Strip Tackling

In order to win football games you need to have possession of the football. Forcing a fumble is one of the quickest ways that you can turn the tides and retain possession of the football. Practice dislodging the football on the field in pairs of players. The defender will practice stripping the ball by bringing his hands up quickly with a clenched fist to grab the opponent and as he does so to aim to knock out the football. This drill is most effective if you start it slow focusing on the motions needed to be effective, and then speed up over time.

Traditional Driving Block

Simple drives are important for linemen to practice and perfect. Hence the name for the most common drive: the drive block. This drive block means that you are going to push the opponent in the direction that they are aligned. The first step of this block is the scrimmage alignment, in order to drive to the right or left this basic block will push your opponent in the way that they are aligned, so if they are aligned to the right the drive will push them to the right. When driving start with your play side foot. Connect hard against your opponent, bring your other foot into play and continue to drive in the aligned direction.

Conditioning: The five dot drill

Conditioning drills are effective in training and helping athletes be strong and reactive. This drills intention is to help quickness and accuracy on the field which will reduce errors and increase the chances of great plays. The drill set up is a mat or place on the field with 5 dots about a foot away from each other forming an X shape, exactly in the same shape as you would see diamonds arranged on a number five card in a poker deck.

The player will start by placing a foot on the back two dots and then jumps together to the middle dot and then out separating his legs to the outer dots, much like you would see in hop scotch. The second phase is having the player touch each of the dots with only one foot, and then switch to the other foot. After this, the player will touch all of the dots with both feet together. The last step is the same as the first hop scotch method but this time when the player reaches the other side they will turn around on the two dots. Remember that speed and accuracy are important on this drill so coaches should start players off slow and then proceed to full speed constantly watching accuracy.

Hand off drill

Drills practicing fundamentals like an effective hand offs can make the difference between a mediocre team and an excellent one. One great hand off drill starts by having two separate lines of players facing each other: line A and line B. A player leaves line A with the football and runs at line B. In sync with that first player, a second player leaves line B, when they meet player A passes to player B. At the point of the hand off another player leaves line A and runs towards player B, who hands off the ball to the new player. It should be a constant motion. It is an effective drill to teach handoff skills and help running backs achieve higher accuracy and consistency.