But it wasn't all bad.  We had some good plays.

They score on first play.  We get ball and turn it over.  They drive DEEP into our zone.  They had 2nd and 3 or 4 on about the 12 yard line. And we come up with this:

We then took the ball on a 90 yard drive and scored. I'm thinking okay, we're back in business.

Nice play on a bootleg

A little better on this jet:

Nice pass rush:

88 turned into a  nice Dog for us.  Not very quick, but he did his job pretty well.

22 keeping us in the game, and the difference between him back there and the shorter kids:

I'd prefer the Dogs to attack this play, but ultimately he played it well.

While he stayed in the game for a few more plays, #7 got a concussion I believe on this hit. We saw him bent over later in this series and pulled him.  He missed the rest of the season.

And that's our season in review, LOL.

Lost the first two in competitive games against the two best teams in our conference.  Made some good changes in personnel, and went on a 4 game run. Didn't know at the time how much game 6 took out of us, but we were toast.  Lost that game 7, got smoked against a very good team from out of conference game 8, then got smoked in the playoffs.  Don't have that film, but it's pretty much the ugly from game 7 above. We were just man-handled.

IMO #22 is a special kid and player, he's in 7th grade. I believe in this area he could play varsity as a sophomore if he stays with it. Definitely could start as a S on D as a soph, probably at QB too. We'll see - kid's a really good basketball player too, so sticking with football isn't a given.  And I'm not sure if we'll have an unlimited 8th grade team next season, so he might have to take a year off.  I don't see him wanting to play for a neighboring town...

I've decided to do an analysis of the ugly plays. This will help me understand this defense better.

The DE gets hooked. The Reaper gets blocked. The blocks slow down the pursuit, and that allows the runner to get the edge. If the DE doesn't get hooked, the angle of the sweep is deeper, and that gives the reaper time to make the play.

Here the DE over pursues into the backfield, about 4 yards deep. The reaper doesn't close down the hole and when the blocker comes into his face, he is out of position to make a play.

Dog over pursues again. Reaper bites on the fake. The stack pretty much bites on the fake too.

Dog wrong arms the blocking back and that takes him out of the play.

Posted by: @coach-kyle

I've decided to do an analysis of the ugly plays. This will help me understand this defense better.

The DE gets hooked. The Reaper gets blocked. The blocks slow down the pursuit, and that allows the runner to get the edge. If the DE doesn't get hooked, the angle of the sweep is deeper, and that gives the reaper time to make the play.

The problem isn't that "the DE gets hooked."  The problem is that a) the DE lines up way too tight, making it easy to get outside of him. (Unforgivable, when you are the last line of contain.) b) He rushes straight in, making it easy for the PSWB to open the inside path, thus allowing the DE to commit suicide.  

"The DE gets hooked" makes it sound like the blocker made a good play.  The reality is, the DE seems to have no idea as to what his responsibility should be and just rushes straight in, thus gets sealed off.  If this is the way he's taught, a Sweep (the most common play in all of youth football) will go for a big gain every time. 

--Dave

Posted by: @coach-kyle

Here the DE over pursues into the backfield, about 4 yards deep. The reaper doesn't close down the hole and when the blocker comes into his face, he is out of position to make a play.

Here's where Power works as well as a Sweep, simply because there's no contain.  The PSDE does the "little league" approach to contain, removing himself from the play.  The Fullback doesn't even have to block him.  The Centerfielder comes up, stops and gets caught flat-footed.  But this defensive alignment doesn't help the Centerfielder because he has no help, and if he makes ONE mistake, it's a Big Play.  His problem is that it's very difficult to contain when you're playing centerfield.  And if you're not playing Contain in little league, you will give up plays like this all day, assuming the opponent has any speed at all.

--Dave