1st day of practice

We don't allow coaches to stand behind bags on any drill. However, the post you asked about was in grading "hit" by players which is unrelated to a "pads" drill. You allow the player to cross his arms for a shoulder block, line up blocking distance away, and hit the bag. Some kids ain't got no aggression. Some do. Then there's average. That's your three grades; 1, 2, and 3 (Good, average, and stinks). If you stand behind the bag, it's hard to judge the difference between a good hit and an average hit - although you will spot the creampuffs. What makes it hard to tell is that the bag doesn't move with a 250 pound coach behind it when a 102 pound kid hits it. So the 250 pound coach must cut his weight in half by standing off to the side of the bag and brace it with one hand. The coach holding the bag puts his free hand on his knee. That automatically puts his brace arm in a good, strong position so the creampuffs still can't move it. The brace hand is usually in a fist holding on to one of the straps to keep the bag from falling left or right after contact. Now the kids in no pads hit the bag (We run them through three times). The kid's effect on hitting the bag is now much more visible to anyone watching with just a single arm brace. The other coaches can now stand by to take scores, grading each player that hits the bag for 1,2,3. The coach holding the bag will signal his own grade to the other coaches for them to record. A nod means #1. A shake means #3. No reaction means #2. At the end of practice the HC collects the score sheets, throws out the best and worst scores each coach gave every player and then averages each coach's remaining score. You now have a measure of the player's aggression. A creampuff who taps the bag will never hit hard on the field. If he's timid and shy about hitting a bag, you can imagine how he'll be about hitting a real person. There's not much you can do with a low scoring kid except let the other kids use him for target practice (After he gets beat on enough, he'll start hitting back - if only in self defense - either that or he'll go join a checkers team. But most get tough.). Again, this is NOT a drill. Once you've run this three times you never do it again. It is simply a means to score a player's aggressiveness. This test can weed out "duds" that actually look like studs (but aren't) as well as detect "snotknockers" from those who look like "duds" but, who actually aren't (I once used this test to produce a starting 64 pound right guard as well as an 80 pound fullback). What a kid looks like he can do, and what he actually does, can be two different things. You need a way to weed out the duds and find the snotknockers. This is how I do it and I do it on a "no pads" night, thereby getting a useful result from an otherwise useless practice. If your kids are bigger, say 12-13, the coach bracing the bag punches his brace arm forward just as the kid is about to hit the bag (And the bag actually hits him). This usually cancels out the effect of bigger, stronger, heavier players hitting the bag for scoring purposes. Now! Of course, you can have a player stand behind the bag and brace it and let everybody on the team hit him and score the result. You can do this because he's not a 250 pound dad and he can be flattened by a snotknocker. The problem with this approach is that you have no way of then scoring the kid who held the bag when it's his turn to be tested. You have to "guess" who should hold the bag for him, usually picking someone his own size. But if you choose a snotknocker to hold the bag for him you'll underscore him, or if you choose a "dud" to hold the bag, you'll overscore him. Personally, as HC I like to hold the bag on every single player in order to personally get to know every single player that plays for me.