for 7 on 7 flag football?

NiCkOwNsRTR,

I use to but not sure what I did with it. I have found that there are several things to consider if you want successful plays as well as good defense:

1. Motion every play to determine if the defense is playing man or zone.
2. Speed wins!
3. Crossing patterns are hard to stop!
4. Avoid rolling out with your QB unless you have to
5. Overload receivers for best results....three to one side or more.

Defense:

1. Alternate between man and zone to keep the offense honest.
2. Always force the opposing teams QB to the defenses right side if he is a right hander, it limits his throwiing field while he is running (opponsite for a leftie)
3. Your best athlete should be your rusher.
4. Never rush straight at the QB, it leaves him two options, again, always force him to the limited throwing range side.
5. If the other team is a dominant running team, always have two rushers wide.

Have fun!

CoachKen

Wow... whatever happened to just having fun?

madeinhawaii,

Winning is fun! If you have ever coached a group of kids, they get excited when they believe they have a good coach that gives them a chance to compete.

Coachken

All right! We've practiced for almost three months now. Our season starts in about a month.

We've tried to keep it simple. I think we're down to four basic formations.

Split T
Trips
Twins
Empty

If you have a really good QB, consider the following:

1. Determine if the othet team is playing one or two safeties. If it is one safety, run twins. Run the wideouts at the corners on 10 yard stops. The corners will freeze. Run the wide slots straight up the field moving toward the sidelines and deep. Have your QB watch the safety. If he goes left, through deep right, if he goest right, through deep left.

2. If they run two safeties (suicide if they do) there is always an underneath man open since they will be a man short in coverage, usually the center on a quick throw or the wideouts coming underneath the slots on slants.

3. If they have a really good rusher, put your quarterback at half back, center to your running back and when the rusher gets close throw it to the QB, he will have more time.

4. If they have two rushers, two receivers should be open. Have your receiver come to the vacated spot of the rusher.

Keep me posted on your season!

CoachKen

Interesting. Brings back memories of intramurals in college. Some of the Hawaii guys at my school got together with some mainland buddies and took the IM title. On your offensive pointers, I'd say that we pretty much did those things, although unwittingly. We used motion and crossing patterns and overloads to gain an edge (i.e., confusion), and not to read the defense (that would have been too sophisticated for us). We probably had the most overall team quickness (some other teams had one or two burners). Our QB was our slowest and heaviest guy (like Lorenzen from Kentucky) so there was no real rollout. We actualy had some option plays for the QB but he never kept the ball and turned upfield - yet the opponents would converge on him. No such thing as alignment and assignment.

On defense, we pretty much played zone, although somewhat amoebic. The fastest guys were in the second level, i.e., LBs who could cover the most ground whether the opponent passed or ran. Our safeties were ultimate frisbee players so they were ball hawks by training.

It was sports in the purest form to me. The team with the better athletes did not always win. The better, typically more experienced team (freshmen teams did not usually win) always did. It was funny seeing some teams muttering to themselves after losing to a team with less physical talent. Kind of like when the jocks lost to the nerds in "Revenge of the Nerds."

Sorry for going off on a tangent. I guess the point of my pointless post is that Coach Ken's considerations apply even at the lowest levels of 7 on 7 flag football.

Thanks Duster. My favorite part of sports is gaining leverage through strategy and hard work. I played in a seven on seven adult league five years ago and you are right...the old guys who had played together for 10 years beat the younger more talented players. Sports at its purest!

CoachKen

For defense we're trying to decide on a base defense.

I think we're gonna try only rushing one guy, having one safety, two corners, and three linebackers.

NiCkOwNsRTR,

That's the perfect defense to run! Two rushers will leave too many people open and the same with two safeties. You will get nickeled and dimed to death. One of the great seven on seven plays is to run the option out of the pistol, pitch to the running back and have him read the corner. If he comes up you throw, if he stays back you run!

CoachKen

We've found a team nice enough to scrimmage with us before the season starts (they play in a different league)

So we'll get to see where we're at fundamentally.

ive found that the best defense is when you blitz two on the edges, play it man and have two deep in zone
but then again, playing intramural against guys who dont really know how to play QB is always pretty easy

All right. We played our first game Thursday night. The team we played against was a late addition. They are 4-Time UAB Champs and they play all over the South. Needless to say, we had a big job ahead of us. We did better than I expected.

We lost 40-7. I went 5/6 and a TD.

We had some growing pains and first game jitters. We hit the practice field tomorrow night to work on fundamentals.

what are the rules? what are the field dimensions?

Field is 80 X 40 yards. It's 7 on 7 shield blocking. 4 on the LOS