Season 15 Practice #1: 8/29/09

Great turnout at practice today: Cain, Nick, Leo, Jesse, Mark, Carlos, Ricky, Gary, Andre, Biscuits, Matta, Day, and Mark's brother-in-law. A word on this last attendee. He is not joining the game. He's a cyclist who just moved to town and hasn't found a riding group yet. So we are not opening the roster yet.

We also got some good stuff done. Simple 4 on 4 to start with followed by some 4 on 4 with minor line play. We also did a good receiver drill that Mark found but perhaps the most valuable parts were the route and line drills.

Nick pointed out that the 2 most basic cut routes we run are the slant and the out but there is little consistency in the way the routes are actually run. Some people may run one or the other pretty good but many people have never been shown the mechanics of how to plan your cut, explode out of the cut and snap your head around with hands up immediately. So we set up two sets of cones and had everyone run crisp 2 yard slants and 10 yard outs with Nick and Cain serving as coaches to critique routes - they did it really well. Then we had 2 QBs throwing to receivers running those same routes with a corner backpeddling and not knowing whether it was a slant or out so the receiver could run the corner back before making the cut. Great drills and I think lots of people got something out of it.

After this, we ran a good line drill with players taking turns one at a time rushing the QB and then defending the QB. We set up a box that was about 3 yards wide by 5 yards deep and put the QB at the back of the box. The rusher had to touch the QB within 3 seconds and the O-lineman had to keep the defender off for 3 seconds. This was probably the BEST drill we ran and the one with the most value. First, it gave us time to really coach players to play O-line where people could watch and critique. Second, it put more pressure on the lineman to perform. It was one-on-one and everyone was watching. I saw people working hard at it. The only suggestion I have for next time is that I think we should have people like Mark and Matta do most of the rushing because they are who people really need to defend against. I also think that after we do some one-on-one drills like this, we should change it to 3 on 3 drills becasue that is the most common line we have in our games. We should still the QB lined up but not running and counting 3 seconds to see if the line can protect. This will help line practice communicating and we can make suggestions on technique for protection vs. different types of rushes. The one-on-one rush was pretty much center vs defensive tackle. Obviously we need to work on offensive tackle vs defensive ends too and a 3 on 3 drill will do that.

I would also suggest that for the real season, instead of having people standing around before the game just throwing the ball around, we run at least the one-on-one drill some as a warmup and to help players continue to improve. When people can watch and coach the lineman has a better chance to improve. During the real game, the only person who can help the offensive lineman is the defensive lineman (because the other members of the offense are busy blocking their own guys or running routes/looking to throw) and it's not really fair to expect the defense to coach the offense during the game other than maybe a newbie at the beginning of the game or if the score is really lopsided (which we don't want to happen anyway).

Big thanks to Mark, Nick, and Cain for stepping up with some great ideas today and thanks to everyone else for their attendance and great participation and coaching. Everyone was trying to help others get better as well as themselves. And thanks to the weather gods for keeping the temperature so low all morning and providing a nice breeze.

See you next week.