|
Special Teams Practice and Drills By: David Inserra - Maine South HS (IL) Originally Published in: Nike 2015 Coach of the Year Clinic Notes -
I have a staff of nine coaches. There are two staff members plus myself running the special teams program. They do the film study and preparation for that part of the game. The special teams are a third of the game and you must devote time for them in practice. I do not think you can designate a third of your practice time. but if you do not commit ample practice time, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage. This year, in our opening game of the season, we were down by 20 points with two minutes to go in the game. We scored to be down by 13 and pooch kicked the ball and recovered it inside the 10-yard line. We scored to be down six. We kicked off and forced a punt. With 20 seconds left on the clock, we blocked the punt and ran it in for the score. We won that game by one point, against the second place team in our league. In the last ten years, we are 87-10, which leads the state. Our punter was not very good to begin the season. He was a two-way starter and through the course of the season he became an excellent punter. He had enough quality practice time under game situations to improve greatly. Special teams will win games. You must put in the quality work in practice. We excelled in our punt return game. Those big plays did not come against weak teams. They came against the best talent in the state. With everything that is going on with the concussion issue, you have to be careful how you practice special teams. Bad special teams play can hurt you as well. In the last game of the season we were undefeated. We kicked off and gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown and lost the game. I am going to begin by talking about our punt team. What I am covering is not original material. I have stolen from other coaches, as we all do. The key issue on your punt team is discipline. You must use your best players on this team. We focus on this phase of the kicking game every day. Our goal for this team is to have the least amount of snaps in this phase of the game. You want to put tough players on the punt team, but they must be disciplined. The punt team can lose a game very quickly. The blocked punt is one of the biggest game changers in the game. We are a good offensive team. That keeps your punt team off the field. In a three or four game stretch, we could have one to two punts a game. We do not get that many reps in the game, so the most meaningful reps we get are in practice. DRILLS Punter • Drops Long Snapper • Freshman year The first things we drill are the drops. We want the ball dropped so that it hits the ground and bounces back to the punter. When we practice ball placement, we walk the punter down a straight line and let him drop the ball. The ball hits the ground and if dropped properly, will bounce straight up to him. It will not bounce up to the spot he dropped it but it will bounce straight. He may have to bend at the waist to catch the ball. We walk down the straight line dropping and catching the ball. We also stand two punters 10-yards apart. They play pitch and catch punting the football. We work on the drop, pointing the toe. and getting a spiral with the ball. They are trying to be accurate with the ball. We practice bad snaps to the punter. As hard as you work with the snapper, there will be bad snaps. The kicker must be ready for them. Have someone throw the ball to the punter and make him catch them. On occasion, throw the ball over his head. In 1995, in the finals of the state championships we had to play on artificial turf. We practiced at Northwestern's field. We practiced kicking off the turf. In our bad snap drill, we threw the ball over the punter's head. He had to retrieve the ball and punt it on the run. In the game. the third series, we set up to punt the ball. They blocked the kick and it went straight up in the air. He caught the ball, scrambled out of the way. and punted the ball on the run. It was lucky. but we practice it. The cross field punting drill is like playing pitch and catch but at a distance. We take two punters and they punt to each other across the field. If you do not have two punters that can kick that distance, use you kickoff man on one side and the punter on the other side. Our kick off man this year was a foreign exchange student that wanted the total American experience. He never played football before. He was a good soccer player. He went back home this year, or he would do the kicking on next year's team. We snap the ball off the hash marks so the punt is probably 35 yards at best. By giving them time to practice kicking, by the end of the season, they can be very creditable. The sheer numbers of kicks give them a chance to get better. The last part is to let them work on punting the ball inside the 10-yard line. We practice angle kicking as well. The key to that is stepping straight for the target and keeping the head down. If you give the kicker time, he will figure out what he has to do. The more they work the more they fine-tune their techniques. We drill the long snappers in a similar manner. That is an essential part of the punting game. We find them as freshmen and work them through repetition. We had a good coach at the freshman level that taught that skill. You do the same things with the snappers playing pitch and catch with their snaps. The key is coaching and repetitions. We have 2600 students in our school. However, our punter was a two-way player. He played outside linebacker and receiver. He was 6' 5" and the more work he got the better punter he became. We had five two-way starters this year, We have many players but that is the way we do it at Maine South. You have to build the kicking game into practice with that in mind. We play in the top division in the state. but in 2008, we won the state championship and started six players both ways. We have upwards of 80 players on the team. I want the best players on the field. I do not want them standing next to me on a fourth and one. I want them on the field. That is the way we have always done it. Punt Keys • Blocking schemes on air - half and full line This talk is not about one blocking scheme over another. What you do is fine. When we practice our blocking schemes many times it is on air. We go over our footwork. We are a kick-slide protection team. We work those steps on air. We want to watch and make sure when they kick slide. they are going straight back and not opening gaps. We work half and full line drills doing this. I got this drill from the old coach Phil Acton. I was at this clinic eight years ago. I ran into Phil. He invited me to his room with his coaches and we talked about this drill. You create as many punt teams as you can. You align the first group first with the second group behind them. Everyone is in the drill even though they are not a team. We get as many punters as we can. The punter aligns at the 50 yard line. The snap comes from the 35-yard line. We punt the ball and the coverage team covers. The snappers and kickers do not cover every kick. They punt the balls. This is a fun drill. We put as many of these drills together as we can. It breaks up the monotony of repetitious drills in practice. We have a scoring system for the drill. If the punt team downs the ball inside the 10-yard line, they score a +1. If they down the ball inside the 5-yard line it is +2. If they down it inside, the 3-yard line it is +3. If the kick goes in the end zone it is -1. If the kick goes out of bounds it is -2. If the ball does not reach the 10-yard line it is -3. When one team gets to +10 or -10, the drill is over. The -10 team runs a conditioning drill. It will take you longer to run the drill to begin with. Once they learn what they are supposed to do, it may take you five snaps to get a winner. Your players learn how to run down and down the ball. They learn how to let it roll and learn how to keep it out of the end zone. In addition to teaching, it is a good conditioning drill. We work the gunners and the center in their coverage, while the line works on their protection scheme. They do not cover. We put one more blocker than you have coverage people. Someone will get double teamed. You do the same with your protection scheme. The gunners do not cover. Inside players work on protection. We like to work across the field when we work on coverage lanes. Working down a yard line helps them stay in their lanes. Working down a line keeps them from getting too close to one another. Five yards forward is working on all the kicks inside the 50 yard line. We kick the first kick from the 40-yard line. We move 5 yards forward and kick from the 35-yard line. It teaches situational kicking. We work from all the hash marks and the middle of the field. You need to practice kicking out of your own end zone. You must do this live. This is a critical situation and we want to do it with pressure on everyone. We have a good offense and do not punt the ball often. During practice, we stop practice and call for the punt team. They stop whatever they are doing and hustle to the field and punt the ball. We pressure the punt coverage team and protection team with 12/13 defenders on 11 punt team players. We can double the gunners or the center or put more rushers on the punter. I got this from basketball. When a team wants to practice against a press, they put six to seven players against five and press. Find ways to teach so it is harder on the offense than it is in the games. The last play of the game has to be practiced. If you are behind and have little time on the clock, you work on block, scoop, and score. You also work on your return player. He needs to know when to try and return the last punt or when to fair catch the ball. On offense you need to practice getting the kick off. Punt Return Keys • Every man must defense punts The next part of the punting game is the return. On this team, you need speed and smarts. You may have defensive players on this team, but whoever is on the field, they must be able to align if the team changes their mind and goes for the first down. You must practice with your punt return personnel so they can align and play defense if necessary. You do not want to burn a timeout to get your defense on the field. We work our return game about twice a week. We practice the return for eight minutes twice a week. The day before the game we work five minutes on the return. You have to think it is a third of a game. You do have restrictions and cannot spend that kind of time on all the teams. Part of the team drill is recognizing a fake and how to play it. You must have someone responsible for counting the numbers of returners you have on the field. You must teach about the punt formation. They have to know who is eligible and who is not. If the punt team uses motion, you have to adjust and handle those movements. We like to send two returners deep and that hampers how you cover some of the punt formations and motion patterns. Having two returners presents a problem about the fair catch rule. You must teach your returners the rules of the game dealing with fair catches. You have to train them about where to catch the ball on the field and where not to catch it. Every year we find out that the players know less about football than in the past. They must be taught all the rules. Never assume they know the difference between a fumble and a muff. If you do not spend time coaching the little things, it will bite you in the butt and you will lose the game. You need more than one punt block scheme. You must work on them and explain who is coming free and what everyone's job is within the scheme. It is not a random rush, but a planned rush. Because your early practice depends on the start of school, you must get more done in the spring and summer practices. There are not as many days where you can practice twice a day. We use cones in teaching our returns. This gives the players landmarks to the punt return walls. We have a left and right return. When we practice the wall return, we practice one man at a time. If we return left, we start with the first man in the wall. He runs through his responsibility and the next man follows him and does what he is supposed to do. That gives you more individual teaching. With two returners, communication is a must. As soon as the ball comes off the foot, the player calling the -ball" gives his call. He calls it loud and never calls the ball to the other player. He calls -mine" or he says nothing at all. If the returner calls "mine", the second return man gets in close proximity to the return man and communicates what he should do. He watches the rush and tells the returner to fair catch or run with it. He is the returner's eyes. After he communicates what the returner should do, he becomes the personal protector for the catch. When receiving the ball if we are backed up. the returner plants his feet at the 10-yard line and does not field anything over his head. If he gives the fair catch signal, he cannot block. If he gives the fair catch signal he must be a good actor. He wants to draw the coverage away from the ball so it gets into the end zone. Never stand where the ball is coming down. Move away from the ball to draw the coverage. Turf field and artificial turf affect the ball differently. Turf fields often times cushions the bounce of the ball and keeps it from getting into the end zone. On artificial turf, the ball bounds into the end zone. You need to coach your players on that point. If we have a single safety, it does not mean we are going for the block. We have hold-up returns with the single receiver. It could be a normal return. The reason I like two return personnel is the security of the catch. Kickoff Keys • Landmarks We struggled this year with our kickoff coverage. We had trouble with speed, getting the coverage together, and tenacity. On the kickoff, you need players that play as if their hair was on fire. I told you we played five players both ways. Of the five players, four of them were on all special teams. They needed to rest and we did not have enough quality players to plug in on the kickoff. We have to do a better job of setting the rules and enforcing those rules. Our kickoff man was a good kicker. However, as the year went on. he got weaker and leg weary. That was my fault for letting him kick too much. If you have a good kickoff man, you must limit the number of kicks he takes in warm-ups and practice. You must practice, but you must monitor what he is doing and limit what he does. The heavy days are Monday and Tuesday. As the week goes on you restrict their reps. Our offense was so good, the kickoff cove -age team was covering 6-7 live kicks a game. When you are getting that many kicks in a game, you do not need as many reps in practice. We have two kickoff teams. We have so many kickoffs a game, we can rest the first unit on some of the kickoffs. You must correct what they do from the game films. We correct during the games and teach off the films. That rule does not hold on the punt team. We may be up 40 points and the first punt team is going to punt the ball.
We use a drill we got from Northwestern. They called it 'cats and dogs." Our mascot is the Hawks and we calf it "Hawks and Rats." (Diagram #1) The runner is aligned on the sideline with a coach telling him when to go. On the numbers is a blocker. On the hash mark are the coverage personnel. There is no kick. When the coach tells the back to go, he starts up the sideline and the defender comes down toward the sideline. The blocker blocks the coverage defender. The defender has to defeat the block and come over the top and get into position to tackle. There is only five yards in which the action happens. It is a lively drill with much movement. It is a quick whistle. In this drill we look for kickoff blockers, coverage personnel, and return men. You can run multiple drills at once, using the entire field. The inside four are the two defenders on either side of the ball. They sprint down the field for 10 yards. They cover, attack, and defeat the block. After they defeat the block they stop. After they stop the outside six coverage people sprint down the field and attack, the blockers coming out. There are three defenders on either side coming down the field. They do the same thing the inside four players did but it is further down the field and squeezing on the ball. That allows the coaches to coach both groups. The inside four comes down the field and goes back. The coaches work with the inside four as they come down. As the inside four goes back the outside six are coming down and the coaches work with them. When we go full scale, I stand at the 30-yard line. I am looking for the last man to get to the 30-yard line. He is the one who does the up/downs. We need to work on kicks after a safety in the kick coverage game. I find is it is better to kick the ball off than to punt it. Most punters are not as consistent as your kickoff man. Unless you have a great punter, it is risky to use him on a safety kick. When you onside kick the ball, you need more than one scheme. The onside kick that Seattle used against Green Bay, is one type. The Seattle kicker said he did not practice that kick many times because it was such an unnatural movement of the body. He said it hurt him to kick the ball as he did and do it correctly. The pooch kick we used is the one we practice all the time. You kick it the right depth down field. You need to be able to squib the ball and line drive it. When we receive the kickoff, the object is to score. We want speed on the team. The front line blockers are smaller players. We want them to move and throw a block. Kickoff Return Keys • Count the numbers On a kickoff return you must count the coverage personnel coming down the field. We design our return blocking off the numbers of coverage people. You must be aware of the onside kick and pooch kick on every kickoff. You can do a better job of coaching if you break down the return unit. Work with the front line. You do not need to sprint them all the way down the field. Work on their blocking. We do the same thing with the back six blockers. We practice them as a separate unit from the front blockers. We have several returns. However, if you add them in, you must practice them. That takes time. You must decide how much time you want to allot to practice that aspect of the game. We practice our kickoff without the kicked ball. Unless your kicker can put it in the same place every time, you will waste time returning poor kicks. We put the returner in place with the ball in his hands and the coach regulates the action of the coverage team. If we play teams that have faster personnel on their team, we cheat the return blockers up five yards if not more. We want to get to the faster runners earlier and slow them down. With the scout team kickoff team, there is no such thing as off-sides. They can leave early and get across the line. On the PAT and field goal, we want perfect operation. We do not want bad snaps or holds. The snap needs to be on target every time. You want to keep the kicker's leg fresh. We kick more in the earlier part of the week and less as the week goes on. We use a goal post drill for our kickers. The pad on the goal post is a good way to work your kickers out. Let him drill his leg swing against the pad of the goal post. He is not kicking hard enough to hurt his leg, but he is getting reps on contact of the foot on the ball. With our kickers we use a goal post drill. (Diagram #2)
Post Drill The kickers stand in the corner of the end zone even with the goal post. They kick the ball trying to hit the near upright of the post. After they become proficient at hitting the near upright, we make the aim for the far post. They adjust and trial error their mechanics until they succeed. We use a repetition kicking drill out in the field. The kicker kicks at a high rate of speed. He kicks, returns to kicking position, and kicks again in rapid succession. That keeps him from thinking too much about what he is doing. Kickers tend to over-think their kicking. They must practice against the wind and with it across their kicks. We work them against a lively rush on occasion. We do not do that often because we do not want the kicker or holder hurt in that type of drill. Our holder is generally the starting quarterback. We cover all the special situations that can occur in a field goal or PAT. We cover the bad snap and patterns run off a bad snap. We cover the field goal in case of a miss. If you remember Auburn-Alabama, you know how important that is. When we start our kicking drill we start with PAT's. The kicker must make three in-a-row before go to field goals. After he makes three in¬a-row, we begin to back up. He wants to make 10 in a row. Every kick is a PAT. He cannot change his mechanic as we move back. All the kicks should be the same. We move left, right, and in the middle for 10 kicks, moving five yards as we go. We use a drill called "Double or Nothing." As an example, if the kicker misses a 40-yard field goal, the team runs. We give the kicker, and only the kicker a choice. He can try the same kick again for double or nothing. If he misses again the entire team runs double the sprints. That adds a tremendous amount of pressure and stress to the kicker. Those are the types of situations we want. At the end of practice, while we are working on field goals or any other phase of the game, I call out "25." It does not matter where they are on the field. They must get to the three yard line and Rick an extra point in 25 seconds. It could be in the middle of an offensive period. When the kicker lines up to kick we throw balls around him, slap him on the backside with a whistle, or anything to distract him. It is an enthusiastic play with everyone cheering and making noise. We do it even as he kicks. Anytime we have field goal practice, everyone on the team is there cheering and encouraging the kicker. We want to put as much pressure on him as possible. That leads to no pressure at the end of games with the win on the line. There were no schemes in this lecture. All of you run different schemes. The message is to get quality practice to improve your kicking game because you do not have much time to get it done. Kickers have a tendency to over kick. Before they can kick field goals, we make them do all the little drills. By the time they finish there is not enough practice time left to over-kick. We try to get 30-40 kicks on Monday and Tuesday and prepare do to 10 the day before the game. Thank you for your time.
|
Special Teams Practice and Drills
