout players then set up in an odd or even front and the coach gives the defender the stunt for the quarterback to read. Players should run the play as they would without the chute, only using the chute to remind them to stay low.

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Steve Tucker is a youth football coach, and the owner and publisher of Football-Tutorials.com. Visit his blog today for more than 468 free articles covering football drills, plays, and coaching strategies.

The Balanced Line Single Wing Offense for Youth Football

Most youth football teams that run the Single Wing Offense run it out of the traditional unbalanced line set.

Many coaches have asked me about using the Balanced Line Single Wing Offense in youth football. For most coaches, they ask because they have "Special Rules" in their Youth Football Leagues that require them to use balanced line formations. From 2-3% of youth football leagues have rules like this.

It is very simple to modify the Unbalanced Line Single Wing Offense to a balanced line set. While most High Schools that run the Single Wing Offense do stick to the unbalanced set, a number of them do have a balanced line set or two as well.

Menominee Michigan High School runs nearly its entire Single Wing Offense out of a balanced line set. Menominee won yet another State Title last year as well as blew out the Defending Largest Class State Champion (Wayzata- 3,400 students) of Minnesota. Menominee as most of you know, has just 550 students. It's hard to argue with Menominee head coach Ken Hofer, who has over 250 wins running this offense from a balanced line set. Hofer is a legend in Single Wing circles and is an excellent clinic speaker.

Some modifications required if you run the Single Wing Offense from a Balanced Line Set:

The midpoint of the offensive line is the center, you now wedge on the center. Pull the Left Guard on off-tackle runs to the right. Pull just the Right Guard (not the power tackle also) on reverse runs to the left. The Left Tackle Blocks GD, Gap-Down on traps to the left.

As you can see, moving to the balanced line is no big deal if you are required to do so. If I was forced to run this offense, those would be the changes I would make. I would make my power tackle the left guard, as he would be my second most athletic lineman.

We must all play by whatever rules the leagues think makes sense, no matter how silly they may be. Don't dwell or whine about it, just make the adjustments and make it work.

For 150 free youth football practice tips: Youth Football Plays

Copyright 2007 Cisar Management and http://winningyouthfootball.com republishing this article are parts of it without including this paragraph and the links is copyright infringement. Please republish, just include the links.

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.
His web site is: Football Plays

Why Did the Single Wing Offense Die Out?

At one time the Single Wing Offense was like the Spread Offense of today. Invented by Pop Warner in 1907, it was the most common offense in its heyday. At one time there were more teams running the Single Wing than not, at every level of football. In the 30's and 40's over 80% of College and Pro teams were running the Single Wing Offense.

Why do we see so few teams running the Single Wing Offense today?

Why Did It Die?

There are many theories here are just a few of the more popular and logical ones:

With so many teams running the Single Wing, the "familiarity factor" led to it being easier to defend. Just like today, the first time you see something like a 5 wide Offense it takes you by surprise but after you've played 5 wide teams 4-5 times it becomes much easier to defend. Imagine defending the same offense 8 of 10 games for 20 years in a row and practicing against it every day (assuming your team ran the Single Wing on Offense). The familiarity factor would be quite high.

The Platooning Theory

The move to two platooning football gave rise to specialization which in turn allowed for "finesse" players to play the game at Quarterback and Wide Receiver. Back in the 50s and before, most players played both ways. Even the great quarterback YA Title played both ways, leading the NFL in interceptions playing at safety. Title also excelled as a punter, playing special teams as most starters did back in those days. Players in that day had to be tough, physical, durable football players that had to excel in many facets of the game. Todays College and NFL players play one way and are very specialized. Today even many High School teams platoon. This specialization allows more practice time to be devoted to intricate offenses and the development of less physically dominant players.

The Sinking of the Titanic

The 1940 NFL Title Game factor. With the largest ever nationwide audience tuned in, the Chicago Bears using it's new fangled Straight T offense, beat the Washington Redskins and the Single Wing 73-0. This sound thrashing on the national stage led many to think the Single Wing was as good as a slingshot in a gunfight, it was thought to be antiquated and "old fashioned". Horse and buggy stuff in the days of air travel and indoor plumbing. This may have been the nail in the coffin for the Single Wing, as many teams started abandoning the Single Wing for the next greatest thing, the T Formation. Just like today, coaches are bandwagoners, they jump on board with the next greatest thing that has caught their eye and the fickle hearts of their fans.

The Keepers of the Faith

Fortunately the Single Wing never really died. There were college teams running the Single Wing right into the 1960s. A number of very successful High Schools never stopped running the offense including Menominee Michigan's Ken Hofer. The Maroons have been running the Single Wing for the last 40 years and have gone to the playoffs in each of the last 13 seasons and won 3 State Titles with it in just the last 9 years. Giles in Virginia is another one who has stuck with the Wing for the last 20 years plus and has won 2 State Titles in just the last 6 years. There are a handful of High Schools like these that kept the offense alive along with some forward/backward thinking youth coaches where the offense has really started to catch fire in the last decade. Add in what Urban Meyer has done with the Single Wing and you have a stampede of coaches jumping back on the Single Wing bandwagon. There were 25 or more Division I College teams running at least one Series of Single Wing plays in their offenses this season. Heck even the Miami Dolphins got in on the act with the Single Wing in their amazing turnaround this season.

Modern Day Single Wing

While the Single Wing of today still contains many of the core principals of the 1940s Single Wing; Overwhelming at the point of attack, using angles and leverage, deception and great ball fakes, motion and great play action passing. The Single Wing many of us run today also includes some new bolted on features like: Jet or Fly Sweep Series, Trap and screen games, Mesh or Air Raid passing concepts and much more.

Youth Single Wing Football

How wide spread is the Single Wing at the youth level? Is the familiarity factor going to kill my chances of being successful with it?

Our latest research from marketing executives of several very large companies and polls of over 1,000 youth coaches tells us:

There are about 2,500,000 kids playing youth football today.
There are about 120,000 youth football teams in existence today.
About 2,400 of those youth teams are running the Single Wing Offense.

So us Single Wingers are still in the minority and the familiarity factor is still low as about 2% of youth football teams are running the Single Wing. But those adopting the offense is growing and will continue to grow in the advent of seeing it on TV on both Saturdays and Sundays. Same goes for the success a number of our teams have had at the National Pop Warner National Championships and other big Tournaments. With so many teams having so much success with it at the youth levels, interest is bound to spike up. But don't fret about that, my teams have been doing consistently well with it over the long haul. We have been running it for 11 seasons against a lot of the same teams and a lot of my competition has bought my book, has my DVDs and comes to this very web site daily. We have a tracking thing on the web site that shows me which towns hit the web site every day.

Coaching Youth Football

The moral of the story is to expect to see more Single Wing Football wherever you are. But don't worry, we are still a minority, they still have to stop it and if you bought the book you have the countermeasures at your fingertips for the most commonly used techniques and schemes used to stop this offense.

One last thought: Do you platoon? Do your best players play both ways? Are you able to devote 5 days a week practice time to just offense, no defense or special teams? Boy the youth game and dynamic seems to fit more of the mold of the constraints the teams of the 40s and 50s had, doesn't it?

Dave Cisar-

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Youth Football Defense

Football - The Offense

The game of football features two teams going at each other. One team is on offense and the other team is on defense. We're going to concentrate on the offensive players in this article and the role of each man.

The offense of a team is the key to scoring points. Without a well tuned offense a team doesn't have a chance. That's why each man in the offensive unit has to know his role and execute it to the best of his ability. This involves not only skill but also thinking on his feet. Football is a very technical game in many respects and if a player doesn't have all the plays stuck up in his head, he's not going to know how to react when a certain play is called.

The offense itself is actually run by the coach who calls the plays, even though he's not on the field with his players. But on the field, the game is run by the quarterback. This is probably the most important position in the game of football. A good quarterback can mean the difference between winning and losing, especially in the final minutes. He's the one who hands the ball off to the running backs on a run play or passes it to the receivers on a pass play. Everything falls on his shoulders.

The running backs, which are the halfbacks and fullbacks, are the ones who run the ball on run plays and help give protection to the quarterback on pass plays. They can also act as receivers on pass plays as well. Running backs need to be very quick on their feet. They also need to be strong in order to block for the quarterback. Running backs are probably some of the best athletes on the field.

The wide receivers and the tight ends are the ones who catch the passes thrown by the quarterback. There are a number of routes that these players need to run during the course of a game and each route has to be known beforehand. The routes themselves can be very complicated in an attempt to throw off the defense. Receivers have to be very fast in order to outrun the defense. They also need to have very good hands to catch a football.

The linemen, called guards and tackles, are there for two purposes. On pass plays they are there to provide pass protection for the quarterback so he can have enough time to get his pass off. On run plays they are on the line to create holes for the running backs to run through. In order to do both of these jobs linemen have to be very strong and very big. Some linemen are well over 350 pounds. When these guys hit you, you know you've been hit.

Rounding out the offense is the kicker. He is the one who either kicks the extra point after a touchdown is scored or tries for a field goal if the team is close enough to the goal line but not close enough to go for a touchdown. A kicker has to have very strong legs, as some of the kicks he has to try are from quite a few yards away.

For an offense to be effective, all the men on it have to work together. That's what makes some offenses great and others not so great. It's called teamwork.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Football [http://football-guides.com]

How to Stop the Single Wing Offense in Youth Football

We have yet to be stopped very well, but there have been a team or two that slowed us down in a way most youth football coaches wouldn't think of.

To answer this, all I can do is relate my direct experience. We have played teams over the last 6 seasons with every imaginable defense and stunt you could dream up in your wildest mad scientist lab. We are always the most filmed, most researched, most talked about team in the leagues we play in. It's probably because of how different the offense is and how many points we put up each week.

We have even played the same team with the same group of coaches 3 years in a row. They put up a different defense and different set of stunts each year and we still came out on top each time, so the newness factor for our success may not be all what it's cracked up to be.

Our parents have overheard opponent scouting coaches just throwing up their hands and saying "No way we can stop this I don't even know where the ball is." There are other youth football coaches that have been very confident and said "All we have to do is X and we will shut them down." X may stop one play but it doesn't stop the entire offense or the adjustments detailed in the book. Some of the comments of the smug expert defensive coaches have been darn right funny and those are usually the teams we score 3 TDs on in the first quarter.

I have no problem with opposing coaches scouting us. I take it as a huge compliment that they think so highly of us that they would spend time studying our football team. I'm very friendly and joke around with these guys, I really appreciate their effort to understand our football plays and system.

There has not been a single type of defense or tactic that consistently gave our youth football team problems. There have been a few defenses that we love to see. we run through these like butter:

4-4
GAM
10-1
5-2 Monster

We do well against the others too, but the above youth football defenses perform particularly poorly against the Single Wing Offense. We also found that teams that stunt and stem a bunch are vulnerable to big plays and often get behind early and never recover.

The few teams that have given us problems do so in an area you wouldn't think would have much to do with stopping the Single Wing, it is the opponent's offense. When we play teams that can get a few first downs every possession and keep our offense off the field, we can struggle. In 2006 we lost a playoff game in overtime to a team that always got 1-3 first downs on every one of their possessions. They also got an extra possession due to very good special teams play. Their coaches did an excellent job of eating up the clock and keeping us off the field. They stayed in a base responsibility defense and varied from it very rarely if at all.

The teams that gambled on offense and went 3 and out played right into our hands, we got the ball early and often and scored early and often. Same for the teams that got out of their base defense and threw a bunch of blitzes and stunts our way. The defensive kids were playing out of position, got burned and lost confidence in the "scheme" and ended up playing tentatively.

Is the Single Wing Offense the "silver bullet" for youth football? In of itself probably not, but add to it proper practice priorities, solid defense and special teams play and it's a knockout combination.

Here is a poll that answers the question: What is the defense you like least to see as a Youth Single Wing coach? It was answered from a group of 41 experienced Youth Single Wing football coaches.

Wide Tackle Six
6 votes (15%),
5-3
5 votes (12%),
4-4
7 votes (17%),
4-6
2 votes (5%),
GAM
4 votes (10%),
10-1
2 votes (5%),
7 Diamond
1 votes (2%),
5-2 Monster
2 votes (5%),
3-3-5
7 votes (17%),
4-3
1 votes (2%),
3-4
1 votes (2%),
Other
3 votes (7%)

For over 400 free youth football coaching tips go to: http://winningyouthfootball.com

Dave is a trainer of youth football coaches nationwide. He has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized, while having fun and retaining players. His book "Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan" was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington. His DVDs and book have been used by teams nationwide to run integrity based programs that win championships