Today, we’re going to go over some football drills that will help your running backs become even more skilled and improved.
Taking the Ball from the QB
Once we know how to hold the ball, we’ve got to know how to take the ball from the quarterback.
We have to learn how to take a pocket. Every hand-off, the guy that gets it has got to have a pocket.
The first thing we do, we take our up hand and turn the thumb down. When your thumb goes down, your elbow goes up. The hand to the side of the quarterback, or the man handing you the ball, is the arm that needs to go up. That way you have no obstruction when you hand the ball.
We take our bottom hand and put our pinkie finger about where the belly button is. The bottom hand is the shelf that we’re going to lay the ball on. We’re going to lay the ball right in that pocket.
In order to practice this with a football drill, we get two lines facing each other. We have the yard line or whatever you want to do at your school, and we go to each guy.
We’re going to run with the ball until we get about three steps from the runner. When we get about three steps, he’s going to run at us, we’re going to take the ball, he’s going to do a big pocket, and he’s going to lay it in his belly. We pick up the speed as we go.
Now we’ll do the same football drill, but we want to keep in mind that sometimes we come by and we fake the ball. When we fake the ball, we want the defense to know that they got it. So what your players do when they fake it, they take the top hand and reach over and grab the elbow and dip the shoulder.
Securing the Ball
We’ve taken our ball. We’ve secured it in the arm. We’ve shown how we make a pocket, to make it. The next thing we work on is securing the ball.
For this football drill, get two players. The first player has the ball protected.
The second guy’s going to take his front hand and put it on the tip of the ball in front; he’s going to take his left hand and put it on the back tip of the ball. He’s not really going to try and pull it out of there, but he’s going to tug on the ball.
If I’ve got the ball and I’m running down the field and the man tugs on the ball or a defender comes to me, what do I want to do? I want to pull that ball to my breastplate.
For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. He’s tugging on that ball, I pull it in. As I pull the ball up, that pulls it away from him and helps me protect the ball.
For this drill, get about four lines and practice this a little bit. Let one guy go on defense and go about 10 yards normally. Tell the front guy he’s going to sprint 10 yards.
Do it a couple of times and then switch hands.
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