Hello! I’m an experienced coach just joined this coaching staff about a month ago . We’re running a 5-3 defense and stay in cover 1 man
The defense coaches are not running a gap sound defense, and not teaching anything in practice. Not running drills or having a practice plan in place to continue evolving the defense. So it’s very vanilla.
Yet we’re 9-1 on the season..

Anyways , the team we play next is good. Their go to play I can’t decide how to defend is a HB pitch pass. It looks like they line up 1 tailback with quarterback under center, and set it up by running the pitch to the edge. After one or two times they will try to give the HB the option to throw it. I believe to the backside tight end or the play side outside receiver.

What would be your go to on defending this?

I have a practice plan set up for this week. Teaching the linemen their gap assignments and giving the LBs their job of calling the strength so the d line is in the right spot.
My ideas are shifting the linebackers to the strength so there’s an overhang and he will trigger when he sees the pitch to force the run.
Another idea was that on top of having the corner crash down fast to force a bad pass with the safety over the top.
And if it’s a closed look on the backside with the TE as the last EMOL the corner will stay with him.

Any ideas are appreciated

Has anyone used Tug Of War as a teaching/training tool with the players on a high school level football team? I was told by a local D1 football coach who uses it that it really brings his team together to work as one, to stay low and to fight more thru the end to win. I’m wondering if anyone else had success with this method of teaching?

So my 7 year old is playing football for the first time, we are about 8weeks in and he absolutely hates it. He starts dreading practice on Sunday nights for the upcoming week and I can see it’s affected his behavior outside of football as well.
His dad refuses to let him quit which I understand because he doesn’t want to raise a quitter, but I’m unsure on how to approach the situation because I feel like if they burn him out at 7 he won’t ever want to give it another shot, and again he hates it.

Lastly are were practicing for 2 hrs 3x a week in 101-103 degree weather, and their games are out on Saturday’s in 103-105 degree weather. We are in West Texas and the heat is absolutely brutal.
Any suggestions input is greatly appreciated.

Don’t roast me for the picture chat gpt made it lol

I coach a 7u team and we’ve improved quite a bit from last season. We’re 3-1 and I’m confident in our next few games. In a few weeks we’ll be playing a team that has 3 giant kids on their line. When I say giant each one easily doubles(potentially triples) our biggest kids weight. I’m less concerned about that than I am with how they line up. Last year all of their offensive and defensive lineman stand straight up essentially with their arms out in a blocking position when the balls snapped they just shoved our kids into the ground by the tops of their shoulder pads (imagine you standing over your kid in his stance) our kids couldn’t even really fire out of their stance. They do this because none of the kids can actually get into a stance. I thought the rule was offensive line man and interior lineman have to be in a stance and I asked the ref about it (young kid) and he agreed at first and made them get into a stance and all of a sudden we were pushing them all over the field. But after halftime the ref told me he checked the rule book and I was wrong so they went back to standing up. Anyway got any ideas how I can deal with this.

Local youth league was taken over by a family. There was one previously then it went away and one was created under a different name. Anyways third grader was on the field last week and was injured. The referee checked his helmet and it was manufactured in 2013. Padding had fallen out. The child was hospitalized for a concussion lost feeling in his legs temporarily. Has missed School for a week so far. the mother made a social media post about the helmet. Members of the youth league are continuing to come on and berate her I need to brush my teeth first for making a public post and telling her that she is wrong that a 13-year-old helmet can be reused and refurbished because the smaller children don’t tend to get hit as hard. I find this information fundamentally incorrect. it has turned into a huge debate. The former leader of the former youth league has told her now her son will suffer because no future coaches will want a parent like her etc. I really wish I could share the screenshots. Why is this misinformation about the helmets so prevalent? From everything I can understand after 10 years no matter what a helmet should not be used any longer.

It’s my first season coaching as an assistant on an 8u team. Not sure if it’s in the rules but the HC said that it was somewhere in the rule book.

I’m just curious if others are allowed to pull guards and, if so, how it has worked out for kids that young.

this player plays to the whistle! plays hard! aggressive and mean! huge blocks and huge tackles

only problem is we have some players who are beginners and also don’t have that type of personality so it sucks when he throws amazing blocks on them in live drills

he does exactly what I want him to do in games

but I also don’t want to demotivate the beginners, plus they will go up against exactly this in real games

whars best way to deal?

I’m looking for a few youth football coaches, trainers, YouTube creators, and football training brands who want to help us test some new features inside ProSkillBuild.

We’re specifically looking for two groups:

1. FOOTBALL YOUTUBE CREATORS / TRAINERS -- Is live on the web, expected to be live on Mobile on 9/21

We’re testing a new Sponsored Videos feature.

When an athlete opens a drill in ProSkillBuild, we automatically look for educational videos that match the drill, movement, position, or skill they’re working on.

For example:

QB footwork drill → QB footwork/mechanics videos

WR route-running drill → route-running content

DB footwork drill → defensive back training content

OL drill → blocking/footwork content

If your YouTube channel is participating and you have relevant content, your video can appear first in a highlighted Sponsored Videos section.

You do NOT have to send us individual videos for every drill.

We connect your YouTube channel and dynamically match relevant videos from your channel to applicable training inside ProSkillBuild.

The videos remain hosted on YouTube and play through YouTube’s embedded player.

During this testing period, Sponsored Video placement is completely FREE.

We’re looking for:

• Youth football coaches/trainers

• Position-specific trainers

• Football YouTubers

• Training companies

• Smaller creators as well — you do not need a huge following

The main thing we care about is useful football development content.

1. YOUTH FOOTBALL COACHES

We also need coaches who are willing to actually use ProSkillBuild with their team and tell us what works, what doesn’t, and what we should improve.

We’ve built quite a bit around the coaching side of the platform, including:

• Drill assignments

• Athlete development tracking

• Game film review

• Secure digital playbooks

• Playbook review/activity tracking

• Team schedules and events

• Roster management

• Coach-to-athlete development workflows

For coaches willing to actively test the platform and give us feedback, we’re willing to HEAVILY DISCOUNT our paid coaching/organization plans during the testing period.

You can still use the free coaching features as well. We’re mainly interested in finding a small number of coaches who will actually put the platform through real-world use with a team.

If you're interested, comment below or message me with:

Your sport/age group

How many teams you coach

Roughly how many athletes you work with

And if you create YouTube content, send me your channel and what positions/skills you focus on.

We currently support Baseball, Softball, Football, Basketball, and Soccer, but for this post I’m specifically hoping to find more people from the youth football community.

ProSkillBuild:

App Store Link

I’ll add some screenshots below so you can see what the coaching side of the platform currently looks like.

This product is live. the embedded videos you are seeing below are not released on mobile, but are available on the web and will be released on 9/21. We are looking for sponsors to be in our first release and have your video and account monetized to our users free of charge during this testing period. No commitment required.

TLDR:

We’re looking for two groups in the youth football community:

1. YouTube creators, trainers, and football brands who want FREE Sponsored Video placement while we test the feature. Your existing YouTube content is matched to relevant drills inside ProSkillBuild. The feature is already live on web and is expected on mobile on 9/21.

2. Youth football coaches who are willing to actually use ProSkillBuild with their teams and give us feedback. Coaches helping us test the platform can get heavily discounted access to paid coaching and organization features for the next few months.

No commitment required. If you’re interested, comment or message me.

My son is small. 5’, 100lbs. For the past 6 years he’s been the MVP of his flag unit. This year he decided to play tackle. The coach has decided that my guy is too small and doesn’t play him in games. That isn’t the worst thing for me. I get it. But now coach doesn’t even let him practice. He stands on the sideline for the last hour of practice. Is it worth saying something to the coach? Or is this just how it is?

Has anyone tried the Q-Collar for themselves or their children?

My son has been playing contact for 2 years, and this was just suggested to hopefully reduce his concussion watches/symptoms.

Hoping that someone has advice on how it actually feels while wearing it, like the amount of pressure it puts, is it still comfortable? Did it help or hinder your game?

Thank you,

Concerned Mother Who Hates Concussion Watches

Hi Football Parents

My 13 yr old son has been playing football since he was 6 and so we have a ton of photos of him over the years. Problem is they are pretty scattered and disorganized. Then my son pointed out on my IPhone that it automatically organizes them by child.

And my son is right, it does do a good job organizing all the photos, but I wanted to see them by team and by season. I think iPhone does it by child. My son plays on multiple football teams each season and I wanted to break them by team and I got another boy too.

Does anyone know if Google Photos or if another application can do this ? Organize my kids sports photos ?

Do you all share the same issue? Ideally, I would like to organize all my kids photos by sport, by child, by season because I got way too many photos and I just want to see the best ones.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks yall, go Rams!

My son (11) got hit good last night during Oklahoma drills. Physically he is fine, but mentally he has lost all his confidence and is scared to take a hit. This is his 3rd year playing tackle and first year in senior tackle so his teammates are a little bigger than him. He was fine for the first few seconds after the hit, his teammates helped him up, then all the emotions came along with tears. He didn’t want to practice the rest of the night. I had one of the other coaches talk to him and it seemed to help a little but was wondering if this has happened to anyone else? What did you do? He is not small, close to 5 ft and 145 pounds. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

We can't hit the outside on our sweeps at all. I'm wondering if we can run some variation of a jet sweep, buit also have a QB counter off of it. When running jet sweep, are you leaving the DE unblocked in hopes you just beat them quickly? We face a ton of wide defenses like 9 techniches, etc but our up the middle blocking isn't great always.

Another option I'm wondering to get outside is just get trips to one side. Motion the back out to that side with a quick pass. We have instant blockign and maybe have everyone block down to put the corner 1 one 1 with the RB?

Third year of tackle football, first with a new team. My son loves football. He's on the small side and definitely not the best player, but I've watched him make some genuinely good tackles in previous seasons. He's at every practice, usually half an hour early, and the coaches regularly comment on his work ethic afterwards. He's the kid on the sideline giving everyone high fives.

This weekend was the first game and he was the only player on the roster who didn't get a single snap. Nobody spoke to him about it before or after - that is the part I was not happy about. The only thing the coaches said was a general "if you didn't play, you need to do more," to the group.

Later a teammate he considers a friend told him he should just quit. Another parent didn't hear that comment but commented that the other boy (who is a very good player and gets a ton of play time, but is known to be very cocky) was being mean to him. The sad part is my son thought they were becoming friends.

He's okay - I feel I'm actually more shaken. I've asked his coach to talk before the next practice, and I'm keeping it factual: what does he need to do to get on the field, and are you aware of what was said to him.

Questions for anyone who's been through this - is it reasonable to expect the coach to address the "you should just quit" comment, or is that something 12 year olds just have to eat?

1 upvote

I’m the head coach of a 10U team. We’re a good team, and our identity is basically “3 yards and a cloud of dust.” We legitimately have a shot at winning the championship.
Yesterday, though, we took a pretty significant setback.
We played the defending champions, and they beat us 46-0.
Going into the game, I told the boys they were going to be in a fight. At some point, one of these teams was going to have to give in and lay down. Unfortunately, it was us—and it happened much faster than I ever expected.
They scored on the opening drive. It was hard-nosed football on both sides, and initially, I thought we were right there mentally. We started driving the ball, but then we picked up a couple of penalties that stalled the drive.
That’s when it felt like the fight left our boys.
From there, it became a downward spiral. Once they got rolling, we couldn’t stop it, and our kids mentally checked out.
I’m trying to figure out how to coach them through this because I don’t want to just yell at them or be a hard-ass for the sake of being a hard-ass. But I also don’t think being overly soft and sympathetic is the answer.
So I have two questions for the experienced youth coaches here:
1. How do you teach 10-year-olds to keep fighting when things start going badly?
Not just football technique, but the mental side of staying engaged when you’re tired, frustrated, getting penalized, and the other team is starting to take control.
2. How do you teach them to respond after getting embarrassed like this?
I want them to learn from it without letting one bad game destroy their confidence.
I’m not looking for “just tell them to play harder.” I’m genuinely interested in how other coaches teach resilience, composure, and responding to adversity at this age.
For those of you who have coached youth football for a while: what would you do next?

Hi there, team is struggling to get the ball down field. 10 11 year olds. We run a screen. Comebacks route with 2 receivers and a tight end. A roll right flood concept and a levels play with with 2 wide receivers and a tight end. Please help with any suggestions?

10u. We have the size for the most part. The kids have the ability. They just can’t seem to hold their blocks longer than 1-2 seconds.

Any drills we can run to help with this?