How to Effectively Improve Your Defensive Line

During this blog post, I’m going to share some terrific defensive line football drills with you that you’ll surely want to try out with your team.

Get-Off Drill

This defensive line football drill involves a tennis ball. Simply, it teaches defensive linemen to move on movement.

You, the coach, will hold the ball up and drop it on the ground. Your player will come out of his stance when that ball leaves your hand and grab that thing before it takes a second bounce.

If you want to make it a little bit harder, don’t hold the ball quite as high. You can tinker with your players as to how fast they are, but it’s great for getting off on movement and reaching for your target.

Indicator Drill

The “indicators” are the front hand, the shoulder, the ball, the platform, or the quarterback.

In this drill, you’re going to execute a pass rush move and your player’s going to get his hands up and knock the ball down on your (the coach’s) indicators as you throw the ball.

High Strip Drill

During this defensive line football drill, your player will execute a slap passover and rake your back hand.

The key here is after you get through all your pass rush stuff, you have to know how to sack the quarterback. We want the ball on the ground.

Short Wave Break Drill

During this defensive line football drill, you’re going to bring your player up into the bags, change directions, he’s going to rush the quarterback, and you’re going to throw the ball. Finally, he’s going to re-trace for screens.

This is kind of an ultimate effort drill.

Lean Drill

This drill is used to get defensive linemen used to leaning edges, leaning corners, compressing edges.   And if your player wants to drag his hand, I’d more than welcome that.

The next thing we’ll do is take it one step further and do what we call a figure eight. It teaches great body control.

Chase Drill

This defensive line football drill adds a little excitement to the Lean Drill. It can get a little monotonous with the guys, so the Chase Drill adds a little competition.

We put a guy about four yards of head start and we put a guy behind, and we see who our best leaners are–who our best edge rushers are. And we just kind of compete and run a figure eight here.

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