This is Step 6 of the 10 Steps to Creating a Tougher Defense, an on-going series where we look at 10 ways to improve the overall toughness of your team defense.

Step 1: Conditioning Your Defense for Toughness
Step 2: Building Toughness in the Weight Room
Step 3: Equipping your Defense to Play ToughStep 4: Tackling Angles for Tough DefenseStep 5: Defeating Blocks for Defensive Toughness
Step 6: High Intensity, Full Contact Football Practice
Step 7: Run a Tough Offense to Toughen your Defense
Step 8: Aggressive Play Calling for a Tough Defense
Step 9: Limited Contact Practices
Step 10: Award Tough Play on Defense

This may be more of what comes to mind when we talk about creating a tough defense. We’ve got to make the players work hard. They’ve got to have intensity. They need to want to hit. And they should have fun doing it.

Practices need to be high tempo, high intensity, hard work, and fun at the same time. That will create maximum toughness.Circuits for Intensity and Technique [Read more...]

We have all seen those drills that are designed with only one thing in mind – “Toughness!” Maybe it is something with some level of football skill involved, such as Oklahoma drills. Then again, it may be something with absolutely no relation to football.

My dad likes to tell the story of how tough it used to be, back in the day. He says he was fighting for a position with another guy. The coach put a ball on the 50 yard line after practice, and lined up one of the guys at each end zone. They ran at the ball, colliding at the point in a massive collision, struggling for the ball to have that starting position. (By the way, if you think this is a blog about football drills, I encourage you to try this one. With your Principal and A.D. present, and tell me how it goes).

Why do football coaches believe we need to “build toughness” through football drills that, well, don’t really involve football? Let us remember that just because there is a football involved, doesn’t mean we are working a football skill. Sometimes, we may not be doing anything more than inviting injuries, and turning kids off of the game.

Think back, who is your toughest kid? Toughest kid that EVER played for you, or with you. Got it? Picture him. Was he tough before football? Did a wrestling match over a football make him tough? What about running gassers til he puked, maybe that did it. Then again, we also toughen kids up with verbal abuse, hurling curse words at them. Did any of this really make that guy the toughest kid you’ve ever known? I doubt it.

You can bring up some example of a kid who wasn’t tough, went through all of that, and became tough. You can’t tell me that he didn’t just simply mature, though. Or that there aren’t a million kids out there who quit this sport, and many grew to hate it, because Vince Lombardi Jr. tried to toughen them up in the 8th grade.

I do not claim to be above guilt on this. Probably my biggest complaint about the whole idea is that it has somehow become a part of my mindset as well, and one that I have to consciously fight off. But I think that instead of trying to build toughness, we as coaches need to concentrate on building a love for the game, and a desire to excel at it. We should promote feelings of success in our players, not failure. Football, by nature, is a tough sport. We don’t need to spice it up.

We can learn everything in the world about defense for football. We can have so much knowledge on paper, and in clinic season. However, how much can we really TEACH to our players?

Many coaches follow the K.I.S.S. philosophy of football defense – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Figure out how much you NEED, and stay with that. Other coaches just throw everything against the wall, and see what sticks. You are smart enough to realize that there is not a hands-down, best method. Rest assured that someone has won a state title, or national championship, doing something opposite of what we may believe is “best”.But for now, lets assume that K.I.S.S. is the way to go. What do you need? You need a base front. What is it that you’re going to feel comfortable in, no matter what the situation is? Last season, I felt comfortable in the 4-3 Under Front vs. the Wing-T. And vs. the I-Formation. I mean, really comfortable. We were by no means dominant, but that formation was good to us. Early in the season our Goal Line package was shaky, so we just ran Under. And had success. But on 3rd and 14? Dear God, are you mad!? Based on that, it is not a candidate for OUR base formation. If you are comfortable in that situation in the Under front, by all means, make it your base. It works for Pete Carrol, and I would listen to him before I’d listen to me, too. We made the 4-3 Over our base defense. I felt comfortable any time, anywhere on the field, goal line to goal line, side line to side line, running this formation.Next, we need a base coverage. We had our Quarters, with two checks. One coverage call, two possible coverages – and every possible situation was taken care of. Now, you need a change-up. If you base with a zone, you need a man-coverage. Simple as that, a Cover 3 is not a good enough change-up to the Cover 2. If you base out of Man, you need to add in Cover 3.You need a Short-Yardage Defense. Keeping it really simple? Make this a second front, that doesn’t involve personnel changes – so you can run it in the middle of the field in a pinch, too, on 3rd & Short. Or when the opponent decides to just line up in Power-I and march down the field. [Read more...]