Greetings Coaches,
Kinda slow on the list lately, thought I’d toss a couple Questions on the table and see if there’s any interest…
From the sounds of things, nearly all of us have MPP rules, or equivalent, for the less talented kids. Where do you tend to play them?
I.e., we’re an every-kid-starts league, and they must play the whole game on at least one side of the ball. And we draft, so we’re always going to have a last rd, and a couple late rd picks, and we have to play them. Most times the last couple rds are the medicated and/or on-the-spectrum kids. Sometimes we get lucky and find something those kids can do pretty well… but usually we’re trying to find a place for them which minimizes any negative impact their lack of talent may bring, or to ‘cover’ them with one of our better kids.
Are their places in your Offense / Defense that you feel you can put a lesser talent / no talent kids?
NOTE: We coach all our kids, talented or not. It’s to our advantage, by the time playoffs arrive, we’ve usually raised our floor, so to speak.
But more importantly, for most kids, football will do more for them than they will do for football. We want them to experience what the game can do for them.
And in the end, those kids will become voting tax-payers, we want them to love football as adults even if they were not good at it.
Umm.... why does that 6 ft tall 9 yr old have a goatee...?
Short/Weak End - mainly fills for pullers, including cut blocking. You can really build a sense of pride in a kid. He's working hard, doing blue collar work and making a difference.
WR - Have a dedicated WR coach work with them to teach them how to stalk block, run routes and catch.
Short guard (Beast) - Protect the C, or more specifically, protect the A gap.
NT - Teach him to cut the C, then get up and play football. Not my favorite, but we've given out Crunch bars to "MPPs" who spent the entire game shutting down the wedge or QB sneak.
KO - We always onside kick and always to the left. We put the these guys on the right and teach them how to corral a ball carrier that somehow breaks free and reverses field.
KR - I would not advise this, but sometimes you have little choice. I put them on the front line and wide, but never against a team who onside kicks.
If you are up or down 3 scores in the 2nd half . . . everybody plays. Screw it.
Game plan? I got your game plan. We gonna run the bawl some. We gonna throw the bawl some. We gonna play some defense. We gonna run some special teams, but we better not run kick return but one time and we sure as heck better not punt.
Depends on the severity of the "mpp". If I have a kid that can't run with out tripping or the kid just isn't as talented as his peers but can play a little bit and not get hurt and potentially make an easy tackle or block.
In the case of "tripping Timmy" . - my goal is to have him run in open space, be able to have his fight or flight response and not hurt any other kids in the process. He goes to wr in a crew of 3 that rotates every play. The absolute best thing he can do is interfere with defense on run plays and attempt to catch the ball in specific situations (blown out).
Kid is experienced but not up to snuff "jv johnny". I'd put him where ever he's most comfortable. If he's a smaller payer with avg speed but mechanically not there, he would be a c gap player for me on the d line or boundary second level player.
If he's a big ole boy "big boy Barry" would be a A gap player but only if I have a great linebacker behind him.
I don't mpp olineman or secondary player (dbs/safeties). If on defense I always have him surrounded by the better players.
Hope this helps
I can explain it to you, I can't understand if for you.
Depends on the severity of the "mpp". If I have a kid that can't run with out tripping or the kid just isn't as talented as his peers but can play a little bit and not get hurt and potentially make an easy tackle or block.
In the case of "tripping Timmy" . - my goal is to have him run in open space, be able to have his fight or flight response and not hurt any other kids in the process. He goes to wr in a crew of 3 that rotates every play. The absolute best thing he can do is interfere with defense on run plays and attempt to catch the ball in specific situations (blown out).
Kid is experienced but not up to snuff "jv johnny". I'd put him where ever he's most comfortable. If he's a smaller payer with avg speed but mechanically not there, he would be a c gap player for me on the d line or boundary second level player.
If he's a big ole boy "big boy Barry" would be a A gap player but only if I have a great linebacker behind him.
I don't mpp olineman or secondary player (dbs/safeties). If on defense I always have him surrounded by the better players.
Hope this helps
I can explain it to you, I can't understand if for you.
We've found that placing a weaker kid inbetween our best G and TE works OK. Kid has one job, down block to cover the G's pulls/ traps / KO's. All we ask for is to not allow penetration. We coach the kid up on this day in and day out. This past season, after game 3, I mentioned in the post game talk (and it was legit) how much he had improved, the kid glowed. Became more enthusiastic about his assignment. To be fair, mostly he got run over and tangled up in the DL's feet. But he stopped penetration, and that is what we needed from him. He is coming back this season, and thinks he is a good player, and we're not going to tell him otherwise.
We also find we can stick a weaker kid in the Defensive back field if he's surrounded by our studs. This past season, our Spectrum kid played behind our best DE/OLB combination with our best DB nearby at Safety. Note: we have in on on 2 tackles, both times it looks like he got knocked into the play by another players. But what we saw was... in the beginning of the season he ran from contact, toward the mid-season, he was standing in there, and at the end of the season he was running toward it.
Last season, not our weakest, but definitely not a starter if we didn;t have to play her, we set her at ILB next to our biggest stud. Most times he out-raced her to the play, but she did get a couple tackles on her own, and did a lot of clean up.
Umm.... why does that 6 ft tall 9 yr old have a goatee...?
I had a bunch of them this year! I don't know that there's a "one size fits all" approach. The trick is to find some thing that they can do well and use it to your advantage.
Here are some examples from 12U this season..
1. We had really big kid that had difficulty seeing things that were far away. An assistant or two grumbled that he'd "never play at the middle school because he's too slow". I put him at NT. While he wasn't disruptive like I prefer for the NT's to be, no one could run "A" Gap on us. Our MLB's Dad even bought the kid a Gatorade after every game because he always drew double teams, allowing his kid to make plays.
2. We had another kid that had always played offensive line in previous seasons, but never really grew. His dad was worried that he'd never play because he wasn't big enough. We put him at quick side end and used him to do scoop blocks and to pull when we ran GaTE. He did super job for us with that and on special teams.
3. Another undersized kid really didn't seem to fit in anywhere, but since we're also an "every kid starts" league, we had to be creative. When we were doing bear crawls for conditioning, I noticed that he routinely finished towards the front. We put him in a 4-tech on the right side. He caused a few problems for slower offensive tackles. He wasn't necessarily a star, but he did his job and allowed his teammates to do theirs.
Fight 'em until Hell freezes over, then fight 'em on the ice -- Dutch Meyer
I had a bunch of them this year! I don't know that there's a "one size fits all" approach. The trick is to find some thing that they can do well and use it to your advantage.
Here are some examples from 12U this season..
1. We had really big kid that had difficulty seeing things that were far away. An assistant or two grumbled that he'd "never play at the middle school because he's too slow". I put him at NT. While he wasn't disruptive like I prefer for the NT's to be, no one could run "A" Gap on us. Our MLB's Dad even bought the kid a Gatorade after every game because he always drew double teams, allowing his kid to make plays.
2. We had another kid that had always played offensive line in previous seasons, but never really grew. His dad was worried that he'd never play because he wasn't big enough. We put him at quick side end and used him to do scoop blocks and to pull when we ran GaTE. He did super job for us with that and on special teams.
3. Another undersized kid really didn't seem to fit in anywhere, but since we're also an "every kid starts" league, we had to be creative. When we were doing bear crawls for conditioning, I noticed that he routinely finished towards the front. We put him in a 4-tech on the right side. He caused a few problems for slower offensive tackles. He wasn't necessarily a star, but he did his job and allowed his teammates to do theirs.
Pulling double teams AND successfully stopping runs to 2 gaps? That sounds pretty disruptive to me.
Game plan? I got your game plan. We gonna run the bawl some. We gonna throw the bawl some. We gonna play some defense. We gonna run some special teams, but we better not run kick return but one time and we sure as heck better not punt.
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