Football Practice Plan – Sudden Change, Iron Man, & LIVE Drill

When you are making your football practice plan, try the drills below to liven things up.   These are three of my favorite football drills.

Sudden Change
This is a drill we use a couple times a week. It’s called “sudden change” and it simulates a turnover during a game.

At any point in the practice the coach blows the whistle and calls the “sudden change”.

The first “o” and the first “d” line up against each other and the coach gives them the situation, the offense gets 4 plays from the 25 yd line to score.

This is a great drill to use to pick up the tempo of a weak practice and the kids love it!

Iron Man
This is a conditioning drill where the players don’t realize they are being conditioned.

You line the team up on the goal line, put 1 player at 20 yards and have the “safe zone” at the 40 yard line.

On the whistle all players start sprinting to the safe zone.   The player at the 20 has to tackle as many players as he can.

If you are tackled you go to the 20 and become a tackler.   You can run this drill as long as you want with variations such as if you don’t tackle someone you go back to being a runner or you can play it down to the last man, “the iron man”.

LIVE Drill
We do a drill called the LIVE drill:

One defensive player, one blocker, and one ball carrier, and two cones. We slowly work our way to five or six defensive players, same number of blockers, and one ball carrier.

Kids love it and it works the fundamentals of tackling, blocking, and running with the ball.