Youth Flag Football Drills
While the temptation may be to spend practice time running plays over and over, you should spend the bulk of practice running drills to improve your players’ individual skills. Below are some youth flag football drills to use in your practices.
The first one isn’t really a drill — it’s just how we warm up. My goal for each practice is to have every kid catch and throw the ball 30–40 times. We accomplish the bulk of this through our two-line passing warm-up.
Two Line Passing Warm Up
For this warm-up, kids pair up and start at a short distance apart. A good rule of thumb is to base the distance on your team’s age: 5- and 6-year-olds should start about 5 yards apart, 10-year-olds and older should begin about 10 yards apart. After a few minutes, have one side take a few steps back. Repeat once more after another few minutes.
Generally, we do this for 5–10 minutes to start practice. If you break it down, a kid should be able to throw and receive the ball back in about 10 seconds — that’s 6 passes per minute. Five minutes in and they’ve already got 30 catches. Ten minutes in and I’ve already hit one of my goals. A good rule of thumb is to have at least one football for every two players — if you’re short, these youth footballs work well for practice (make sure you get the right size).
Flag Football Drills – Offense
Drills for offense include handoffs, passing, catching, route running, and agility moves (spin, cut back, juke, etc…). For many drills, I use cones — I’ve been using the same set of multicolored disc cones for years. I will often plan ahead and lay out the cones for some drills while they are doing the warm-up above or during a water break.
Handoff Drills
Handoffs are critical with younger kids: not just the speed of the exchange but performing a clean handoff without dropping the ball. If you’re coaching a team of new flag football players, expect a few fumbles early in the season. The tough part is that if you coach like I do, every kid gets the ball at least once per game, so a few fumbles can really eat into those opportunities.
Split Backfield Handoff Drill
Passing Drills
One thing you’ll notice is that you may have a few kids that can throw the ball well, but once you get them in a game-type drill, they don’t look so good anymore. Same with receivers. Kids may be able to catch everything during the warm-up, but once they’re running around trying to get open, the reception percentage drops. This drill can give your quarterback and receiver a game-situation feel.
Leading the Receiver
In this drill, you’ll mark off a couple of areas on the field with cones. The goal is for the receiver to catch the ball inside one of these areas. This will teach the quarterback to lead the receiver to an area instead of throwing to a receiver who has just run a hook and is facing the quarterback. This will also teach the receiver to sprint away from the defender while catching the ball. This drill is also a good man-to-man defense drill.
Flag Football Drills – Defense
Flag football defense drills include various flag pulling drills, covering receivers man-to-man, and breaking on a ball once thrown. One key thing that kids will learn through most defense drills is taking the correct angle of pursuit. This is knowing where to run so that you’re running to where the offensive player will be and not where they currently are. It sounds basic, but many younger first-time players will struggle with this early on.
Flag Pulling
At all ages, flag pulling is very important, but at the younger ages, it is the most important part of the defense. There are several flag-pulling drills you can implement during practice.
Sweep Drill
This drill is one I run almost every practice with all age groups.
One-on-One Flag Pulling
This drill has the offense running straight ahead as fast as they can with the defense cutting across trying to first slow down the ball carrier by getting in front and then pulling the flag. This drill can be fast-paced, and you can get in many reps in a short amount of time.
The Gauntlet
A team favorite. Create a small running zone for the offense. At the other end, one defender. The rest of the team lines up on offense at the far end. On your “Go!”, the first offensive player tries to beat the defender. Once the flag is pulled or the defense is beaten, send the next runner. The defender has to process quickly and pull as many flags as possible. Good conditioning drill too.