Ideas for Defensive Practice

We've only held one defensive scrimmage in practice this year. Otherwise, our drills develop skills by position and then we have group tackling. The way we held that one single defensive scrimmage was to put me at QB and run a mix of 1st and 2nd teamers on both sides - offense and defense. I then ran our next opponent's plays. After while, we switched the guys that are on offense to defense. Mixing up the two squads reduces the mismatch. We've also run a half line of offense against a half line of defense, say the right side of the offense versus left side of the defense. We do this as a demonstration for our DT's. In this example our left side DT would run the ball from an "I" formation using a "Blast" play right. There's no handoff. We let the DT start with the ball as the TB. This eliminates teaching him to take a handoff, not to run to the QB, and to have his eyes ahead. We stand behind the "D", signal the "O" the snap count, and away the DT goes for the slaughter. The purpose of the drill is for the DT to see what the ball carrier sees when the DT on the defense does his job right. We do a similar thing thing with the DE's. Using the example of the right side of an offense against the left side of our defense, we'll let the right side DE carry the ball on a sweep. This allows him to see what happens when the DE on defense plays it correctly. This is a very short drill. We run two plays to the DT and two to the DE. Then set up the left side of an offense against the right side of our defense. Now the other DT and the other DE carry the ball. The object of the lesson is for the DT's and DE's to learn that, if they do their job, the runner is going down - and for a loss (Either by them or somebody else).

Although we've done this demonstration and our "four stupid rules" demonstration, you really need an intelligent bunch to benefit from this. The group of knuckleheads I have this year all learn the lessons in practice - then forget them instantly come kickoff on gameday. As an example, we ran offense practice last night. In a 2 hour practice, we spent going over two plays THEY ALREADY KNEW ("24" and "36 Toss") for the first hour against the scout "D" (a 5-2 monster) - And they got both plays wrong for 50 of those 60 minutes. This is not a bright group. I've seen smarter carrots.