Defense Takes Care Of Offense

I like to start with defense, since it is the foundation and allows you to do almost anything you want on offense. Your defense must be solid and set up correctly.

If your defense is not allowing yardage and smothering opponents, any kind of offense will work. This is why I spend more time on defense than offense in this book, in terms of specifics.

If your defense is shutting down opposing offenses, you don’t need to worry too much. You can run any offense, and it will work. Please read the defensive assignments carefully and work on it in practice.

This article is an exact excerpt from our Dominating Youth Tackle Football Book!

Sound Coverage

Sound Coverage means everyone is covered. Your defense is covering every offensive player. You don’t’ always have to play sound defense and you can gamble if you want.

Your Toughest Opponent

The defense you install should be designed to stop your toughest opponent. Go back and watch last year’s league championship game and analyze what the top two teams were doing. You should design your defense to stop them, not the teams that were trounced 62-0.

Look at what formations they used. How often they ran power plays versus misdirection. Which plays worked better? Did they throw? How did their pass plays look? Can their quarterback pass or just run? Did they use different formations for runs versus passing (I hope not)? Try to figure out what the best teams did and how to stop them.

The weak teams will take care of themselves.

Toughest Plays To Defend

Design your defense to stop the toughest plays in football: Blast and Off Tackle.

The Blast play is when a runner goes the A or B gap behind one or two blockers. This is very tough to stop.

The Off Tackle run is the most dangerous play in high school, and even at the youth level. It’s like the blast, but usually to the C gap. If you have more than one blocker in front of the runner, it will be very hard to stop, especially since most defenses are zone defenses and can’t react fast enough.

Most Difficult Offensive Football Plays to Defend:

1. Pitch Sweep
2. Fake dive handoff sweep
3. Reverse
4. Fake reverse
5. Running back pass
6. Blast
7. Counter
8. Deep pass
9. Off tackle

If you spend time learning to stop these plays, then normal defense is easy!

Can’t Prepare For Everything

You can’t prepare for every possible trick play. If you over prepare, the kids will play timid and not be aggressive enough.

I have seen it all. You simply can prepare for the off chance that they run:

1. Fumblerooski
2. Statue of Liberty
3. TE falls, then goes out
4. Silent snap
5. Player walks off field, then goes out for a pass
6. Double reverse
7. Hook n ladder (although we do this)

Over preparation can sometimes lead to paralysis by analysis. If you are playing my Base defense, you should have all of this covered regardless.

Youth Defenses

Most youth defenses are either a 6-2-3, 4-4-3, 5-2-4, or 5-3-3. In the 6-2-3, this means that you have 6 on the line of scrimmage, you have 2 linebackers, and 3 defensive backs (corners and safeties). The same applies to the other configurations.

You need to have eyes on the defense as a coach. Have one of your assistants watch the defensive alignment and figure out what they are running.

I also have a cheat sheet you can download that lets your assistant coaches mark the defensive players as either playing man coverage, zone, bump and run, etc. You can review these during a time out and it will help you adjust your offense.

Having Eyes On Defense

Having eyes on the defense means you are watching what they are doing and running plays that make sense.

If you are running a Wing T and have an unbalanced line that is strong to the right, and the defense does not line up correctly and they have most of their players on the left (because they decided to line up over the snapper and not the center), then you should run inside and Wedge and Off Tackle them to death.

If they line up correctly and line up over the center of your offensive line, regardless of where the snapper is lined up, then you run outside with Sweeps and Reverses.

Regardless of defensive alignment, if the box is stacked, like in a 6-5 defense, go wide.

If they are wide, go inside. It takes experience to do this on the fly.

Too many youth coaches run the wrong play against the wrong defense. They keep running Off Tackle because “it worked so well last week”, not realizing that this week’s opponent is in a different defensive alignment. Don’t be one of these coaches.

Run the play that works best against their defense.

Don’t run random plays in random order.

“Use one play to set up the next”. I can’t stress this enough. Not random. Precise and surgical! Like a cardiologist!

There are hundreds of other similar option plays and playbooks in our Dominating Youth Tackle Football Coaching Book!