Assessing Flag Football Player Skills at the First Practice
Assessing Flag Football Player Skills at the First Practice
How do you know what skills and potential each player brings to the field on day one?
As a flag football coach, whether you're welcoming a new season with fresh faces or a mix of new and familiar players, understanding each player's strengths and growth areas is crucial. Here’s a summary of what I personally use to help identify these talents in your first practice.
Key takeaways
Take notes about each individual player at every step, or have an experienced older player / assistant coach take notes. You may remember who your standout players are after practice, but you need to remember what everyone is bringing to the table. The newest player to the game has the most room to grow, both as an athlete and a person.
Run sprints and agility drills to get everyone in a competitive mindset.
Ask “who here can throw?” and let each player that raises their hand take a turn QB during passing drills.
Have every player participate in catching drills for the basic receiver routes.
Run flag pulling drills to identify your best defenders
Have players rotate through being the center, running back, and defense during drills and/or while installing the first game playbook.
After practice, ask parents what each player has enjoyed in the past, and if they want to focus on any specific positions based on your findings.
Identifying speed and agility
As you’re starting practice, set up some cones or an agility ladder. Have players do a clear exercise with either the cones or the ladder to get their bodies warmed up, and watch them to see who is quick on their feet, who gets excited, etc. This gives them something to focus on to start practice, gets them in the right mindset, and lets you get a rough idea of speed/agility.
We don’t spend much time here, because speed and agility take longer to develop than the fundamental skills like route running, throwing, and running (remember that running is different from speed, as it includes handling the ball, looking for openings in the defensive zone, etc.). This step is more about getting the players ready to practice and learn.
Finding your quarterbacks
Ask the team as a group to raise their hands if they can throw. You’ll likely get at least a few volunteers (and potentially the entire team), but that’s what you want. A player who is willing to raise their hand is already excited about football. Make a quick list of those names.
Now you’ll have all players run through basic route drills. Take the top name from your QB list and have that player stand in the “middle” of an imaginary line of scrimmer. Set a cone near the sideline and have the rest of your team line up behind the cone (creating a line behind your “wide receiver” position on the field). Pick any basic route and have a coach or experienced player demonstrate it in slow motion for the team. Next, have each player run that route in order with your QB throwing the pass. Note how well players run the route and catch the ball, and how well your QB hits their throws (they should ideally be leading the players so that they catch the ball in stride).
After each player has run the route once or twice, have the current QB go to the end of the line and have the next QB on the list throw the next route (you can keep using the same route or switch to a new one, depending on how much time you have and how many potential QBs you are testing).
Dialing in your defense
This section assumes that you are running some sort of zone defense (as opposed to person-to-person coverage).
Assuming that you’re running two squads that flip between offense and defense each half, every player is going to play defense for at least half the game. We’ll go into more details on what defensive positions look like in a later article, but for now, you want to identify two things: which players can reliably pull flags, and which players are fast enough to rush the quarterback.
For flag pulling at the first practice, I love to run the NFL Flag cone drill featured in the video below. It tests for agility, flag pulling, and even running skill at the same time. If you can, make the two lines different lengths so that players get to match up against different opponents each time they run the drill.
When it comes time to set up your defense, your “front line” defenders, sometimes called linebackers (LB in the diagram below), should be your best flag pullers. These are the players that will engage any running backs first, and being able to pull a flag at or near the line of scrimmage will shut down even the fastest runner. These positions are also great for players who may be new to the game or not as engaged yet, as it gives them ample chances to be involved on run plays without the pressure of keeping up with the other team’s top athletes.
That being said, you may also identify a player that is both fast and good at pulling flags. Don’t hesitate to position such players as safeties (S in the diagram above). Having a reliable flag puller as your last line of defense against the deep pass or a breakout run is always useful.
Centers and running backs
There’s one skill that centers, quarterbacks and running backs all need to develop as soon as possible: handing off the ball. For the center, a clean snap is critical whether the quarterback is under center or in the shotgun position. For running backs, being able to take the ball at full speed ensures that your running plays will go for maximum yardage (and is fundamentally as important as speed or agility).
I recommend that you evaluate for these skills while you’re teaching your team to run your playbook. There will be time for building these skills over the next few practices, and knowing who needs more work or picks up the concepts quickly is enough for your first practice.
Planning out your playbook is beyond the scope of this article, but you can follow this basic progression of plays if you don’t already have a playbook designed (if you have enough players to field a defense, put them out there too). Run through enough times to give each player some chances at center, running back, and receiver. You should also rotate in your potential QBs as they move around the rest of the formation.
Line up the running back (Z in the diagram below) several yards behind the quarterback. Run a basic “up the middle” handoff, where the quarterback takes the snap from the center, and then plants one foot in the ground while turning 90 degrees to the right or left, handing off the ball to the running back who tries to take the ball without slowing down at all. Let the play continue until a flag is pulled or the runner gets past the defense.
Run a play where your running back (Z again) lines up at a wide receiver position, then runs “across” behind the quarterback as they take the handoff. The quarterback should continue moving in the opposite direction of the runner (an experienced QB can fake a throw here), and the runner continues up the other side of the field. Let the play continue until a flag is pulled or the runner gets past the defense.
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You’ll want to watch how your center snaps the ball, how your quarterback transitions from receiving the ball to handing it off, and how your running back takes the handoff and continues running as fast as possible. Emphasize to your running back that they should “run hard” instead of trying to stop and juke the defenders. For fake handoffs, you want to see players “selling it” by acting as if they have the ball rather than just lazily slowing down after the fake handoff. You can and should coach all of these things as the season goes on, but right now we’re just worried about knowing where everyone is at.
After running a play 2-3 times, rotate players around so that everyone gets to play offense, defense, and specific positions. Make sure to note who on defense is pulling flags, holding their zone, and especially engaged, so that you can coach up specific players as the season continues.