John T. Reed’s football coaching blog

What are the main keys to youth football defense? by John T. Reed Copyright John T. Reed 50% of the time, when a youth defense fails, it is because one or more players did not use good tackling technique. Tackling is a skill where the natural way kids tackle is awful. They want to grab the shirt of the opponent with their hand and a half dozen other abominations. That means you must use a large dose of drilling to get them to do it right. I did a ten-minute-a-night, half-speed, form-tackling drill every night of the season for all...

Yeah, I know, a zillion of you are going to call me and tell me to put this in my clock-management book. Basically, with 10 seconds left, MI had to punt. Mi took the lead 23-21 at around 9:00 left in the game. According to my book Football Clock Management, they should have been in a slowdown from then on. The official play-by-play is at http://www.msuspartans.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/2015-2016/michmsu.html#GAME.PLY. Mind you, MI need only run an additional :10 off the clock to win the game. Did they unnecessarily leave :10 on the clock. Probably. Let’s see. With 3rd and 9, MI threw an incomplete...

Being a masochist, I put the Bucknell at Army game on TV this morning. I have not studied it using replay or any of that. In recent decades Army has been so “hapless” that it seems like piling on to criticize the Army players further. But what you expect in an Army game these days is lack of talent, because of Army being the only football team in America whose players must fight in wars as ground pounders after graduation. In a football game, lack of talent manifests itself as slower players unable to catch the opponent, small linemen getting...

You can turn your youth football season around during the season. I have many testimonials in which readers tell me that for whatever reason, they were not allowed to put my Single-Wing Offense or my Gap-Air-Mirror Defense in at the beginning of the season. Half way through the season, the coaches who initially would not let the coordinator use my scheme finally decided they might as well try it because what they are doing is not working.       Somewhat to my surprise, many readers who did that had great success for the rest of the season—even undefeated rest of...

Copyright John T. Reed I am often asked what drills I recommend for youth coaches. The more drills you do, the fewer games you win. Most football drills waste precious practice time and thereby make the team less successful. First, let me define some terms. Definitions Drill. A drill is a repetitive, narrowly-defined, and closely-supervised activity. The purpose of drills is to inculcate into players habits which they resist. Example: Football players must participate in nightly tackling drills because the way they would tackle otherwise, grabbing opponents’ shirts, is totally unsatisfactory, whereas the way the tackle after much proper drilling...