Winning Youth Football

Coaching Youth Fooball - Football Plays

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Pulling your Offensive Guards in Youth Football

To me it's a picture of sheer beauty. Two offensive guards pulling down the line of scrimmage and leading the play around the end and downfield while your athletic running back tucks himself in behind and follows the blocks into the end-zone.
It's one of the grass root plays of football!

If you have a couple of big athletic guards its something that you want to consider doing an implementing as part of your offensive scheme. It's a great way to move and protect the football and when executed properly is a hard play to stop. Basically, you're out manning the defence at the point of attack by pulling the two guards. You're creating a physical mis-match on the corner with these linemen lead blocking into the secondary.
But it takes a lot of practice time to implement as your offensive line have to work in tandem to cover off the pulling guards who are vacating their spot on the line of scrimmage and this vacant area needs to be plugged to prevent middle linebackers that read the pull from shooting the vacant gap and stuffing the play in the backfield before it develops.
Usually, when you run this play you'll get your offensive line to tighten up their splits. This makes it a little easier to plug the gap. On the play side on the snap of the ball your offensive tackle and fullback will work in tandem as the offensive tackle will step down and fill for the pulling guard while the fullback will either take on the defensive linemen covering the tackle or go down and get the middle linebacker depending on how they are lined up. On the backside of the play the offensive linemen in tight splits will all just down block and prevent penetration into the backfield.

Again, practice and timing are the keys.

Cheers!