Friday, December 5, 2008

8 Man Unbalanced Double Wing

Before we get into the playbook, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Coach Robert Olide and I've coach with the Downey Razorbacks since 2000 along with helping a couple of neighbor cities along the way. Every year except my first year I have coached 11 man tackle football and we have ran the Double Wing Offense either exclusively or 80% of the time. Through out my time I have coached under 3 great head coaches and learned from our OC's version of the Double Wing. The blocking concepts and series based plays are all inspired by his 11 man playbook and are modified by me to put together a playbook that will translate well to our 5, 6, & 7 year old 8 man full contact flag league. With the funky rules of no defensive line men can line up head up on the center or in the A gaps. Along with no running in the A gaps until center has cleared the middle and no 3 point stand for anyone but the center that is snapping the ball. It was a mission to get the core of the Double Wing and be able to come up with the correct blocking schemes. I was able to still keep the Power that the DW provides and the deception for a solid smash mouth ball control offense. I also added some varied formations that I learned from my studies of the wing-t and spread offenses.




For 8 man tackle coaches, I would only recommend you read my book as a starting point as the plays and blocking schemes should translate well, but the only tackle DW that I have coached is an 11 man DW. Again, this Unbalance 8 man DW was developed for the use of my 8 man full contact flag football 5,6 & 7 year old league and that is the only proof that it works that I have video on.

If you are an 8 man youth football tackle coach that would like to use my book. I would be honored to help you remotely to trouble shoot the playbook to make sure it works with your 8 man tackle team.

To get a copy of my book please email me with your name, league you coach at and level. I will email you the link to the download along with the password shortly after I read your email.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Introduction and mission of this blog.

Welcome to Youth Football Weekly.

The purpose of this blog is to share and learn different ideas and philosophies dealing with youth football. This will include all ages from 5 & 6 year old flag kids, to 8 - 14 year old youth tackle teams, along with the young 14 - 17 year old boys and 18 year old soon to be men that play High School football. Weekly we will announce the football coach that we will interview. During the week we will collect questions from all the blogs members and any interested coaches. Once all the questions are collected we will submit 6 - 15 questions to the coach and once answered we will post the interview.. If you would like to write an article and post it on this site please shoot me an email to rob.olide at gmail.com.

As the owner of the blog I will also document and share my playbooks along with my offensive, defensive, special teams, and practice philosophy. To give you a brief idea of who I am and my background. My name is Coach Robert Olide and I have coached youth sports from ages 4 years old to 16 years old. Even though I have coached baseball, basketball, and fast pitch. My 1st love and passion has always been football and is the sport that I have coached the most. A lot of my ideas and coaching methods where learned from various coaches, books, videos, and through 8+ years of coaching experience. I have had the fortune to learn from very solid and very experienced coaches. Regular season record of the football teams I coached are 66 - 6 - 1, three undefeated seasons, coached on two youth super bowl games and two AYF National Bowl games. I was just a piece of the puzzle and am very thankful to Coach Mustane who gave me the opportunity and trusted me with his defense in my 2nd year of coaching, Coach M. Baumann, Coach C. Baumann, and Offensive guru Coach A. Clark for granting me an opportunity to join their staff and passing on the knowledge from their experiences.

Thank You for visiting and supporting this blog. Please feel free to email any topics, programs, or coaches you would like to read about.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

10 TIPS ON HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH YOUNG 5,6 & 7 YEAR OLD FOOTBALL PLAYERS

1. Have a series based offense, we use an Unbalance 8 man Double Wing. (the formation is not important, the important thing is that each play has a purpose and builds or sets up another play and you can attack all areas of the field and that this offense is series based..

2. Best 8 start on Defense. We use a 4-2-2 Defense and a 6-1-1. The only place we rotate players at is our D tackles.

3. Best 8 play special teams, you would be surprise how important it is and this alone can win you or loose you games. For the most part we look for a young 5 year that can kick. We been fortunate to find decent 5 year old that kick well. Even though they kick about 5 yards shorter kicks than the older players. It is a great place to start getting a future young player that is above average involved in quality play.

4. Be strict, if kids do not listen or start messing around (PUSH UP POSITION IMMEDIATELY) Takes a few seconds to punch out 5 push ups or have them get set in push up position with their heads up while you transfer information to them.

5. Keep drills fast pace and short. If you feel that you are loosing their attention, we quickly line up into 5 lines and have a relay race. This only takes 2-3 minutes but gets kids back into learning mode. Immediately after the relay race get back into teaching offense/defense/special teams. I noticed that this tends to happen while repping offense..

6. After Stretches, Amp and Dynamic warm-up. Go immediately into offense. With the young teams teaching or polishing offense at the beginning of practice while their minds are fresh will insure you get them when their attention span is at the highest peak. It is nice to break up offense or any new learning by a water break.

7. After learning something new, it helps to do a highly active and instinctive drill. We like to line kids up in 2 lines facing each other and practice down blocking and man on blocking.

8. Keep practice consistent but give the kids some variety by learning and teaching more than one style of drill.

For example, if you need to practice your offense. You can do that vs. air at high rates. You do this by splitting kids in half into 2 offenses. You tell them that the team that gets in the huddle, breaks the huddle the loudest, lines up and doesn't move until the ball moves and they run the play the best gets a point. We give the team that gets into the huddle the fastest after the whistle blows 2 points. Look around and you will notice that many coaches at your level have a hard time getting kids in and out of the huddle. That is where a lot of practice time is lost.

Another example is to rep it vs. bags or plastic trash cans. Kids love hitting the trash cans and bags. and last but not least live vs a D. That is 3 examples that will let you rep your offense. Mix it up. You do not have to go live all the time to be effective. Fit and Freeze drills works great as well.

9. Make sure to have fun and be patient. I said "PATIENT" not soft. Demand their attention and make sure you have it. On that same note do not freak out if they do not understand something or you have to re-explain a drill a couple times.

10. Last but most important, be organize, have a practice plan every practice, also have one for pre-game and halftime.