coachKidsSports.com

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Don't worry football coaches, I haven't forgotten you… The other day I profiled a free resource for soccer drills , today it's time for some pigskin action.

USA Football has assembled a ton of information on the coaching section of their website.  Out of all of that information there are two areas I want to send you to.  The first is the Coaches Guide.  The guide is set up like a play book with tabs for Overview, Philosophy, Getting Started, Practice , Game Plan, Techniques , Offense, Defense , Special Teams and Health & Safety.  Many of the tabs are further broken out into sub-categories and they have some meaningful information.  For example the Techniques tab contains six sub-categories including one on tackling.  There are two drills in the article and they are detailed as to purpose and technique.  Remember, stay true to the purpose of the drill , cut ANYTHING that doesn't support the purpose.  If you're looking for some insight or just a couple of extra ways to get your kids to make the play, check out the coaching section of USA Football.

The other are I really liked on the site doesn't have it's own tab and is easy to overlook.  At the bottom of each page of the Coaching Guide is a link that looks like this:

From this link you choose from a list of dozens of offensive, defensive and special teams plays.  After selecting a play, you can see the alignment and hover over each position to see that player's detailed assignment on the play.  Once you understand the assignments you can run the play to see how it looks in action.  The animated plays are a coach's dream, the offensive plays all end with a touchdown and the defensive plays all result in a loss of yardage, but your mileage may vary…

The other areas on the site are a little sparse.  Few of the Featured Articles are recent, but there is still some good information in there.  I like the "Calling All Coaches"  and "Parents as Resources" articles, but then I would…

If you are a football coach, check out the Coaching section and the Interactive Plays before you spend time rummaging around the rest of the site.  There are interesting nuggets throughout the site, but most of the gold is in those two areas.