PopWarner and AYF National Championships

We would have to play in Pop Warner or AYF
We play in a nearly 100 team independent league.
AYF has no league in our state- even though they say they are in all 50 states
Pop Warner only 2 years ago came back into the state of Nebraska after 30 years, it is a tiny league- made up of only a handful of teams that were doing poorly in unlimited- our kids arent very big, but Im not sure I would want to exclude the handful of kids that are. Nothing against Pop Warner or AYF_ they do a great job.

Like many areas of the country, indendent unlimited weight football is what is played here and not affiliated with AYF.

FYI- Im not a fan of tournament teams, the best football I saw play was from teams that had been together all season- rather than all-stars.

We have played in a number of tournaments and a number of teams in our league have played in the big ones in Las Vegas and Daytona-
Not a regional qualifier etc, but any out of state tourney is a blast for the kids to play in.

DC

I am looking forward to reading your observations. Having been a participant on the AYF side, I completely understand your "Gorilla Teams" comment. Heck, my team was one of those teams, & I know our punt game was horrible because of it. We only punted 2 twice all season, fortunately we only punted once in Florida.

One thing I observed that was upsetting, was the lack of quality blocking & blocking schemes. I know for us Power & Kick were our most important runs, with Trap & Counter being a close second. Watching several elite teams, Pasco Paul & I had the same thought. They had elaborate backfield actions with limited or no blocking. The pass protection schemes were completely vague & horrible. I saw more sacks then anyone could imagine. We saw no pulling guards even at the 8th & 9th grade level.

Joe

Joe,

You guys pulled well, loved that little QB counter you guys do with G and Slot leading- well done.

Yes, way too many QBs getting sacked

Agreed, very little pulling

The guys running my SW at AYF- pulled well- Glencoe Trevian, SOF Warriors, Santa Monica and Oakland

At the PW Midgets- Pt St Lucie runs some of my stuff- they pull well and protect well.

Im going to have a very long blog entry- on Gorilla team problems- once they get to Florida- very evident with many teams.

From my blog today:

Stumbling Gorillas
At both the AYF and Pop Warner National Championships there are many very good youth football teams that have dominated their opponents throughout the season. Several coaches I spoke to quoted their impressive records and point totals that bordered on the absurd. One coach was 15-0 with a 510-6 point total, another was 14-0 with a 456-14 point total.

While this isn’t necessarily the rule, there were plenty of teams that for whatever reason had ruled their fiefdoms with an iron fist and had experienced very little adversity prior to the tournament. Several coaches told me they had not punted at all the entire season, several others mentioned they had punted 2 times or fewer. At least 30 coaches said they had not trailed in a game all year. I like to call these teams “gorilla” teams, they rule the jungle and have no legitimate threat to their control of their jungle. They dominate their competition and many times they face teams that are defeated mentally before they ever take the field, due to the gorilla teams appearance or the gorilla teams reputation.

However, when most gorilla teams get to Florida, they find there are other gorillas just as talented as themselves who have little or no fear of facing other gorillas. I saw one gorilla Pee Wee team at the Pop Warner tournament, seemingly well coached on both offense and defense and with very good athletes, struggle to move the ball against another gorilla team. On their first punt, they barely got it off and it went just 12 yards, giving their opponent very good field position. On their next punting situation- 4th and 6 from their own 40, they decided to go for it and didn’t make it. On the next possession on 4th and 7 they booted a 14 yard kick. On another possession, they had 4th and 9 and faked the punt, it was an awful attempt, both the kicker and the player they were short snapping to were just a yard apart, it fooled no one and the snap was bad, the other team recovered and went in to score. On their last punting situation, they were 4th and 11 from their own 20 yard line. Since they punted so poorly and their fakes were just as bad, they decided to go for it and were stuffed to seal their fate.

This game was being played on one side of the field for the entire game due to poor punting of the one team and pretty good punting by the opponent. The opposing team was consistently getting 30 yards on their punts or were just going for it on fourth down because of the field position they had. The winning team was able to take a few more chances due to field position, whereas the losing team couldn’t dig very deep into their playbook. In the end the punting game was the deciding factor in this game which was decided by one touchdown.

Neither team was able to move the ball very well, but on each exchange the one team was gaining 20 yards or more of field position, which in the end won them the game. It was very obvious the losing team had not punted much during their season if at all. They didn’t need to, but they had obviously failed to perfect it for the day they might need it.

The same is true of some blocking scheme adjustments. Like any youth football league with about 100 teams, our league has very good teams, good teams, average teams and poor teams, the coaching runs the gamut. Depending on the schedule, we may have a good number of teams where we can run our base 12-14 plays with our regular blocking rules and schemes and win handily if we execute well and our players technique and effort are near potential. However there are always teams that are bigger, faster and better than us on the schedule, if not during the regular season, then in the playoffs or when we play out of conference in tournaments. Against the teams you bully, things like traps, influence plays, false pulls, wrong waying, key breaker plays or screens may not be effective at all. When you play teams that have players that do not play aggressively or are not coached well, those type of plays or tactics often times fail miserably, because those players are going to respond and play differently than well coached or aggressive players. The danger is, once you run a wrong way pull or key breaker play and it doesn’t work well against the weaker team, the coaching staff and players lose confidence in the play or adjustment and it is either put on the backburner or tosses altogether.

In many leagues the rules also prevent you from developing your teams for title runs. Many leagues mercy rules prevent you from working and developing aspects of your game that you will need once you are playing on a bigger stage. There are very few teams that are winning National Championships without a legitimate pass threat or great special teams. I’m not talking about going Air Raid and throwing 70% of the time, I’m talking about being able to threaten the field with the potential of a completed pass that will net 20 yards or more. In many leagues once you are up by 3-4 touchdowns you are not allowed to throw the football. These mercy rules are well intended and needed in many places where coaches are out of control, but they can also hinder team development.

What to do? If you think your team can be a league or National Title contender, you have to perfect parts of the game that you may not need until you face another gorilla. You MUST perfect those parts of the game you didn’t need to beat the weaker or average opponent with, that means committing practice time to it. If you have a title contending youth football team, you may need to play a game within a game. To work on your punting game, when ahead by 3-4 scores, go ahead and punt on third down to get the practice. In games where you feel confident your team has the upper hand, start throwing the ball earlier than you normally do or on downs you normally wouldn’t throw the ball on. Use your influence or false pulls/wrong waying even though your base plays are working extremely well. Keep the end goal in mind which is not only beating your opponent today, but winning the last game against another gorilla. If you are controlling the game on offense, put your weaker players in earlier on defense to keep the score differential tight enough not to go into mercy rule so you can work on your offense and special teams. I don’t get caught up in the final score, I could care less about shut outs, my goal is to prepare the team to it’s full potential and to win that final big game.

To win on the big stage, in most cases you are going to need all the tricks in your bag to beat the other gorillas in the jungle. Before every game take a few moments off to the side away from everything to think about your end goals, don’t get caught up in the moment and excitement of the game that day. Write some of the things you need to work on, on your play sheet to help remind you. My game three sheet said: Punt, Wrong, Burst 43 G, Buck, Smoke Pass, all things we were going to need later in the season. There were spots in that game where I was able to work in all five of those points of emphasis. When you get to that final game you will be glad you invested the time to fully prepare for that opponent, often times it will be the difference maker.

Mike,

You and I both know guys that beat on their chest proudly and say, they never punt.

When playing championship caliber ball against good competition, you need to be able to punt well.

My favortite part of the punt- the fake punt- which you CANT execute well if the other team knows you cant punt worth a darn.

Ive also lost a few games because I didnt stay consistent with getting great at key breakers

DC

Coaching one of those "Gorilla Teams", I know exactly what you are talking about. I think sometimes it's not about arrogance, jut opportunity. Punting on third down is a great idea, but what happens when you don't have a 3rd down for 4 games. We had 1 game this year we had a total of 7 plays on offense, 6 went for td's the other for 25yds.

Mercy rules for AYF are really decent. Running clock starts at 35 point differential, it then never tops. You can run any play including a pass( AYF requests no trick plays). This at least allows me to run my offense. In Florida they handled the Mercy rule very different. It started at 30 points & each officiating crew had a different take on the rules.

Joe

From my blog: Youth Football Plays- Which Work and Don't Work Against Quality Teams

One of the things I found very interesting while watching over 60 different youth football teams play at the Pop Warner and AYF National Championships was observing trends. One of the things that was very evident early on and was very consistent were the type of football plays that didn’t work in this tournament. Since every team that got here was the bully of their own league and came into the tournament with 14-0 or 13-1 records, each team had a few kids that could play. But since each team had a few athletes and most of the teams were coached pretty well, there were no one man army teams dominating games. In fact many of the plays you see run in your local leagues didn’t work here at all.

You didn’t see teams scoring with the sweep. In fact in the 20 plus full games I watched, I saw just 4 sweeps go for scores. Less than half of the sweeps I saw went for more than 2-3 yards. In many games I saw teams run just 2-3 sweeps for the entire game. Most of the deep outside reverse plays I saw went for negative yardage. Coaches have to remember that most of the teams playing in this tournament didn’t get this far by having players play out of position or undisciplined. Even most of the bootlegs I saw were negative yardage plays at this level. One memorable play came in the Pop Warner Midget game on Tuesday where Port St Lucie Florida was playing West Haven Connecticut. West Haven was a very good Wing T team, who like most good Wing T teams has a nice bootleg “Waggle Pass” as part of their offense. The first time West Haven tried running it against Port St Lucie, the Pirates had 3 defenders all over him, their Defensive End wasn’t fooled for a moment by the fake and he had the speed to run down the Quarterback as well. From the film I saw on West Haven, this had been a big play for them all season long.

I was very disappointed that I didn’t see much option football down here at all. Being a dyed in the wool Nebraska guy, we love seeing the option run out of any set. You would have thought one of the 60 plus teams I saw would be on option team, I guess it’s back to watching Navy and Georgia Tech on TV. I didn’t see a single team run true triple option and saw just a handful of teams running a few “double” or called option plays. Even the Wishbone teams in this tournament were power Wishbone teams, with little or no option game. The Spread teams here ran just a handful of speed option plays and some zone read option, but for most of them the zone read was not a read, it was a called play. You could tell based on the blocking scheme, most were getting an extra blocker at the point of attack toward whoever the predetermined runner was going to be.

On the other hand, in every game I saw, the teams that won were able to establish the off-tackle run. It didn’t matter if it was an I Formation, Spread, Double Wing, Wishbone or Single Wing team, all the winning teams were able to run the power off-tackle. Most of these same teams had some success with some type of inside counter play as well, not a reverse, a tight, quick hitting counter play with some misdirection.

In over 85% of the games I watched, the winning team had a legitimate passing threat. I’m not talking about going Air Raid and throwing the ball 80% of the time, I’m talking about having a 35% plus chance of a pass play going for 20 yards or more on any attempt. While this may not be the most efficient way to move the ball, the legitimate threat of the pass was integral to the overall success of vast majority of teams playing at this level. In later posts I will break down some of the passing numbers- you may be surprised by those.

None of this surprised me at all. Most good youth football coaches aren’t going to allow themselves to get beat by sweeps, reverses or bootlegs. Most teams aren’t going to allow themselves to be beat by a team with no legitimate passing threat either. In the big tournaments there may also be a number of beast players, but none of them dominate.
Good football was in abundance.

Crickets???

DC

In our multiple 4-4, we align in 6I's. The alignment of our DE's was a very debated subject this year. In the past we aligned in 6's and stunted to C-gap. We felt it allowed our opponents to wash the DE down. So we went back to our original alignment of 6I.

The year before last we gave up 41 points in 15 games. This season we allowed 28 points in 16 games. IMHO no matter how good(or bad) a defense plays a coach must always look to be better. Sometimes it's a coaching issue, sometimes a personel issue, either way I think it's important to always look to be better.

In youth football mostly better teams will play either 8's or 9's as you say. I can say we were successfull running naked against all of our opponents. Granted we scheme it a little different, yet we were still deadly with it.

Joe