Offensive Drills of the Week

• By Keith Grabowski

This week we share another set of drills to help you develop your position players throughout the season.  

Whether it is footwork, hand placement, vision and decision making, or refining existing techniques, these drills should give you some ideas that allow you to adapt them to the schemes and concepts you utilize on offense to have your players ready to go on game day.

Offensive Line

The Oregon Ducks are off to a hot start and fresh off an upset of #3 Ohio State.  Offensive Line Coach Alex Mirabal.  One of his everyday drills is the “backside knee drill” which works on the power that comes from that backside knee in the run game.  This applies to offensive line play regardless of the scheme.

Damian Wroblewski, Offensive Line Coach at James Madison, likes to use the “machine gun drill”  to warm-up his offensive line and activate their shoulders.  It gets them firing their hands quickly which is especially important in pass protection:

Running Backs

Head coach at LaSalle Prep likes to utilize the “Zone 1-2 Cut” drill to teach his running backs to have vision on zone run plays and react quickly and burst. Coach Buys believes this is one of the most efficient drills for teaching the inside zone. He explains the drill here:

Beaumont’s quarterback is currently #4 in the country in passing yardage.  Part of that certainly can be attributed to great decision making.  Head Coach Jeff Steinberg utilizes a “progression drill” to teach his quarterbacks to make quick and correct decisions.  This drill can be utilized for any kind of progression whether that is half field or full field.  He explains it here:

Winning on go routes really starts at the line of scrimmage and in the first 10 yards.  In that space the receiver should work for a release to gain leverage on the defensive back and then get him stacked.  This puts the defender behind the receiver.  Now he can run to the football and make the catch.  Madison-Ridgeland Receiver’s Coach John Weaver explains how they work three aspects of this in the “Escape-Stack-Willie Mays” drill:

North Dakota State OC/TE Coach Tyler Roehl likes to teach body control and body position with a simple movement drill utilizing a small PVC pipe.  He shows how this can be applied to teach the footwork for any type of block:

Click here for last week’s drills

Finding different approaches to developing the skills necessary to succeed on the field is good for both the coach and the player.  It keeps things fresh and stimulates player thinking and execution.

Good luck this week!