Measuring Your Football Defense and the “Takeaway” Drill

The measure of any great football defense is how many times you can take away the football. And it’s certainly a great indicator of wins and losses. In today’s blog, I want to share with you one drill that we incorporate in our football defense and also take a lot of pride in.   It is one that works our takeaways.

Measuring Your Football Defense

When we quality control our football defense at the beginning of the season to the end of the season, we’re going to take a strong look at not only scoring defense, but also takeaways, which are the second indicator of our defense.

The “Takeaway” Drill

The main reason that I like this particular drill is that it is more game applicable. It’s a more competitive drill, which makes it more realistic.

In this drill, we don’t teach anything majorly different in terms of what we’re trying to get from the takeaway in the rake or the punch, but we have a ball carrier that probably is not used to carrying the football. But he takes that football, he doesn’t have time to secure it, and now we get a race to a finish line. And again, it’s more realistic.

Major coaching point on the takeaway:

• You get one shot on the takeaway. You don’t get multiple opportunities to take the football away. And that’s key. Because many times when you see takeaway drills, you see guys clawing at the ball four or five times, and that’s not the idea. You get one shot. Other than that, secure the football.

Setup of the “Takeaway” Drill

The dynamics or the setup of the drill is we have a coach that’s going to toss the ball to a player who is only about 2 ½ yards out. The defender’s five yards away and we typically use the sidelines to set this drill up.

The defender that’s chasing right now should leave as soon as the ball leaves the coach’s hand. And the only thing that runner has to do is make sure he secures the ball to the side of the guy that’s stripping the football. If they do not see the football, we want those guys to rake that ball or rake that arm. If they see the football, we want to get a punch through football, again, as we secure the tackle.

Work three groups at one time, and do multiple reps on both sides. You want to try to get this drill done within five minutes.

Watch a video runthrough of the “Takeaway” Drill:

Fore more great football defense drills, check out my “Football Drills and Practice Plans” series, complete with video deomonstrations!     And don’t forget to Become a Fan on Facebook, where you can discuss these, and other topics with fellow coaches, players and fans!