Here are two drills I’ve uses a lot. The first one is an all inclusive practice drill that works on all skills with your younger players. The next one is a defensive drill with NO offense being played–fun and effective.
Punt/Return Youth Practice Drill
A drill I use a lot is a complete drill, it helps younger kids work on sprinting to the ball, open field tackling, long snapping, and punting. It’s great as a warm up or a conditioning drill. It’s just a punt return drill.
Centers practice their long snaps, punters work on punting. For younger kids it’s basic punting; for older kids they can work on ball placement as well.
I have two lines on each side of the ball and one line back to receive the ball. When the ball is snapped or punted again based on experience the front player in each line sprints to the ball making sure to maintain outside containment forcing the ball to the middle. At this point players break down and make a good open field tackle. The player running the ball works on protecting the ball, stiff arm moves, or various other running moves.
Breakdown Drill
When we go over defense with no offense, we started snapping the ball as coaches and going through our angle of pursuit drills. 4 seconds after the snap we throw the ball and all 11 run to it from where they stand.
The first one there gets to holler “breakdown” when everybody gets there and they break out.
This serves a few purposes proper angle/pursuit, conditioning with out them realizing it and in games we have 11 guys flying to the ball.
