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Fumble Drill for Youth Football
Here is a favorite youth football drill the players as well as the coaches. It brings out the competitive nature of your players and allows them to react naturally to a loose ball.
You start with four or five players facing the coach, approximately three yards apart from each other.
The drill is:
When Coach does this |
The Players do This |
And Players yell out this |
Run Towards the players like a running back |
Run at the coach forward simulating the approach to making a tackle |
RUN |
Drops back like he is going to throw the ball |
Backpedal Straight Back to Simulate Dropping into zone pass coverage |
PASS |
Shuffles to HIS left |
Shuffle to the RIGHT, staying in front of the coach |
RIGHT |
Shuffles to HIS right |
Shuffle to the LEFT, staying in front of the coach |
LEFT |
The youth football coach continues these random directions and then the coach will spike the ball on the ground and all the players must run to recover the “fumble”. It is not unusual for this to turn into a small wrestling match, where we will while the players to go at it as long as they have a hand on the ball. In addition, we have the coach is quickly remove any player who has dropped the ball or taken as hands-off. You have to really watch and make sure no player has an arm getting bent the wrong way.
Each group continues to have a winner, and we will continue until we end up with one youth football fumble drill champion. Most important, make sure that the proper form is used for shuffling left, right as well as and sprinting forward.
It does not matter if I am coaching a 4-year-old flag youth football team or 14-year-old tackle youth football; this is always one of the player’s favorite drills.
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