Youth Football Preseason Update

My Youth Football Team’s Preseason Review.

Last night we had our last scrimmage game of the preseason. We had 4 scrimmages and last night was our team’s best performance. It was good to see some real progression. Not close to where we need to be, but we are getting there slowly but surely. We open up against one of the better teams in the entire league.  This could be a good thing because sometimes you want to catch these good teams early, before they get into rhythm.  Unfortunately we do not have film on the team we are playing on Sunday, so there goes having some advantages. We will have to play fundamental and disciplined football. We will be in our base defensive alignment and gap responsibilities.

We have to get better on the line of scrimmage. We have to get off the football and finish our blocks.  We have a lot of timid kids that are not aggressive and want no part of contact- so this has been a real challenge for our team.  We have improved a little bit since the start of the season, but I feel like once these kids get confidence in their abilities they will be fine.  Again, slowly but surely!

Offensively we do not look that bad. Again, the line of scrimmage has been a major issue for us.  We implemented the shotgun wing t jet offense.  The success we have had with our offense has been because of scheme and play calling. We use Jet and Rocket sweep.  These sweeps have been our best play by far. We have one decent athlete at running back that runs well in space.  We also have power, counter, trap, and post corner off of jet motion.  We also have a post/wheel combination and a running back pull screen that is absolutely lights out.  Overall the offense does not look bad, but it is not where it needs to be. Positive note, the kids understand the blocking scheme, even though we messed it up twice in last night’s scrimmage. We just have to get some attitude and toughness. We have to want to finish our blocks.

Now that the youth football preseason is over we will keep working on our fluency on offense and we will keep grinding with the offensive linemen. I have and will be spending the entire offensive individual position period with our OL.  Our running backs have to develop some attitude as well. They need to run through the contact consistently and run with attitude.

Defensively, I am real concerned. We spend a lot of time on tackling, block shedding, and alignment/ gap responsibility.  Defense is all about attitude, being physical and getting to the football and we lack a lot of that.  We are not an aggressive or physical team, the kids are super timid.  I feel like you can out scheme or do some other stuff on offense to counteract not being aggressive. When you are on defense you really cannot hide your weakness. Good defenses do not play soft; we have a timid and soft team. Last night’s scrimmage we did attack a little bit more, given this team was not as good as some of the other teams we have scrimmaged.

Going forward we will have to scout really well. We will have to scout our opponents and try to find some tells for our defense.  We will also, onside kick the ball a lot, hopefully we can take away some of our opponents possessions.  We will also rotate one or two of our best defenders to the wide side of the field because our league is such a sweep happy league. Our division in general is a fast division; some of these teams can really run.

Our special teams are not that bad. Our extra point is decent. We have to get more consistent with blocking on our extra points, but overall, not bad.  Our kickoff team has not given up many big returns this preseason.  This is nice surprise because I was a little concerned with our kick coverage because I have maybe two good athletes. When kicking off we do not want to kick to their best athletes, we have to try and kick away from these athletes. Our kick return has not done much.  This is because we lack decent athletes to field the ball. Our return middle looks good, but we are one block away from popping a big play.

We have a lot of work to do. I had some real project teams in the past, but this team takes the cake! The goal is to get these kids some wins! This group has not won a game since they started playing. No body wanted to coach this group and their coaches from last year bailed. So I decided to move down and work with them. I look forward to the challenge; even though they need a ton of work, they are all really good kids.