DC Need your defense drills for each position by Dum Coach

By: Dum Coach

Let's do one at a time. A pursuit drill is a drill that teaches "pursuit angles" for linemen. Let's say you play a 5-2:

                      B1     B2
          O              O
              O  O  O  0  O  O  O
          E1    T1     N      T2      E2

The play is sweep right from the middle of the field (The lead B1 and QB are usually eliminated from this drill and B2 just begins with the ball.). The wing cracks E1 and "contain" is lost and the offensive line is blocking. The runner is loose, the LBers all got lost, and a TD is at stake. The down linemen must stop the play. As the runner turns up the sideline, T1 meets him for a 2 yard gain and touches him. N meets him for a 5 yard gain and touches him. T2 meets him for a 10 yard gain and touches him. E2 plays the reverse (Which is simulated by having the runner hand back to the RTE.). Every defender should be able to touch the runner. The runner, of course, will want the drill to be made tackle but it's a touch drill (If T1 tackled him we wouldn't know if N and T2 had their proper pursuit angles.). If someone misses their tag, deepen their pursuit angle by an extra yard. I don't spend much time on defensive drills because we don't play much defense so we would run this drill (to both sides of the field) 2-3 times in a season (Once preseason, once regular season, and once for the playoffs) but we would run it as long as it took for everybody to make their tag. Once you get this drill down, it pays big dividends. The other team just can't bust "the big one". Questions? And are you running a defense similar to this?

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