LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d
September 24th, 2006, 02:42 PM
I think most of you know I haven't been around much lately because I've been coaching my son's football team of 7, 8, and 9 year olds. I've never coached football before and in my first year I'm the offensive coordinator and assistant head coach. So I feel like I need to focus my time there and not let these kids down. I've literally lost sleep because I'm thinking about football, where kids should play, plays to run, what defenses I'll be up against, how to get all the kids in every game, dealing with parents. I fall asleep almost every night thinking about football, wake up a time or 3 during the night dreaming about football, and wake up thinking about football.
In our scrimmage on over Labor day weekend we played the usual worst two teams in our league of 6 teams. So we did pretty well and I started feeling more comfortable with what we were doing. In week 1 we had a tropical depression come through and dump 4 inches of rain the night before the game so it was canceled. So in week 2 we faced the best team we saw at the scrimage and they made us look silly. My first drive we went right down the field and scored no problem. But they made a change at there nose guard and started to mess up my center quarterback exchange not to mention the entire game they were running an illegal defense. That wasn't the worst of our problems though because our defense couldn't tackle a kid standing still. I didn't think it was possible to miss so many tackles. In one play alone their tailback broke 6 tackles and cut back across the field for a 60+ yard touchdown. Oh yeah and it was a girl, major props to her as she was awsome and fast as greased lightning. We lost 32-14, they out played us and we were out coached, plain and simple.
Week 2 we play one of the teams we scrimmaged against and we were pretty sure we had a win coming to us. We spent a good portion of each pratice working on tackling and it paid off. The only time my offense didn't score was when we had 2 penalties in the same series and we couldn't make up the ground. We won 27-12.
Week 3 we played the same team as the first week so this was our chance to prove we weren't the same team they beat by 3 touchdowns. Again we spent most of the week working on defense and tackling, in fact I was getting scared that my offense got so little work in practice last week that we might have trouble moving the ball.
My opening possesion was the same as in the first game, marched right down the field and scored. Then our defense had to see if they were up to par. They got a first down pretty quick but then our D stepped it up and shut them down. We got the ball at the beginning of the 2 quarter and moved about 30 yards before a penalty and lack luster running ended our drive. So they got the ball back and our defense shut them down pretty quickly so I got the ball back with about 3 minutes to go in the half. Their D did pretty good and stopped us but it was half time. In the third quarter we kicked off and and after giving up about 20 yards D held strong and got us the ball back. My offense got it together for a nice clock eating drive that produced our second touchdown. In the 4th defense had some trouble but finally stopped them on our 20 yard line. In the second and fourth quarters they had a mean little cuss at nosegaurd. So to shut him down we went on 2 and pulled him offsides, next play we went on Set and ran right by him. They stopped us around the 50 but time was winding down. Defense was doing well but on the last play of the game their quarterback did a naked bootleg to the wide side of the field and scored as time expired. We won a hard fought battle 14-6.
That's a huge turnaround from our first meeting and we were very excited with how our kids performed. In 2 weeks our defense went from giving up 32 points to 6 against the same team. One of the other things that we do on our team is to make sure every kid gets some game time. Granted for some it's only a few plays a game but it's the 5 seven year olds and a couple other kids who are still pretty scared to be in their gear standing around. Did I mention we have 41 kids on our squad that we get in 60 minutes of a rolling game clock? The rolling game clock means it almost never stops, even after touchdowns, even if you go out of bounds, whatever.
Anyway just thought I'd relate the story to let yall know where and why I've been AWOL and because I was super excited to have the redemption our team wanted and needed after the first trampling we took.
In our scrimmage on over Labor day weekend we played the usual worst two teams in our league of 6 teams. So we did pretty well and I started feeling more comfortable with what we were doing. In week 1 we had a tropical depression come through and dump 4 inches of rain the night before the game so it was canceled. So in week 2 we faced the best team we saw at the scrimage and they made us look silly. My first drive we went right down the field and scored no problem. But they made a change at there nose guard and started to mess up my center quarterback exchange not to mention the entire game they were running an illegal defense. That wasn't the worst of our problems though because our defense couldn't tackle a kid standing still. I didn't think it was possible to miss so many tackles. In one play alone their tailback broke 6 tackles and cut back across the field for a 60+ yard touchdown. Oh yeah and it was a girl, major props to her as she was awsome and fast as greased lightning. We lost 32-14, they out played us and we were out coached, plain and simple.
Week 2 we play one of the teams we scrimmaged against and we were pretty sure we had a win coming to us. We spent a good portion of each pratice working on tackling and it paid off. The only time my offense didn't score was when we had 2 penalties in the same series and we couldn't make up the ground. We won 27-12.
Week 3 we played the same team as the first week so this was our chance to prove we weren't the same team they beat by 3 touchdowns. Again we spent most of the week working on defense and tackling, in fact I was getting scared that my offense got so little work in practice last week that we might have trouble moving the ball.
My opening possesion was the same as in the first game, marched right down the field and scored. Then our defense had to see if they were up to par. They got a first down pretty quick but then our D stepped it up and shut them down. We got the ball at the beginning of the 2 quarter and moved about 30 yards before a penalty and lack luster running ended our drive. So they got the ball back and our defense shut them down pretty quickly so I got the ball back with about 3 minutes to go in the half. Their D did pretty good and stopped us but it was half time. In the third quarter we kicked off and and after giving up about 20 yards D held strong and got us the ball back. My offense got it together for a nice clock eating drive that produced our second touchdown. In the 4th defense had some trouble but finally stopped them on our 20 yard line. In the second and fourth quarters they had a mean little cuss at nosegaurd. So to shut him down we went on 2 and pulled him offsides, next play we went on Set and ran right by him. They stopped us around the 50 but time was winding down. Defense was doing well but on the last play of the game their quarterback did a naked bootleg to the wide side of the field and scored as time expired. We won a hard fought battle 14-6.
That's a huge turnaround from our first meeting and we were very excited with how our kids performed. In 2 weeks our defense went from giving up 32 points to 6 against the same team. One of the other things that we do on our team is to make sure every kid gets some game time. Granted for some it's only a few plays a game but it's the 5 seven year olds and a couple other kids who are still pretty scared to be in their gear standing around. Did I mention we have 41 kids on our squad that we get in 60 minutes of a rolling game clock? The rolling game clock means it almost never stops, even after touchdowns, even if you go out of bounds, whatever.
Anyway just thought I'd relate the story to let yall know where and why I've been AWOL and because I was super excited to have the redemption our team wanted and needed after the first trampling we took.