Progression Tackling Drill
Here is a drill I started doing and has huge impact on how we approach ball carriers.

Step One: Setting up the drill
Take 4 Tackling Bags and make one strait long line, having them touching on the end.

Step Two: Building of muscle & mind memory in the athlete.
Start everyone at the end start of the bags and begin in footfire, traveling down the bags, keeping but down, head up and bag between legs. Takes 20 seconds to travel the distance of 4 bags. Use fingers and have them call out numbers to ensure they are not watching their feet.

Step Three: Incorporate Form Tackling
Make 2 lines of athletes, one at each end facing each other. Line A the tackler and Line B the ball carrier. Have first athlete in line A start footfire down the line, when they get the the start of the last bag, have the ball carrier run down the line keeping the bag between his feet. Have Athlete A wrap and thrust up, carrying the ball carrier back to the place he started.

Step 4: Pick up the pace
Now have them execute the same drill but running the first bag, on second bag, start the decent into the tackling position, while foot firing. When athlete A gets to the second bag, have athlete B start running at him. Have athlete A form fit, thrust and drive athlete b back to starting position.

Step 5: Be creative
I even incorporated angle tackles with this technique and it works beautifully. They learn quick, and really build the muscle and memory needed to be a proficient tackler.

THUNDER BALL
This is how we do it:
We use half the field and split that field in half again and that is where you need to pass in order to get a first down.

One team punts the ball to the other team and the game begins.

As soon as the receiving team is touched that is where they begin their first offense series of 4 downs.

Once they pass the mid-field marker they get another set of 4 downs until they score or fail.

At that point they turn it over to the other team and they try to go the other direction for a score.

It’s kind of like a 7 on 7 drill with no huddle.

The key is at the end of every play you, as the coach, get them reloaded as quickly as possible then all you do is cheer them on from the sidelines. The plays and the quarterbacks are determined by the respective teams and anyone can be the QB. It’s that simple.

We use this to identify leaders as well as uncover some hidden talents of our boys; we also see how good they can perform under pressure and make quick decisions.

We do this at the end of practice for some conditioning and a way to break-up the seriousness and focus that we ask our players to commit to during our regular practice.
The boys really seem to enjoy it. This is especially fun for the younger little league teams.

Advanced Tackling Drill
Form groups of three; one a tackler, one a blocker, and a ball carrier.

Position the three as follows:
The tackler is on his back, head pointed toward the impact line, the ball carrier has a football and the blocker is in position just ahead of the ball carrier.
Two cones are placed to form an imaginary line 3 yards from the tackler on the ground and 5 yards from the “offensive” blocker and carrier. The tackler and the blocker/carrier are separated by 8 yards.

With the three in position, the coach blows his whistle. The objective of the tackler is to tackle the ball carrier before he crosses the line between the cones while the blocker and carrier rush to the line attempting to cross it.

Subjective variations that the coach can implement are using a scoring system to create a competition between the offensive group and the defensive group, such as 5 points for each successful tackle and one point for an offensive success. If a tackler not only makes the tackle before the line but causes a fumble in the process he can get double or triple “defense points”.

The coach can also scale back the intensity of the blocker/ball-carrier to 3/4 or 1/2 speed depending on the skill level of the tackler.

This drill places a premium on sound tackling fundamentals but also instills toughness as the tackler must get off his back, get across the line between the cones, take out the blocker and tackle the carrier before he can cross the line, with a premium on causing a fumble. It also gives the blocker/carrier practice in their respective roles, and the ball carrier additional work on protecting the ball.

Big Man Duel
EQUIPMENT-You need one stand alone weighted tackling dummy, 1 football, and 4 players.

ALIGNMENT-Two offensive linemen stand 7 yards in front of the dummy with roughly 5 yards between each lineman, essentially making a triangle.  We then put 1 defensive lineman directly in front of the offensive lineman.

EXECUTION-The coach calls for an outside rush or an inside rush so that both D linemen are using the same pass-rush technique.

The offensive Line simply pass sets and works them to their “outside” regardless of whether we call an inside or outside rush for the defense.  I want the O line feeling as though they are taking their guy to the outside each time regardless of whether it is to their left or right.

On the snap, the defenders are in pure pass rush mode and the first player to make a TACKLE, not make contact with an arm, on the dummy, wins.  The 2nd player owes 5 pushups or up downs, depending on the coaches pre-drill preference.  The Offensive line then subs out to the back of the line, the defenders become the OL.

I do not always use a conditioning penalty of pushups or up downs.

To change the drill you can place a football on top of the dummy so that the first player makes the Tackle, and the 2nd recovers the fumble without any sort of penalty for being 2nd.

RESULTS-This drill has improved our DL handspeed, made our pass rush more effective, and helped with players finding the ball on fumbles.  Our OL gets to rep the pass drops and pass blocking while both sides benefit from the 1 on 1 competition, and the players have fun motivating each other and cheering on their peers.

To end the Drill we always take the 2 rushers who performed the best during the days drill and have one final rep against our best 2 OL of the day, and the players make their bets on who will win, the winning side gets to determine if the losing side does 5 updowns or pushups.

One final note, the updowns or pushups are tallied and done in full at the completion of the drill, rather than having 1 player do 5 at a time throughout the drill itself.

Team Challenges
Challenge 1:
Split the team into two teams.Give them a practice dummy and a football.
They line up on the goal line and have to carry the dummy to the five yard line and then run back.
Tag the next guy who then runs out and gets the bag and brings it back.
The next one in line goes with the football and puts it on the ten yard line then runs back tags the next player. He gets the football and brings it back and so on out to the 40 and then back.
This drill helps with conditioning and keeps the boys competitive.

Challenge 2 is with 2 tractor tires:
Have the boys start on the goal line.
They flip the tire 10 yards then back to the goal line.
Tag the next guy who takes it for the length of the field.
The boys enjoy it and it breaks up the monotony of practice.

5 Minute Box Drill
4 cones make a box 20 yards x 20 x 20 x 20.
The kids form a line at one of the cones.
On “go” the first player sprints 20 yards to the first cone, then karaokes to the next cone, then sprints 20 yards again – but at about 5 yards in between this sprint section there is a coach on a bag and the player has to hit the bag properly and at full speed, then release into the remaining 15 yard sprint.
The last 20 yards is a 10 yard side shuffle – hop over a bag and bear crawl to the finish.  Then get back in line.
As each kid gets to the first cone you send the next in line.
We run the kids through this sequence 5 or 6 times in 5-8 minutes.

It’s great for conditioning and also for reinforcing blocking technique, and the side shuffle hit position.

There is a coach between each cone who reinforces the proper technique or yells encouragement.  Adding the “hit the bag” drill with immediate positive reinforcement when they do it well seems to re-energize them.

Coaching Tip
One of the drills we are doing this year I took from wrestling camp.  We slide side ways, bend our knees and keep our hands on the ground.  This keeps the kids low and conditions their legs.  I like it because of the LOW aspect.

Preseason Conditioning
Currently we are doing conditioning practice.  We are not allowed to make contact of any kind not even pads for the first 10 days so we do pure conditioning.

I divide the kids into 6 groups, usually done from the 6 lines as we stretch.  I then have 6 cones spread around the field about 40 yards apart with a coach at each location.

We do 3 min at each location doing some exercise before sprinting to the next location.

It takes about 20 minutes and will really wear them down.  Some of the exercise we do are: squat and jump, sit ups, push ups, up – downs, lunges, leg lifts.

High School Transition Drill
When coaching youth teams, we try to mold are players to make a smooth transition into are local high school program.

We found that the drills that help us the most were containment and angle pursuit drills with work on making the runner go to inside and not letting them get to the outside.

Pursuit drill was so effective that some teams almost never made it too far past the line. What we would do is to go half speed, have a coach or runner hit the sideline and go then have the D turn and find their angle of pursuit.

After a couple of walk throughs we made sure everybody had it down, we would go full speed with no tackling involved no need to have a whole team cream a runner during practice as long as they excite the angle correctly we would save the big hits for the game.

Hand-Off Drill
We line our flag football team up in 2 single file lines, 15 yards from directly across from each other–call them team 1 and team 2.

I take a football about 2 yards in front of team 1 to start the drill.
I say “Set Hut” and the 1st player start from team 1 runs at me with his arms in position to accept a hand off.  He takes the ball and sprints at team 2.

Once he gets about 2 yards from the other team he switches the ball to his proper hand and prepares it to hand off to the player at the front of the line on team 2.

The player on team 2 must have his arm ready to accept the hand off from the team 1 player.

We run this drill until each player has touched the ball at least 4 times.

The results of this drill are:
The coaches can work with the players to make sure they have their arms in correct position to receive a hand off and they are using correct techniques for handoffs.

The player must receive the handoff, tuck the ball in his arm so he does not drop it and sprint 10 – 13 yards to the next team.

Once the player gets to the other team he must prepare to hand off the ball to the next player and practices placing the ball into the players belly between his arms.
Doing this over and over gives everyone a chance to be the QB, RB and also acts as a conditioning drill without the kids even knowing it.

Total time of drill 5 – 10 minutes.

The M Drill
You’ll need five cones.
Place four cones in a 5×5 yard square.
Place the fifth cone in the center of the square.
The cones should look like the number five on a die or and M.

The WR should start at one of the four cones in the square.  He begins by sprinting to the first cone and when he almost reaches the cone he works on breaking down and chopping his feet and turning inward to sprint to the middle cone.

The movement should simulate running a hook or curl route.  The receiver then sprints towards the middle cone and repeats the breakdown and chopping of his feet at the middle cone.  He then turns to head back to the top cone opposite of the first cone and repeat the process.  As the receiver comes out of the last break a coach or player can throw him a pass.

This drill can be used for DB’s by back peddling through the drill.

Note:  for more advanced players you can have them reach down and tap the cone with their inside hand. This will help them to remember to stay low and drop their hips into the break.

Emphasize chopping their feet and using their elbow or shoulder movement to assist them in chopping their feet e.g. if I want to chop my feet quickly I need to increase my arm motion to drive the speed of my feet.

Make sure they do this drill starting from both the left side and right side of the cones.

QB Footwork Drill
Have the QB take either a 3 or 5 step drop.
Have a coach with a pad rush him.
While he is doing that have 5 receivers (or however many you would like) in a line spread out across the field with 4 DB.
The DB’s will rush and cover 4 leaving one receiver open.
The QB must drop back while taking on the rush and find the open receiver.

It’s great for a QB on footwork, on taking on the rush and on keeping their eyes down field all at the same time.

Throwing Competition
Here’s a quick and fun “after practice” QB drill:

I’ve been told by pitching coaches that a great way to improve arm strength is by throwing for distance.

When practise is over, I like to challenge my QB’s to a throwing contest.  Choose a distance that is age appropriate.  I pick a spot that I think the QB’s can throw, and move back over time.

For example, start at the 25 yard line and throw the football towards the closest goal post (remember that there’s 10 yards between the goal line and the goal post).  The first one to hit the horizontal cross bar wins a Powerade.  Next time, start at the 30.

The drill is fun, and should help with both depth perception and arm strength.