Use this video as a guide on how to develop and run plays, use different formations, strategize progressions, develop rotations, select player positions, decide how many plays to use and so much more.

I walk you through how I develop plays and how to use the 100+ plays I have created to get your team up and running and scoring more touchdowns.

Wristbands:

Youth (5-pack): https://amzn.to/2voTWut

Youth (10-pack): https://amzn.to/2SAshyx

Adult: (6-pack) https://amzn.to/2OMUAbY

QB tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcvXFvswUac&t=13s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pPOsQZ_LBQ&t=26s

Transcript:

Hi everyone, this is Coach D, and today I have a treat for you. You've been asking about plays and offense and this and that. Well, today I'm going to open it up. I'm going to show you what's on the wrist. All right, I'm going to open up my playbook and show you some of my favorite plays, some of the formations, where I space them out, and who I put in different positions.

I can get up to 24 plays on my playbook, so when I'm out on the field, all I have to do is say seven, seven. All the players look at their wristband; they know exactly what to do, they know which color they are, and we're gonna dive into the details right now. Let me pull out one of these sheets. So, I like to laminate mine, okay? I like to laminate them like this. But let's dive in, okay? Let me make sure this is clean and clear for you. There we go. All right, so I've got a number up here: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, all right? And each one has a name. I'm not too concerned about the name of the play; what I am looking at is that each play—let's talk about number one—has, let's say, a formation, right? So, this is split-back formation. I've got a running back and a running back. I've got a B, right? So, I call it A, B, C. Oranges center, and then I've got my quarterback. C is usually going to be my wide receiver. A and B are usually going to be my running backs, and you'll see different formations and how I do it.

What does the star mean? The star means this is the person who's going to get the ball. Now, as you can see, this is a running play—run. So that means this person, A, in red, is going to get the ball. All right, now if you can see this—and I'll make it a little bit cleaner—but this says BF. What do you think that means? That's right, it means fake. So, what's going to happen on this is I have B fake A. So, I'm going to hand the ball to, who? I'm going to fake it to B coming this way, and then I'm going to hand it to A going to the left.

If I am setting that up, let's go ahead and set that up, and this guy right here—see what—what are they gonna do? They're gonna do an out pattern. I want every time there's a very clear note for anybody not getting the ball: you are just as important as the person getting the ball. They look at this, and they're like, "Oh, I'm not getting the ball." No, you are just as important because what you're doing is you're distracting the defense from this person, right? So, if this guy does a nice—or this gal does a nice—clean out, boom. They may not even pay attention here. If this B does an awesome fake, boom, they'll think that they have the ball, and they'll follow them. If the center does a nice quick slant, they'll think they might get the ball. That is their job, to do their job right, to make sure they're running their route clean, whether they get the ball or not. So, I have that whole conversation with them.

Now, you can see here a little bit, there's a black line that kind of shows if the quarterback is going to be moving out, right? If the quarterback is going to be moving out, and you see dotted lines, that means it's a pass, right? That means they're rolling out. That's the black line connected to the quarterback. Roll out, and then, boom, dotted line to that receiver. Cool.

All right, so let me just show you number one here. How do I lay it out? So, I have my center here, quarterback here. Now, here's the deal: a lot of times, you'll have your running backs—these six-year-olds, seven-year-olds—they'll be right next to the quarterback. You can't have them right next to the quarterback. I need them about five yards away, so I need them way back here. Why do I want that? Because as I get the ball going this way, I want to be at full speed by the time I get that ball so that I can run and hit the sideline.

So, right away, I want ready to go. They go, I go. Another thing, very important principle, is this one. That needs to go quick. That means B, this person right here, needs to move immediately. If they're doing a fake, this person needs to go immediately, and then this person goes right after them so that it's right away. Let me show you. Okay, quarterback's there, ready to go right away. You don't go halfway, you don't wait, you don't turn your body here. You are ready to go this way, right? Either this way or this way, I don't care. Down like this, ready, go, get the fake.

And when you're faking, running back—come on—you've got to do the full-on, like, "Okay, if I'm going this way, the ball is coming in. I've got to act like I've got the ball, so I keep running for the sideline, right? I go, I move." All right, we don't do this like, "Oh, I'm not getting the ball, so I'll just kind of hang out." No, the only, the most important job for this person right here, the any faker, is to mislead, to throw the entire defense off so that this person can get a lane. Boom, so it goes right away, ready, go, right away. Who fakes here? Right away, right behind him.

Now, what does the quarterback do? Coaches, on something like this, the quarterback is not gonna try to do anything sneaky, tricky, anything. All they're gonna do is turn around. Let me show you. Ready, go, that's it. All I'm doing—let me show you this way—ready, go, I'm turning around. Then I have a faker coming this way, I pull it out, and then I've got, boom, I'm handing it right to them. So, all they're doing is this, right? Let me get a ball for you. Ready, go, that's it, they take it. I'm faking, I pull it back, I still put it in their bread basket so it feels like I'm getting it. They have to hold on to that ball. I don't care if they're—I've been running this play for—man, since they were like six, five, they could handle it. So, if you run it all the way up to 14, they could handle this play. But the quarterback sometimes wants to go here, wants to move here. Keep it very simple. Ready, go, that's it.

Now, look at this. Can you tell who I'm handing it off to? Nope. Who knows who has the ball, right? That's another reason you want to make sure that quarterback just turns around, right? Boom, right away. Good. That is one of my favorite plays. You could do that all day long. You can even do that in shotgun, and I've got another one. Yep, I've got it right here. Number 18, number 17 and 18. Right here, I do it from shotgun, and when I do it from shotgun, same principle. I've got my hands out like this, everybody puts their hands out, right? Running back, running back puts our hands out on the quarterback, ready, go, and they're just coming in front. Same thing though, right away, right away. It has to be fast, and coaches, I do not want you to let that go in practice. That just needs to happen over and over until it's clean, until it's clean.

All right, principle number two is progressions. Progressions, what that means is I want you to run one play after another in this progression. So, for example, look at this tight coverage, then or type formation. I call this type formation. I've got four, I've got five, six, seven, eight, all same formation. You see that? They're all the same formation. What I wanna do is I wanna run four, five, six, seven, eight, right? Or four, five, six, seven, because what's going to happen is if I run four, this is—remember—this is just going to be a handoff to B, and because the quarterback's just a little bit further away, this running back is going to run between the center and the quarterback. So, they're going to run right through here. It is so sneaky, nobody even knows that they have the ball, and they're gone. Okay, so then my next play would be this one, right? Next play is this one. I run the same exact play, but this time I fake it. So, if that's a little blurry, this time I fake it to my green, to B, and then, boom, I throw it to C doing a nice quick slant. So, C is doing a quick slant here, but I hand it off here. Same thing, but this time I throw it. You see how that works? So, I have to do four and five right next to it because the defense doesn't know what's happening.

So, when you see something like that, where it's the same formation, the next play is literally the other side. Now, A gets the ball, and then the same thing happens here, but I now throw the quick out. You see that? That's how it's done.

Now, let me show you a couple of other plays that I really like, and then you can leave in the comments, "Hey, put my name, put my email, and I will send it to you right away." And you'll even have the app that I use so that you can—it can come as a PDF, or you can print them out like this. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. I've seen it run both ways. This is another one of my favorites. I do 9, 10, 11, 9. Look at that one. Here's how it works. I am going to hand it off to B, and B is going to fake hand it off to A. See this? A fake. So, B gets it, and then they do a fake to A, and they're gone down the sideline. So many touchdowns on that one, it's ridiculous. Boom.

Now, the second thing, here it is. This one is even better. I give it to B first. I'm going to give it to B as the quarterback. I turn around, give it to B, and then B gives it to A2. So, you see B1, they get the ball first, and then it's handed to A2 going the other way. If you can get that clean, if you can get that clean, all they're doing—they have to decide which side they're handing off. Okay, so the first time, B is gonna fake it and run. See ya. The second time, they're actually gonna hand it off as B goes this way, A goes around. Oh, that one, all day long will do it. Another one I like is number 11. These, these cross patterns like this, man, this slant, and both of them doing the slant. Just make sure you don't do any bumping, otherwise, you'll get a penalty. But boy, I tell you, if you have someone with an arm, this is the way to go. You do a B fake, B fake this way, right? They think they're handing it off, and then you've got C, or again, if this person is covered, any other person is available.

That's the other thing I want to talk to you about. Number three, quarterback—you—you have to choose someone and give them more opportunities to be a leader. They need to be able to handle the play and know exactly what's going to happen, almost to a point where someone says, "Hey man, what am I supposed to do?" "Hey, you gotta be a little bit further out. I need you to be a little bit further out." "No, no, you're supposed to be behind me. Okay, you're going to do an out pattern right now." Seven-year-olds can do this. If you find that person or a couple of people—because we're gonna rotate them—and you get them comfortable with these types of plays, they can absolutely handle when, "Oh, somebody's covered." They can go to somebody else.

So, for example, let's say on number 14, number 14 is a great one. If you keep getting blitzed, somebody keeps blitzing, they keep blitzing you. Well, now you're just gonna do these nice little hook patterns. Well, if C is not available, they're covered, I can go to my center, I can go to B, I can go to A, I can go to any of these, but I need my quarterback to not freak out and just throw an interception or lob it up. I need them to have a clear view of the field. Well, "Oh, nope, boom, I'm going to go here." So, be a little bit more decisive. You can run some drills. I'll put in the description a couple of quarterback videos that you can try where it's one, two, three decision right now.

There are tons of others that I really, really like, and I will send you probably 50. I might even have a hundred. I don't even know how many I have. Another quick principle: how many plays do I choose? Well, look, if you're working with like pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, I'd go with eight plays. Get comfortable with maybe two or three formations, and just get them comfortable finding a position, right? Finding out, "Hey, where do I line up? Where do I go on the field if I am A?" There will be some people who have no idea, and you'll literally have to walk them over to their position. That is okay. So, I would say for that young group, just do about eight plays. But anything over that, starting in second grade, I have been using this with 24 plays, and they can absolutely do it.

All you say is, "You're C, okay, you're C, you're A, you're B, you're the quarterback, you're the center. Let's do four, five, six, seven," and you can look at it, right? "Four, five, six, seven, huddle, break." They come out here, boom, they're ready. Then what's great is that after the play, they already know what's coming next, so they just look at their, "Okay, six, okay, I know where to go. I know where to get in my position. I can coach now off the field."

Now, it'll take a little bit of time, but you will get there. All right, and the last thing I want to show you: look, this is how I kind of separate the team, right? I like to put them into A and B, right? So, I will probably put them, and I'm going to rotate so that everybody gets a chance. But what I like to do is I like to put them, "Okay, what can Vinnie do? Well, he could be either a quarterback or a wide receiver. He's done some other things," and I might just start thinking about where I would put them, right? And so I might have an A group and then a B group. Okay, down here, I might have a wide receiver and running back. They're not really comfortable with being quarterback. They're not really solid on it. They don't feel comfortable with it. I've tried it a few times, whatever.

So, then what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, for the first half, A is on offense, B is on defense, and then I just switch it at halftime." It's really as simple as that. And I try to equal it out, right, as far as skill level, what not. In our league, they usually number people, right, depending on how much experience and all the other things that go into it. So, I want to make sure that it's even so that everybody feels like they're getting their fair share, right? And then I want to try to switch them up. But what I like to do, very clear here, I need to make sure if you're the quarterback, you're the quarterback for the entire series. So, if it's four plays to get the first down, they're the quarterback. If we still keep on going, and then we got three more plays, boom, that quarterback stays the quarterback. I don't like to switch it up too much in the huddle because then they're like, "Wait, wait, what was I? Who was I? What am I supposed to do?" So, for the entire series, let's go ahead and keep them where they are.

Now, if there's an interception or whatever, that's, "Hey, the next series, I'm switching it up a little bit. Now you're gonna be C." Because most kids are gonna say, "Oh, I want the ball. I want to be running back. Oh, I want to be C. I want to..." Right? So, you stop that right away. You tell them at the very beginning, "I will tell you who you will be, and I will decide who is getting the ball." That's it.

Once they get to be about 10 years old, then what I start doing is I let them run the offense by themselves to see who a leader might be in the group. So, I might say, "All right, what do you think? You run it. Which one do you want to call?" "I want to do..." "Okay guys, let's do one, two, three." "Okay, one, two, three sounds good. Break." They go, and they run the offense. That is awesome.

And finally, who do I put in each position? Now, we have to be fair. This is all about having fun, all right? You have to have fun and give people a chance. But I'll tell you, there are people who are really good at certain things. For example, there are people who are incredible at faking. Well, I will put them in as the faker. There are awesome kids who can juke all day long and run super fast, but they can't catch. I'm gonna put them as the running back. Man, you got that quarterback who has the arm, give him a chance. All right, you're still gonna let people, you know, play and do this, but give them a chance to be what they're great at. I'm all about the strengths movement and making sure you're putting people in a position where they can be the best.

That is the way to do it, just like we did on the defense. So, I hope this helps. I know it does. Boy, it has helped me so much.