When you set up drills for your team, know that they can be broken into two types of categories – Drills that teach or install and drills that correct problems. You can use drills that teach or install to correct problems, but it’s always best to focus on one thing every time your are correcting technique. If you are just installing plays, the focus should be on getting all aspects of the assignment correct, but you would not be as concerned about specific techniques.

For example, one teaching drill to take a look at is Routes On Air. Here you are installing the routes and teaching how you run them. Teaching drills should have a low challenge aspect to them – they should be very easily accomplished at a high rate of success. You can then progress to correction type of drills. These are designed at a higher challenge level so that you can identify some common problems that occur when the skill/play is executed at a nearly live level. Make sure you always have the teaching drill in place first so that everybody shows basic understanding. Sometimes you may have to review this mid-season. Correcting problems are what you will spend the meat of your time in individual drills throughout the season. There is a balance between a drill that is too hard and too easy. Nobody likes to be criticized no matter what you do so always try to be positive. Some of the best coaches will never lead with a negative comment – and always try to give three positives or more to every negative. We all know how damaging one negative comment can be and many athletes are very sensitive to them today. It’s not that they get too down on themselves, it depends on the athlete how they react, but many will over focus on the concern you brought to their attention, and that can cause problems in other areas as well.

What is so hard about drills? Try as hard as you can, for HS students you won't be able to get more than about 90 minutes of focus from them every day. Every minute over that you lose effectiveness, so every minute needs to be as effective as possible. This time goes down every time you run a boring or ineffective drill. So have great drills planned and completely thought out. I advise that every drill you run, you also draw out. Especially if you have a lot of drills right after each other you can take a quick peek at your practice plan and see how to set up the next one. You also need to write down the key points of emphasis for each drill. This guides the athletes expectations on how they should be performing the drill. You will save yourself a lot of correction if you go over this first. After they know the purpose, I use Q and A to see if they have retained it. They should be able to easily give you your key points of emphasis back for every drill.

What's not the purpose of drills:

1. Give them something to do while we plan practice. Includes warmups.

2. To find out who is the best hitter, runner, blocker.

3. Drills we did when we played – ex. bull in the ring, etc.

4. Every day drills. The reason I'm against these is because whenever you do something every day the quality and intensity goes down, the boredom goes up and inevitably practice lags. Doing a drill just to do it every day is the lazy way to play practice. Coaches need to mix it up and focus on problem areas and create new ways to address problems players and the team are having. Same drills everyday are boring. I hated them when I played, and your athletes will feel the same though they may never say it.

5. Running drills. When we only address conditioning in a drill we are wasting time that could better be spend working on a skill or technique. Conditioning or running can be a part of every drill. Teams that eliminate conditioning by conditioning all practice within drills gain valuable practice time.

What is the Purpose of drills…

To teach angles, steps, alignments, reads and techniques.
To correct improper skills and/or techniques.
To build confidence and give success to players in doing the play the correct way.
To teach from error correction and praise from success in isolation of the entire football play.
To put team athletes in situations to prepare them for competition.
 

Most drills coaches use are just tapping the surface of the things we are wanting our players to do on game day. Some drills don’t replicate live game situations at all? Ex. Traditional way of teaching tackling where you get helmet across a defender to bring him down. In live games this picture perfect tackle rarely happened – many other kinds of tackles happened but they were all viewed as desperation tackles with incorrect form because if it wasn’t the perfect form tackle it was a bad tackle. We have all learned since then that that was wrong and are teaching our kids multiple right ways to tackle that are all safer than previous tackles.

How do you get more from the drills you run? How can you pick drills that work?

To answer these questions you have to be very good at identifying what the PROBLEMS with your offense are right now.

And that comes from film study.

If you aren’t recording games or practices, start now. Then watch it and make notes on corrections that need to be made. I guarantee things will pop out that you weren’t even thinking of from just watching in person. You will also be able to see which individuals need to work on what things.

I always build my practice plans off of the problems I have identified on film. If they are starting poorly, we practice starts. If they have difficulty knowing assignments, we practice them on air vs dummies or shields until the errors are corrected.

Time

This is a huge factor to consider in how you set up a drill. I have seen and done drills myself that were either too short in time or too long. You could also set it up by repetition. Two times through then move on to the next drill. That type is good for repetitive drills like OL steps or WR routes or RB cuts. When drills go on too long, players lose interest again and the drill becomes stale. Sometimes it is a feel thing, but a great technique I learned is to always quit when you are ahead and the drill is going great. It’s best even if they really want one more rep when time is up…don’t give in and give it to them! Make them wait till the next time you run the drill.

Engagement:

One of my biggest pet peeves is to see drills being executed with long waiting lines. You want to maximize however possible the number of quality repetitions each player can get. If you are the coach and you are working catching the football and you are the only thrower to 8 players, they don’t get many chances to catch the ball. One catches and 7 are standing around. Instead, give everyone a partner or have multiple lines with an assistant throwing so more chances occur for each player to improve skills. As a coach you then check for skill acquisition by moving from player to player and making corrections or giving feedback as needed.

Practice Setup:

All your practices will be effective if you progress from many smaller groups with one coach per group and then gradually join together. It should look like an amoeba. Each small group joins up with another small group for the next series of drills. This is how I will give you the PSSO recommended drills for Installation. First we will have individual drills. Second, the individual groups join up into either Backs or Line. Tight Ends can go either place – depending on their skill set or coaches recommendation.  

Introducing the offense:

The first step in installing anything is to begin with teaching the parts and then work to the whole. If you make sure you have covered everything in part – like how to run a certain pass route, then when you get together with QB’s they will know what to do and you won’t waste time teaching a pass route that’s new when they should already know it and be practicing running it with the QB’s.

Here’s a run-down of the basic individual skills each position needs to know before they come together. When you practice these individual skills I recommend having them all stand in a line together all facing you as a coach. Then call out the command and they should follow with the correct response and form.

OL – Stances, Alignment, Center Snap, Cadence and Procedures, Steps, Pulls, Pass Set.

QB – Stance, Alignment, Taking the snap, opening for the handoff (mesh) and continuing playaction ball fake, tossing/pitching the ball, Bubble Throws Right and Left, 1 step drop, three step drop, sprint out right/left and passing from each drop.

WR – Stance, Alignment, Starts, Releases, Routes, Breaks (Post/Slant, In, Out, Speed Cut, Comeback) Catches (from every possible angle), Stalk Block, Cutoff Block.

RB – Stance, Alignment, Starts, Handoff (mesh with QB) Ball Fakes, Speed Cut, Square Cut, Jump Cut, and Spin, Catches, Blocking.

Skills for every position to practice – Ball security – One Hand, Two Hands. Fumble Recovery