| Pursuit and Tackling Circuit Drills
By: Bill Clark - Univ. of Alabama-Birmingham Originally Published: Nike 2014 Coach of the Year Clinics Clinic Football Manual- by Earl Browning
I want to get started by discussing our rules. Our number one rule is to always protect the team. This rule applies when you are out on the practice field, in the classroom, or in a game, we are going to protect our team. Our second rule is no whining, crying, no complaining, and no excuses. We either get it done, or we don't. Our third rule is to be ready. When we talk with our players we must get them to buy into what we are trying to instill in them and that is to be ready. For meetings we want them to be early and to be ready. This applies to academic aspects. it applies to practices, and it applies to games. It applies to everything we do. What do we mean by being early? We want the players to believe that we play harder than anyone else. We want to practice and to play with enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm means to play with a purpose and to have fun by playing with enthusiasm. It is important to practice like the game is played. We are only as good as we practice. Preparation is the key. We must always have a plan. We do not want to waste any reps in practice. We start every day with our Tackle/ Takeaway/Pursuit Drill. I will touch on our ideas on practice and then cover them more in detail later. Practice Thoughts
Pursuit
Everybody is coaching both technique and efforts. We want the defensive players to line up with their feet behind the line. We are going to blow the whistle and rush to the crunch zone. This is what we want in our Pursuit Drill. Our coaching points are listed below. Pursuit Drill
If the offensive player is inside the yard line markers, we are going to hit him. When the offensive player steps outside of the lines, what are we going to do? We are going to let up. How many penalties are we going to get by hitting the offensive man outside the side lines? How many times have we seen this on film? When do we start teaching the defense not to hit the offensive man outside of the lines? We start teaching this early. We want to be tough, and physical. We want to have enthusiasm, but we must play smart. Some people questioned me when they found out I was hiring a high school offensive coordinator. I tell them this is true. Once, I was a coach in high school. People ask us what our philosophy is and what we want to do on offense? I need to tell you, we were running the spread offense when I was a head coach in high school several years ago. We may know a little about what we are doing. The number one belief we have is all about the ball. I go back to our State Championship Games in high school. It was true then as far as winning the turnover battle, and it is true today. There has been 49 Super Bowl Games. In every game except one, the team that won the turnover battle won the game. Of all of those games, only one team won the game that did not win the turnover battle. The team that wins the turnover battle wins the game in most cases. That is a high percentage of winners in Super Bowl Games. The problem is most of us are only giving lip-service to the turnover battle. It is all about the ball. We may win the turnover battle in three games this fall. We may lose the battle of turnovers in six games this year. It is all about the ball. Our tempo is tied to the spread offense. We must work on our defense to win the turnover battle. We have to do something to change the turnovers with our defense. We will have to blitz on defense. We must prevent our opponents from controlling the ball. We are going to work on ending that aspect as it is all about having the ball. Every little minute detail counts. We talk about all of the little things. Everything counts. We are going to respect our opponents on everything, and not just the real simple points. We want to relate what we do in the sports world to the business world. People ask me what is our mission statement? We want to do better than what we did at the previous jobs we have held. We want to move up and this mission statement covers what we want to do. We want to create competition in everything we do. If the players will not compete, others are going to talk about them. We are not going to quit. We remind the players of this every single day. We are not going to quit in football, or in life, or when we leave our school. We talk about practice being like a game. We want the practices to be better than what we do in a game. We want the practices to be harder than the games. To do that you must be organized and you must plan practice.
We are constantly trying to simulate game situations in practice. Trick plays have become normal today. Teams practice against trick plays all of the time, and as a result the trick plays are not as good as they were at one time in football. They do make you stay honest and they make you play with responsibility. On defense we practice with a tempo we hope matches the offense. I want to cover our thoughts on practice. Practice Thoughts
Everyone must learn to get off blocks. We think our Pursuit Drill is different, but we are interested in teaching our players to get off blocks and to get to the football. (Diagram #1) We talk a great deal about technique and what they must do in the pursuit drill.
When we run the pursuit drill we can have the offense come out of the huddle in different formations. We want to be sure we are lined up correctly. We must be aware of the tempo of the offense as we align in our defense. When the ball is snapped or when either runner on the outside moves, the defense puts their hands up to simulate the blocking by the offensive linemen. Then the corner, on the side the ball comes to, plays his responsibility. which is to back up and play deep to that side. The safety fits into his position. Here is one point about our pursuit. As he comes downhill, he wants to be inside/outside on the ball. Do you know the types of runs that are run the most? It is the cutback play. The cutback play makes up 80 percent of running plays. As we run the pursuit drill. we are coaching effort, technique, and pursuit. We are not running behind anyone, and we are staying inside/out. After we get all of these guys down the line, they are all working their feet. We want them to work their feet until the last man gets his hands on the ball carrier. If they do not do this properly, we are going to come back and run the drill again. In the past, to help get the players in shape we would line up a group and have them run the pursuit drill on 1st down, 2"c down, and then down to get them in condition. We do not do that now. We have a second team ready to go on the next play. We may have even a third group ready to run the pursuit drill. It depends on how many players you have. We run one play to the strong side, and then one to the weak side. The next thing we do is a little different. We come back and run a reverse play, a fake reverse, and an on-the-run pass. We run a reverse, fake reverse, and a reverse pass. We want to know who is responsible for the reverse play. We want the corner on the backside to call out the reverse when he recognizes that it is a reverse play. "Reverse!" That is what we call Responsibility Football. We must get off the blocks and run to the ball. Team Tackle/Takeaways
This is what we ask our players to do. We want them to do these four drills at the different stations. We want them to know all about these stations. We do not want to see anyone get hurt. We talk about tackling techniques. We talk about keeping the head up when they tackle. We teach them to keep their head up on all tackling drills. It is important to talk about these safety points because the players do not know these techniques. This is our Tackling and Take-A-Way Drill. (Diagram #2)
Here are the things we do in this drill: Low Angle, Open Tackle, Shed Tackle, Big Ball Mirror, Angle Tackle (Face across the ball). (Diagram #3, 4. 5, 6, 7).
We do not take the offensive player to the ground on any of these drills. Again, we do not take them to the ground. If we can stop the offensive man, we win. We want to get our pads down low, with our head up, and our shoulders over our knees. We want to strip the ball as we make contact with the ball carrier. We may not try to strip the ball if it is a tackle to save the game. On fumbles, we want to scoop the ball up and advance it a far as we can. Again, we may not scoop the ball if it is a play to win the game. We teach the defensive to "Scoop and Score." If the football is going out of bounds, we want to knock it back in bounds. We are teaching the players to be smart. The question is how to teach these techniques without pads on. We put the players down on their knees. We cut the space down that they must cover to put their hands on the hip of the offensive man. We do sled drills to teach these techniques. Takeaway Examples
5th Quarter
I want to turn the rest of my time of the lecture over to our defensive staff. If you have questions feel free to ask them about any our drills and practice. You are welcome to come to visit us anytime. Just give us a call at the office and we will be glad to spend time with you. Thank you.
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Pursuit and Tackling Circuit Drills
