The ABC’s Of Game Week For Defensive Backs, Coaches

During game week, coaches sometimes concentrate so much on the schemes of the opponents that the true fundamentals of playing defensive back are pushed to the back burner. Since your players will become what you emphasize, one must be very careful when planning game week practices.

To make sure that our secondary units cover all the bases during the hectic pace of game week, we utilize a checklist that we call the ABCs. These stand for:

A.  Agility Drills. These are task-specific drills that work on the feet and hip movements needed to perform all DB techniques.

B.  Ball Drills. Perform ball drills that continually increase reaction time. They must be task specific to the technique that your players use.

C. Contact. Focus on the fundamentals of tackling and working to defeat a stack, cut or crack-back block. Each practice emphasizes different drills to teach proper techniques.

Develop Checklists

At each practice, use a checklist so that by game day your DBs will be ready to play with confidence and execute their responsibilities at full speed.

Here’s an example of one of our game-week lists:

Coaches Game Week Check List: Defensive Backs
A. Agility Drills
-  Stance.
-  Back-pedal.
-  Back-pedal and break at 45-degree angle.
-  Zone turn technique.
-  Zone turn and break.
-  Man turn.
-  Stem (horizontal and vertical leverage).
-  Post corner technique.

B. Ball-Reaction Drills (Always breaking on QB’s Arm)
-  Square in.
-  Post corner
-  Out route and up.
-  Deep ball.
-  Man in the middle (zone principles).
-  Shoot the hip (playing hook, curls).

C. Contact Drills
-  Tackling (sideline, open field, goal line). 
-  Cones with tackling dummy (tackling low at knees).
-  Block reactions (stack, cut, crack).
-  Strip drills (rip, club moves).

Other Checklist Items
Here are some other items that are critical to go over with your DBs before each game.
-  Schemes (walk through before practice).
-  Alignment adjustments (for formations, motions and shifts).
-  Plus and minus splits.
-  Vertical and horizontal field position.
-  Man-to-man (emphasize plus and minus splits).
-  Off-man (3-step, 5-step cutoffs).
-  Bump and run horizontal release. 
-  Vertical techniques (once a receiver gets upfield).
-  Cover 2.
-  Hard coverage (be physical).
-  Soft coverage (read your way out).

Repetition Is Key
The entire concept of emphasizing the fundamentals of DB play during game week is to instill in your players the idea that every time they do something again and again — it should be done better than the last time.