Thoughts on Special Teams

As at any level of football, special teams can have a big impact on a middle school football game. However, it is important to remember that this is middle school football and winning the game is not the number one priority. With a team of 25 -30 players I think its important for every kid to be able to say he's a part of a unit. Remembering that affects some of the decisions I make for the special teams, specifically the kick return team.

By the nature of their age and development, some kids are going to be capable of more than others on the football field. However, its important to keep all the kids interested in the sport and give them all equal attention and instruction, because it is impossible to see what type of students and players they will mature into when they reach high school. I've seen the slightly over-weight, non-athletic 7th grader turn into the 6'4" solid 225lb college recruited player as a senior.

What do you do with those non-athletes in middle school, when you still want to be competitive and you want everybody to experience some success, feeling that football was a good experience? We're really trying to do it all here, and in some respects that is impossible. But, we try anyway.

How have we distributed players among the units? Here's an example:

11 starters on offense. 3 start on defense as well.

8 + the 3 from offense starters on defense. 19 players total

3 kids on kick off team who are not on the starting offense or defense. 22 players total.

5 kids on the kick return team who are not on another unit. 27 players total, who get to go home and tell mom and dad they are a part of a unit.

This is just an example. Our numbers and break down changes with the circumstances.

Knowing that part of my philosophy, I'll try to outline my way of dividing kids onto offense, defense, kick off, and kick return (you're thinking I forgot punt team and punt return, I'll get to that in a moment).

First, I don't dump weak kids on the offensive line. We do pull linemen so they do have to have some athletic ability. That being said when choosing between two decent size kids who probably won't play one of the back positions I try to have the better athlete play defense. I'll also sometimes convince a really good athlete, who is a reserve backfield player, to play one of the guard spots, by rewarding him with ball carries throughout the year.

This was supposed to be a post on special teams. Punt team, my recommendation is don't punt. I'm being serious; I've gone an entire season without punting and in others only punted 2 or 3 times. If you do have to punt (I don't even punt if its 4th and long at midfield), your center should be able to be taught to long snap the ball 8-10 yards. Have your best punter from the starting backs be the punter, and the rest of the team in a tight punt formation of your choice. Tell your punter when he gets the ball to just get it out of there. We practice punts the night before every game, but I don't get anymore complicated than that.

Punt return is even easier. Your best ball carrier drops back as a punt returner. Have a "fire" call when the ball hits the ground, nobody wants to touch fire, so nobody touch the ball when you hear the returner yell "fire," "fire."

The kick off team needs to be stocked with your fastests, best tacklers. You can put two of your non-athletes on the kick off team. Just don't put them next to each other. I put the best tacklers in the middle, on each side of the ball. We do want to be competitive and a weak kick off team gives up touchdowns. Another point, we want all kick offs to be on the ground, preferably ending up between the sideline and the hash mark. We do not want the kick off to go high and deep to the back men. Who do your opponents want to carry the ball? - the two deep men. We can control whether or not they get the ball. They won't be getting the ball. You'll be surprised how many of these kick offs you will end up recovering.

The kick return team is the unit I put a few more of my non-athletes. I place them on the front line of 5. My second line of 4 includes back up receivers and backs, kids who can handle the ball. The back two are, obviously, the two best ball carriers. I assign each player a kid to block on the other team. I haven't been able to make the wedge work in middle school. Nobody seems to block. When they are each assigned a person to block, they at least momentarily slow down the opponent .

It is also vitally important that you teach the kids the rule differences concerning a live ball between punts and kick offs (A few years back I had a kid shuffle around a kick off, waiting to down the ball). They need to understand that when we are receiving a punt, it is our ball unless we muff it; and, on kick offs, the ball is live and up for grabs after 10 yards. Incidentally, before 10 yards, it's just like a punt. They need to understand these rules.

This has been a brief overview on my philosophy of putting the team together. Whole books have been written on each of these topics and it really isn't as simple as I try to make it sound. Hopefully in future posts we'll discuss in more detail what we do with our team.