Flag football players use many of the same fundamental skills that tackle football players use. As a matter of fact, flag football can increase player situational awareness and confidence in an entirely different way. Many tackle players use flag football as a way to zero-in on key fundamental skills. It’s sort of like wearing ankle weights or a weighted backpack while you run. Coaching flag football has similarities to coaching tackle football…just no tackling. If you're the head coach of a flag football team, your objective remains the same as any other football coach at any other level: build a team with an offense that's going to score points and a defense that's going to stop other teams from scoring points.
But too many flag football coaches fall victim to the mindset of letting their team play "backyard football" in practices, and then essentially "winging it" on game day. Sure, that might work for some teams, if you've managed to assemble a group that's substantially more talented than any other teams you face. But more often than not, teamwork beats talent.
And it's your job to bring your team together into one cohesive and prepared flag football team.
How do you do that? Glad you asked.
Assessing Your Team's Strengths and Weaknesses
The biggest thing to keep in mind, as a reference or context point, is that flag football is very similar to the "7-on-7 football" that's run at passing camps and preseason practices at the high school and college levels nationwide.
Given that context, you need to start off by taking an honest and thorough look at the players on your team, and determine how their individual skills and talents will translate on the field, based on the rules and style of your league.
Do you have a quarterback who is more athletic and can run for big chunks of yardage themselves? Do you have a bunch of individuals who are tall, can catch, and run really fast? Or, are your players bigger and stronger than the average player? That's going to dictate the offensive and defensive personnel and philosophy you could -- or should -- be running.
The best coaches utilize the strengths of their players and put them in the best position to win. The last thing you want to be doing is "jamming a square peg into a round hole."
Designing the Right Plays
Once you know the type of team you have, you should start thinking about the schemes you want to run on offense and defense.
On offense, smaller, faster teams -- especially those with a mobile quarterback -- might benefit from a "spread"-style offense that features a lot of routes that allows receivers to outrun or elude the defender in single coverage. You can line up the players with more "vertical speed" on the outside for big play potential. The quicker and shiftier players should line up in the slot; this makes them more dangerous because they'll have two different sides of the field in which they can use for their routes. These are the routes that will allow you to pick up quick and easy catches. For teams with small but fast players, a great strategy is to capitalize on quick short plays that net first downs. This will lead to a larger average of “plays-per-game” and an offensive play tempo that brings confusion to the defense. Some of the most successful flag football teams use this fast-paced tempo. We’ve witnessed teams with smaller than average players, less experience, use a no-huddle, quick tempo play style dominate entire regions.
If you've got a bunch of taller players, you may want to consider a defense that features more blocking and receivers running underneath or seam routes. That will allow your receivers to "box out" or out jump anyone trying to cover them since they'll have the size advantage.
On defense, the former group might be better suited for the traditional man-to-man defense, but the latter group might be better off running more of a zone-style defense and perhaps trying to clog the passing windows for the opposing quarterback at the line of scrimmage.
All of this, of course, is predicated on your teams skill sets. As a coach, one of your major roles is to identify the skills and natural abilities of your players. Then, using that data, assign roles that capitalize on those skills. Should you keep blockers on the line? Could these blockers become eligible receivers? Should you target a small but lightning-fast player to blitz opposing quarterbacks? These are all factors to determine when you're building a scheme and designing plays for it.
Running Your Practices
Now it's time to bring it all to life, on the practice field.
As the head coach, you want to divide your practices into two parts: running drills, and installing your scheme (ie, practicing your plays).
We use football drills to build the foundational mental and physical parts of the game, and then we build on those drills by taking those components and utilizing them within the structure of a play. There are four key drills we recommend that you should be running at each practice:
One-on-One Coverage: have one wide receiver lined up in front of one cornerback. You tell the quarterback and receiver which route the receiver is going to run (without letting the cornerback know). The quarterback has to complete the throw to the receiver, and the cornerback has to break up the pass attempt. This drill will not only allow wide receivers to practice their routes with "live" coverage, but it will also build timing and rapport between your quarterback and receivers.
Yards After Catch Gauntlet: Line up parallel cones on two sides, representing the field of play (you want to make this narrower than your usual field width). Then, you give the ball to your offensive player on one side of the "field" you created, and have all your defenders stop said ball carrier from reaching the end zone, by trying to grab his or her flag as soon as possible. This drill simulates the ability to gain the maximum yards after the catch.
Flag Pulling: Very similar to the Gauntlet, except you want to bring the cones closer to each other, making the field of play even more narrow, and have only one defender stopping one ball carrier from reaching the other side. It's the job of the defender to "bring down" the offensive player -- by pulling off their flag -- and prevent them from scoring. After all, the most important part of flag football is pulling off the flag, or preventing that from happening.
Swarm Drill: Have all your defenders out on the field at one time, standing idly in place. Then, your quarterback snaps the ball and throws it to any given receiver, or simply carries the ball themselves. The defenders must stand "frozen" until the ball crosses over the line of scrimmage (whether by pass or run). Once it crosses the line of scrimmage, the defenders must run to the ball as fast as possible. This simulates situations where defensive players might be performing their responsibilities in coverage, but then quickly attack the player advancing the football.
After you practice the basics of flag football, you want to start bringing those together in the context of the schemes you'll be running. The fundamental purpose of practicing plays is to ensure your players understand the scheme you're running, and the plays you're calling. Put more simply, the objective of your practice is to actually rehearse and simulate the plays you want to run on gameday, so that your players not only understand what they are supposed to do on a given play but also understand how their responsibilities juxtapose with those of their teammates.
As obvious as this might sound, it's a fact that too many coaches tend to forget.
Key Takeaways
You might be a football coach, but unlike other coaches, you very likely won't have a staff of coaches that will help you assemble talent, build an offense and defense, orchestrate practices, and help you on game day. You might even be a one-person coaching show, so you need to take a holistic approach to the endeavor, and coach your team from the ground up. We have seen a lot of success with coaches asking parents of players if they’d like to assist with coaching. You can easily give the new assistant coaches simple tasks, split the team in two and focus-in on key technical skills more easily. Just ask – you might be surprised at how willing other parents are to help you with coaching. (Be sure that all volunteers complete the volunteer application via our website before starting as an assistant coach.)
As we've mentioned, successful coaching starts by knowing your players, devising a strategy based on those players, and then making sure your players are as well versed in the strategy as you are.
Once you've got all that down, that's when you can let your players go out there and win some games!