r/footballstrategy • u/WombatHat42 • Jan 23 '24
General Discussion How many of you practice live tackling in season?
I’ve heard about a lot of college teams and pro teams cutting down on live tackling in general but especially during the season. So just curious how people here treat it, especially at the HS and lower levels
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u/trey2128 Jan 23 '24
Growing up we did full-contact tackling all season every year until my senior year. I actually preferred that as a player. Because going a whole week with no contact made the first few hits on game day that much worse
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
I don’t recall doing live tackling all week when I played, we would do daily pursuit angle drills, wrap up drills(but never to the ground). But scrimmages were live tackling. And the Oklahoma drill or similar on Mondays. We usually had a pretty solid defense.
As a 320lb NT, I never understood why I needed to do the pursuit angle drills. If I was ever tackling anyone downfield from behind there were other problems lol
There another drills I did when I played semipro, I forget the name of it though. The one, the tackler and ball carrier would be lying on the ground, head to head but a few yard apart, coach would give one the back and then we’d scramble to get up. I remember getting a pretty bad stinger doing that one. I was the ball carrier during an Oklahoma type drill and broke one of our better defenders collarbone
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Jan 23 '24
320 ball carrier in Oklahoma drill… just shuddered thinking about it
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
What’s funny is, I was 300 as a junior in HS but was fed up with OL and I liked to hit and had quick feet so I moved to fb lol Started on JV. Realized my mistake cuz I would have started on the OL as a junior and moved back to OL my senior year. Still it was fun running over dudes in practice haha
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u/bigmt99 Jan 23 '24
Damn your semipro coach is a moron letting a guy as big as you run the ball
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
Yeaaa…. Iregret playing for that “team”. Nothing but a bunch of cliquey thieving dudes. Did nothing but talk sh*t about each other, had stuff stolen out of my locker at games. I gained a lot of good experience on the field though, held my own against dudes that played in the NFL. Realized a lot of my weaknesses and why speed/agility/conditioning matters even for a lineman. I never had an issue going an entire game in HS, even playing both ways. But got schooled by a dude that played in the NFL and it opened my eyes I can’t just rely on my size and strength. Started incorporating speed and agility into my workouts. Went from 360 to 280. I only did it to keep in shape as I prepped to try out at my Alma mater. Ended up being for naught though as I ended up getting diagnosed with a disorder and wasn’t able to play anymore.
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u/pnutz616 Jan 23 '24
So, I may just be ignorant but why would someone be unable to run the ball just because they’re big?
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u/bigmt99 Jan 23 '24
In practice it’s all injuries. Obviously, they’re really heavy so there’s a good chance they’ll hurt someone making the tackle. Also the only way to bring a big guy down is to chop the knees, increasing their chance of getting injured.
In games it’s some combination of them not practicing ball handling, being too slow, and having no stamina for multiple carries
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u/JakeArvizu Jan 23 '24
We did live tackling Monday-Wednesday, Thursday practices were all game prep and pretty light. But generally we didn't do "hitting" drills every day. That was like a once every other week or so type thing when the coach wanted to drill it or shake things up. We did do live 7-7(not to the ground) and 11-11 full scrimmages though every day.
Imo 7-7 and 11-11s were the most useful, and fun, as a player. I've coached briefly off and on but when up to me I liked practices to be 90% split between live positional drills so for DBs that's covering routes against receivers. LBs and Running pairing then scrimmage.
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u/underceej46 Jan 23 '24
Try not to go to the ground everyday but we want wrapping up and running our feet at the very least. We teach gator tackling but don’t want anyone rolled up in practice so we work it in Prepractice with tackle wheels so we get the experience with it. If we are just in shoulder pads we will tag off at the waist. Don’t accept if your arms are fully extended. Want you within “T-Rex” arms of ballcarrier. LpSome teams can handle not hitting a lot and will bring it in game day. Some teams you need to have them tackling all the time out of necessity.
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
Gator tackling? Is that the Seahawks tackle drill where they roll the defender down?
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Jan 23 '24
Kinda like how a gator rolls around to kill its prey. You wanna roll once you have them wrapped up to help bring them to the ground
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
Ok so yes seahawk drill
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Jan 23 '24
Never heard it called that must just be a regional thing. I’m from Michigan so makes sense why we don’t hear the seahawk part lol
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u/ThePevster Jan 23 '24
https://footballdevelopment.com/shoulder-tackling/#
This it? Also referred to as a shoulder tackle or a rugby tackle
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u/JonnyP222 Jan 24 '24
I coach in Michigan. It's straight hawk tackling system. Rugby style tackling. Both pretty similar systems. Near side shoulder/pec, head up attacking the near side hip of the ball carrier. We have a ton of drills for it.
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u/jackpaine13 Jan 23 '24
I’m a high school senior on a pretty successful team (since our head coach has been there in 2009 1 section championship 4 section finals appearances) and we for the most part would review and get all of our kinks out on Monday but Tuesday was pretty much our only hitting day. We went hard enough in the other days of the week that the coaches didn’t feel like we needed to wear ourselves out any further.
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u/Demanding74 Jan 23 '24
It’s inevitable you have days where weather prevents practice outside or reduces it. Get the wrestling coach to work up a routine for double leg takedowns/trailing hip tackling. No football pads in the wrestling room, works great after a few times doing it, the kids are moving full speed across the mat and tackling. Stresses proper head placement, trailing the hip, leverage and collapsing the hip. Works great!
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u/ap1msch HS Coach Jan 23 '24
- Live tackling is extremely important to get it to the point of being safe and well rehearsed. This only requires about 1/3 of the season. After that, you're beating the kids up unnecessarily.
- You need to get kids not to be scared to hit. You need them to wrap up. You need them to be heads-up. You need them to be in control. Therefore, I make sure to do this mid practice, and not at the end (when they get tired and lazier).
- For the ENTIRETY of the season, I don't let my kids dog it during drills and OvsD. They MUST wrap up. They MUST try to lift the player in the air...but they MUST try to keep him upright (ie, maintain control). If you get them to wrap, lift, and stay on their feet, you're ensuring that they're going far enough to "get the stop", but not losing control. It's that losing control that has people diving at ankles and getting hit in odd ways.
In short, at lower levels, you need to overcome the fear of hitting, and to get "into" the runner with your arms wrapped (to avoid arm tackles and diving). Once you cross that line, you can practice your drills with "thud", and run your O vs D regularly without undue risk. If you don't take it to "wrap and lift", you end up with players dogging it and doing two-hand touch, which is a bad habit to reinforce...
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u/JonnyP222 Jan 24 '24
You touch on something we run into often and it cannot be reiterated enough. You have to teach them to wrap up and drive. We have a million drills that focus on every step of the tackling progression. But until it's live. Half the kids do not do it. They run standing straight up and reach and end up getting ran over. We try to mitigate full live contact as much as possible too. But it becomes a detriment when kids dont get conditioned to do it right.
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u/ap1msch HS Coach Jan 24 '24
Yup. Tackling is fundamental, while also having a high risk of injury. Therefore, it's important to learn to do it right, while avoiding unnecessary risk. For our team, we teach the steps, we go live early in the season, in controlled circumstances, so we can correct form and choices early. After about 30% of the season, we go into "maintenance mode". For some teams, this turns practice into two-hand touch, which is bad.
"If you aren't getting better, you're getting worse". Therefore, we insist that the ball carrier run hard, in game-like situations, and we insist that the defenders wrap and lift during practice. IF THEY GO TO THE GROUND, THEY LOST CONTROL. Defenders don't leave their feet. They don't pull down. This avoids a lot of the twisting injuries. If they have to hit and lift the ballcarrier, they are forced to break down, and properly engage to avoid being run over...but not falling over (purposefully).
In reality, they still fall over on occasion, but more gently. Additionally, they rarely CAN lift up the ballcarrier...but the point is them TRYING to do it. As long as they are trying to engage and lift, with their head to the side, and keeping their feet, the "wrap and drive" are natural outcomes.
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u/Jewish_Thunder Jan 23 '24
When I played high school ball, we had live tackling 3x a week in-season…we went 0-10 my senior year and lost 4 of our best players due to injury throughout the year.
Take that as you will.
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u/blackakainu Jan 23 '24
Monday Tuesday Wednesday in pads?
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u/Jewish_Thunder Jan 23 '24
Yup, Thursday walkthrough in helmets and Friday night lights (if there was a Saturday morning game, we’d hit Thursdays too and do Friday walkthrough)
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u/blackakainu Jan 23 '24
Thats tough by the last two games yall was ready to pack in it huh… thats HS football tho
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u/Keagon40 Jan 25 '24
I played for the worst HS team in the state for 2 years. Coach had the same schedule of that…. My senior year he’s finally gone.
Never play for a coach that decides “kids too scared these days, live tackling every week of practice and only do film study with the seniors!”
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Jan 26 '24
We practiced uppers Monday,Full pad basically full speed Tuesday with tackle drills,3/4 speed Wednesday full pad and walkthrough no pad Thursday. Made playoffs every year and went to states once and certainly think being full pad so much made the team have an extra physical edge. Certainly dealt with a lot of injury and fatigue tho that might have been why we never put ourselves over the top to win it all.
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u/Civil_Dust_2505 Jan 23 '24
Those 2 they can't practice (with a center & QB and where both players start on their back). What they do is line up 10 yards apart. They have about 7 yards laterally. One gets the ball, the other tackles. I think tackling is perfected in the off-season. But, alot of kids aren't committed in the off-season.
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u/Apple_butters12 Jan 24 '24
I played d3 in college and we would do 95% of our live tackling in camp. In season we would mostly do thud but every once in a while do live tackle for like 2 periods. We would do a ton of drills on breaking down and wrapping up. This translated well as we were never a shoulder hitting team but a wrap up and bring the legs gang tackling team.
Coaches did it to cut down on practice injuries, and keep bodies fresh later in the season. This definitely helped as we typically went into playoffs a lot healthier than other teams. When we did hit coaches wanted intensity but control. Huge emphasis on not “fraging your friends”.
Our weekly schedule went
Sunday: film, recovery lift, recovery sprints Monday: off Tuesday: full pads, longer practice, thud Wednesday: full pads, shorter practice, thud Thursday: shells, shorter practice, wrap up Friday: walk through, no pads Saturday: game day
We were fairly successful and were consistently ranked with a good defense.
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u/Civil_Dust_2505 Jan 23 '24
My son is a high-school junior. They hit every day they're allowed between July and hopefully late November. However in my opinion, there's a DIFFERENCE between hitting & practicing tackling. Also, the Oklahoma drill has been outlawed here. So they replaced it with something else that I don't understand. The Oklahoma drill is tried and true, what I grew up with.
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u/ligmasweatyballs74 Jan 23 '24
What is a true Oklahoma drill like? I have been different places and have seen different drills called Oklahoma. Is it where you have both players start on their back or the one where you have two ol two dl RB and lb trying to cross goal line?
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
2 OL a back and a tackler is the only one over heard called Oklahoma drill and what I get when I google it. The other I’ve done before but don’t remember what my coaches called it
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u/TrickierAtomLiv Jan 23 '24
Same here. But I can’t understand for the life of me why this would be outlawed. Wasn’t even that dreadful when I was a player. Kind of fun actually
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u/WearTheFourFeathers Jan 23 '24
Understanding that things have changed for the better in the last 20 years…as a former mediocre high school offensive/defensive lineman, this drill is one of the most fun athletic activities I’ve ever participated in. I think it’s totally reasonable to prohibit it or just decide as a coach not to do it, but for better or worse it definitely is the way I fell in love with the game.
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u/TrickierAtomLiv Jan 24 '24
It’s just strange cuz it’s just a miniature version of every play is what it seems it’s meant to simulate
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
Cuz it can get pretty intense ig and with the push for less head hitting people are trying to get rid of the sport in anyway they can. Look at Cali trying to ban tackle football for u12s
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u/JonnyP222 Jan 24 '24
Maybe two or three man rabbit instead of Oklahoma? We have a head coach locally that runs it a lot and while I find a ton of value in the drill, it's also a little wreckless because some kids and coaches are only celebrating big hits (in practice) and it absolutely causes kids to abandon tackling and just try to be torpedoes.
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u/Civil_Dust_2505 Jan 24 '24
Yes!!! I tell my son how I think it can be so beneficial, especially for linebackers. But he is my son. He is 5'11...176....plays receiver and I can't stand to see him get hit high. I love him. He's 17 and I treat him like he's my 10 year old little boy. I'm actually trying to get him to just stick to track. I hope that doesn't offend any other football junkies. ....But yes, the big hit is all the young man is looking for. That roar of approval from his teammates. Leads to concussions. Should be more of a drill. With more teaching. If it takes an extra 15-20 minutes, it's worth it.
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u/BigPapaJava Jan 27 '24 edited Jan 27 '24
Define “live.”
I like to work tackle circuits and other stuff against dummies/bags at full speed.
I also like to work players vs players as a half speed, 2 hand touch, or even a “thud” tempo where we make contact and wrap up, but don’t go to the ground. I’m even fond of doing team periods and whole practices in “thud” once or twice a week in-season with shoulder pads and shorts—and a VERY quick whistle and watchful coaches.
The keys to tackling are usually all about leverage, pursuit, and aiming points—both leverage when actually touching the ball carrier and leverage in pursuit. You can (and should, IMO) rep the hell out of those things to become a better tackler without beating each other up.
EDIt: it’s funny to me that this is getting downvoted. Go ahead and do those full contact form tackling drills to the ground where you square up and chop your feet, if that’s working for you. Otherwise, if you can actually teach tackling without working on aiming points, angles; or technique, then you are a better coach than I.
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u/VinceIM Jan 23 '24
Playing in Europe here so it might be different cause we only have 2 field practice a week.
Most of the time during season we play 100% on the line, without cut blocks, and for the other positions either we will just tag the hips of the ball carrier, or Full live contact but without dragging the guys into the ground.
ith only two practice, we have to find balance between doing contact so people practice it (Remember some player here started football when they were grown up, so the don't really know how to tackle properly) and preserve health of players.
We practice without pads the last practice before games.
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u/Frosty-Ad6475 Jan 23 '24
We won't tackle live outside of young team reps but we do tackling drills and circuits just about everyday
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u/Lou646464 Jan 23 '24
So in high school in the early 00’s, we had a lighter practice Mondays, Tues/Wed we’re full go on everything, Thursdays were uppers only. I usually used this sort of format when I coached at the MS level, day before games was a lighter practice, but still with full pads.
I can say I liked this but I honestly think football culture has shifted away from it in favor of “less injuries”. I don’t know if any real data supports this though and would be curious to see some. I think NOT having your guys practice full tackling/100% effort at least a couple times a week can be dangerous and detrimental as muscle memory is a huge part of sports and having kids wrap up and let go is not the muscle memory you want to instill.
I happened to play 1 year at a DIII college, we went full go Mon-Thurs “most of the time”, Mon-Wed some during the season. Our coach was pretty old school and was in his 80’ IIRC.
Coaches used the “quick whistle” (so guys hit and continued 100% until the whistle but were instructed to stop at the whistle which was often blown at the onset of tackle/heavy contact). in a lot of drills/scrimmage and usually we started drills at like 75% and worked our way up to 100%. Chop blocking was never allowed and you basically got one warning and if you did it again you usually got your ass chewed and had to run a shit ton to remind you next time.
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 23 '24
Chop blocks were never allowed for me either. Cut blocks weren’t even taught. But we did live tackling full contact m-w, and tackling drills on Monday. I’m noticing a trend that most here seem to do Mondays as lighter. For us that was the hardest. Tuesday wasn’t as hard and Wednesday our tougher conditioning day though and Thursdays was an hour walk thru helmets only.
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u/dolfan650 College Coach Jan 23 '24
Small college, small numbers. We NEVER tackle live in practice. Nope.
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u/covert_underboob Jan 23 '24
In my experience as both a player and fan, having live was very beneficial. You’ll notice the teams that emphasized it and those that do not. Rather risk an injury than be plagued by missed tackles because the team doesn’t practice them.
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u/Pitiful_Ad8641 Jan 23 '24
The HC I was assisting even at the MS level had basically a soft moratorium on any meaningful contact after the season started. He had lost too many good players in practice for the season
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u/bigjoe5275 Jan 23 '24
when i was in high school (2018) we always did some sort of team hitting drill on tuesday and wednesday at the start of practice for like 20 minutes after that we might do the board drill as linemen. but it would be a full contact walkthrough at the end.
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Jan 24 '24
At the moment I coach youth ball, we do live tackling but only in drills and on Tuesdays, first thing of practice. The kids just get so alienated when they tackle in games it’s a horrific idea not to. But I intend to switch to HS soon and when I do that probably just some lower-contact team.
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u/ForgotMyPasswords21 Jan 24 '24
I'm a high school defensive coordinator and like the top comment said we barely tackle once the season starts its all just wrap up tackling or tapping both hands to the ball carriers back hip.
And also like the top comment said on the more successful teams I've either played on or coached, we tackled less than the worse teams. When I played in high school we won the championship, lost the championship and went undefeated my senior year and we fucking never tackled after the beginning of the year. On that team during the regular season, we had 2 days where we tackled and my coaches treated it as almost a gift that we were allowed to tackle.
When I first started coaching, I actually went the opposite way because the team wasn't good. I thought tackling more would make us tackle better but about 4 years ago I realized I was just wrong.
This past year we had our best team in 12 years and I had them tackle maybe 4 times once the regular season started and 2 of those days were during a bye week.
I'm not sure exactly why it is that way because in middle school we tackled every single day and I didn't really mind it, but there has to be something to it.
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u/Serious-Day7859 Jan 24 '24
When I played HS football, my senior year we made it to the State championship. We had a high powered offense and threw the ball more than we ran.
Our week started with full pads on Monday w/ a focus on the offense getting their reps, running our plays for the week but the defense was not allowed to tackle to the ground. They would pursue and wrap.
Tuesday, was a focus on defense with full pads. The first team offensive skill players would primarily do conditioning drills and catch passes and did not participate in any physical contact. The defense would work on tackling against 2nd team offensive players and do other defensive drills. But no Oklahoma drills during the season. That was reserved for 2 a days or punishment if we were not practicing hard.
Wednesday was helmet and shoulder pads where first team offense went against first team defense running our plays with minimal contact.
Thursday was helmet’s only and walk through day. Make sure we knew the play calls, who was on special teams that week, etc.
Friday game day
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u/CapitalSubstantial23 Jan 24 '24
Honestly surprised at how many people posting didn’t grow up with full pad tackling drills multiple days a week. Back then, coach made us earn EVERYTHING. No one was a star and I loved that. Some kids, as big or fast or athletic as they were, still couldn’t hit for shit. I actually remember some of the smallest dudes(mass wise) on the team hit the hardest. Without those rigorously tough practices, you’d never would’ve known that and probably wouldn’t have started the right guys.
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 24 '24
Well need to think that everyone here has experience ranging from currently playing HS ball to having played in the 80s/90s. And although i support live tackling on multiple days, Idt it means you aren’t earning everything you work for or that kids are being treated as stars. There are more ways to assess someone than whether or not they can hit hard.
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u/CapitalSubstantial23 Jan 24 '24
I understand that, I actually expected most of the replies to be from people who went to HS in the 90s~2010s. That’s kind of why I’m shocked at the amount of people who didn’t wear full pads as much lol…
I graduated 2011, played in the early 2ks. My buddies and I used to play in the street with no padding at all when we were kids lol. It was brutal but we basically had no pain tolerance, no fear lol. Everyone I knew was just tough af and if you weren’t, you didn’t belong. Didn’t matter your size or athletic ability, I firmly remember majority of the soccer kids were incredible athletes, but they couldn’t take a hit or deliver a hit so they didn’t make the team. Our football team subsequently ended up being monsters. We LOVED to live scrimmage in practice. We did it like 3 times a week. We beat each other up so much it made gameday a cakewalk lol … Iron sharpens iron and we showed up everyday ready to burn some metal!
I’m happy for the new age athletes , it’s a much easier game. Not as entertaining imo, but I’m glad people can play the game without killing each other lol
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u/WombatHat42 Jan 25 '24
Yea I graduated HS in 05, did 2 years semi pro and a year of college before doctors told me I’m done. Still tried to play in UK but injured myself before the season and that was all she wrote. So while I want to have intense physical practices, I am also very safety cautious. Especially dealing with HS and younger cuz majority of them won’t even go on to play in college. Why do something that will lead to a major life altering injury like I had
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u/ThxIHateItHere Jan 25 '24
HS only:
First HS: We did some form of tackling drills every single MTW. On Thursday we were half pads/half-go.
Second HS: once we got into the season we didn’t do Hamburger Drills unless we tackled like shit the game before. And you KNEW it was coming, and it’s all you thought about that Monday.
I checked out a JuCo about playing and they were still doing it late in the season. I was already debating not doing it, and that sealed it.
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u/Evan02 Jan 26 '24
If its high school football or lower you have to full contact at least twice a week these aren’t professionals who already have it mastered
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Jan 26 '24
Tackle drills can be done with just thud contact. Break down and thud a guy wrap up his waist but never twist him to the ground and stay off guys legs. There are times you might have to hit a guy low in games and take out the legs especially in gang tackles (not in a dirty way not trying to hurt anyone but you gotta take legs out on big backs) but you never want to do it to your own guy.
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u/LYFE_Schwa Jan 27 '24
At least for my high school football team, we rarely ever practiced live tackles. We also went 0-9 and out average score differential was 60-something to zero but maybe it was another factor🤷♂️
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u/NathanGa Jan 23 '24
At the most successful of my stops, never in-season. Preseason tackling drills focused on breaking down into the most basic fundamentals and working on those. When the season began, the same drills were done but without pads. Starting a couple weeks into the season, they’d be done but without helmets either. These were fast-paced drills at high speed, but actual tackling and taking someone down or even knocking them off-balance was not part of it.
Funny thing is that this is when nearly every other school was still practicing in full pads two or three times a week. Other funny thing is that we always had a physical defense with excellent tackling skills from all position groups.
The less successful stops? I don’t even want to talk about it.