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American Sport
Education Program
with Rob Ash
Human Kinetics
contents
preface v
PART I Teaching and Evaluating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
chapter 1 Teaching Sport Skills 3
chapter 2 Evaluating Technical and Tactical Skills 9
PART II Teaching Technical Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
chapter 3 Offensive Technical Skills 21
chapter 4 Defensive Technical Skills 89
chapter 5 Special Teams Technical Skills 131
PART III Teaching Tactical Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
chapter 6 Offensive Tactical Skills 173
chapter 7 Defensive Tactical Skills 225
chapter 8 Special Teams Tactical Skills 267
PART IV Planning for Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .301
chapter 9 Season Plans 303
chapter 10 Practice Plans 317
PART V Game Coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .335
chapter 11 Preparing for Games 337
chapter 12 During and After the Game 349
appendix a Passing Routes 355
appendix b Gap Plays 357
appendix c Running to Daylight Plays 361
index 363
about ASEP 367
iii
preface
If you are a seasoned football coach, surely you have experienced the frustration of
watching your players perform well in practice, only to find them underperforming
in games. In your playing days, you likely saw the same events unfold. Teammates,
or perhaps even you, could find the open receiver and throw accurately to him
nearly every time in seven-on-seven drills or shed blockers and make crunching
tackles in scrimmages but could not transfer that kind of performance to games.
Although this book will not provide you with a magical quick fix to your team’s
problems, it will help you prepare your players for game day. Whether you are a
veteran coach or are new to coaching, Coaching Football Technical and Tactical
Skills will help you take your game to the next level by providing you with the
tools you need to teach your team the game of football.
Every football coach knows the importance of technical skills. The ability of a
player to make an effective block, catch a pass off the turf, hurry the quarterback
into making a poor pass or sprint downfield to cover a punt can significantly
affect the outcome of a game. The book discusses the basic and intermediate
technical skills necessary for your team’s success, including offensive, defensive
and special teams skills. You will learn how to detect and correct errors in your
athletes’ performance of those skills and then help them transfer the knowledge
and ability that they gain in practice to execution in games.
Besides covering technical skills, the book focuses on tactical skills, including
offensive skills like the option pitch read, crossing route adjustments and picking
up the blitz; defensive skills such as defending the option, reads and reactions in
zone pass coverage and defending the play-action pass; and special teams skills
like the onside kick, sky punt and wall return. The book discusses the tactical tri-
angle, an approach that teaches players to read a situation, acquire the knowledge
that they need to make a tactical decision and apply decision-making skills to the
problem. To advance this method, the book covers important cues that help ath-
letes respond appropriately when they see a play developing, including important
rules, game strategies and the strengths and weaknesses of opponents.
Although rigorous technical and tactical training prepares athletes for game
situations, you can improve their game performance by incorporating gamelike
situations into daily training. The book offers many traditional drills that can be
v
vi Preface
effective but also shows you how to shape, focus and enhance scrimmages and
minigames to help your players transfer their technical skills to tactical situations
that occur during games. For example, you can change a tedious pass-timing drill
into an exciting, competitive contest by keeping score of completions, pass break-
ups and first downs.
The book also covers planning at several levels—the season plan, practice plans
and game plans. A set of practice plans are offered based on the games approach
which lay out a description of eight practice sessions, covering elements such as
the length of the practice session, the objective of the practice, equipment needed,
warm-up, practice of previously taught skills, teaching and practicing new skills,
cool-down and evaluation.
Of course, playing the games is what your practices eventually lead to. The
book shows you how to prepare long before the first game, including issues such
as communicating with players, parents, officials and the media, scouting your
opponent and motivating your players. You will learn how to control your team’s
performance on game day by establishing routines and how to manage such ele-
ments as the sideline area, coin toss, signaling, substitutions, halftime adjustments,
time-outs and end-of-game decisions.
STAYING SAFE
Football is an exciting, thrilling, and physically challenging game. Yet, it can also be a dangerous game with
a constant threat of injury. Safety precautions must be taken and proper technique for skills must be taught,
emphasized, and re-emphasized in order to keep the players as safe as possible.
Even when safety procedures are carefully followed, participants in the sport of football must be aware
that the game has inherent dangers. Although it rarely happens, the risk does exist that a player could suffer
paralysis, brain injury, or even death while playing football. Players, parents, and coaches must discuss
these risks, and the reduction of risk, prior to every season. Proper equipment, correct teaching and training
methods, and common sense can minimize the risk. However, even with the best equipment and training, the
chance of an accidental catastrophic injury still exists and must be clearly understood by everyone involved
with the game.
Guidelines for coaches:
(cid:129) Understand and explain the intent and correct application of safety rules in football. Specifically, remind
all players prior to the season and frequently throughout the season that the helmet (including the
facemask) should never be driven into an opponent as the initial point of contact. In particular, head-
down contact (initiating contact with the top, or crown, of the helmet), also known as spearing, greatly
increases the risk of catastrophic injury.
(cid:129) Make graphically clear to players that paralysis, brain injury, or even death could result from violating
the safety rules. Constantly reinforce that the use of proper techniques for contact greatly reduces the
risk of catastrophic injury.
(cid:129) Clearly explain that even with proper equipment, training, and technique, the risk of accidental cata-
strophic injury still exists and cannot be completely eliminated.
PART I
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Being a good coach takes more than knowing the sport of football. You have to
go beyond that and fi nd a way to teach your athletes how to be better players.
To fi nd effective ways to improve your players’ performance, you must know how
to teach and evaluate them.
In chapter 1 we go over the fundamentals of teaching sport skills. We fi rst
provide you with a general overview of your sport and talk with you about the
importance of being an effective teacher. Next, we defi ne some important skills,
helping you gain a better understanding of technical and tactical skills, and the
traditional and games approaches to coaching.
We build on the knowledge of how to teach sport skills with the evaluation of
technical and tactical skills in chapter 2. We discuss the importance of evaluat-
ing athletes and review the core skills that you should assess and how you can
best do so. This chapter stresses the importance of preseason, in-season and
postseason evaluation and provides you with sample tools that you can use to
evaluate your players.
By learning how to teach and evaluate your players, you will be better prepared
to help them improve their performance.
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