Football Drills are the most important way to develop the fundamental skills of your players. Some drills are used to help evaluate players abilities during the football tryouts. We will examine a few of the more popular football drills used by many coaches at all levels of football from pee wee to the NFL.
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Evaluation Style Football Drills
The Three Cone Football Drill
The 3 cone football drill, or three cone drill, is a test performed by American football athletes at every level of football. It is mainly run to assess the agility, quickness and fluidity of movement associated with the coaches that will be selecting the teams. While it is not as highly regarded a test as the 40 yard dash, it will still be an important measure of a players ability.
Please see the video below for a visual of this football drill in action.
The name “3 cone exercise” is derived from the fact that there are three cones used to distinguish the path for athletes. Three cones are placed five yards apart from each other forming a right angle. The athlete starts with one hand down on the ground and runs to the middle cone and touches it. The athlete then reverses direction back to the actual starting cone and touches it. The athlete reverses path again but this time around runs around the outside the middle cone in route to the far cone running around it in figure eight fashion on their way back round the outside of the center cone and finally completing back at the beginning cone. The total range traveled is about 30 yards. Athletes are timed for this whole procedure. This drill is primarily used to determine a player’s agility.
The Oklahoma Football Drill
The Oklahoma football drills has several variations. One of the more popular variations involves three players arranged three yards opposite one another. There are three players on offense and three players on defense. A lane is set up, typically using three blocking bags on both sides of the players, lined up the top to the bottom to create a walls, and the walls are spaced about one yard from each other. This creates an area of about three feet by nine feet. The three lineman, on offense, at the sound of the actual whistle, attempt to block the defenders, while the defenders try to tackle the ball carrier, who has started behind the offensive players.
Many pop warner, high school and college teams use the Oklahoma Drill as a way to kick off the very first day of full contact practice. While many have often criticized this drill as excessive, it can be a crucial tool used by the coaches to evaluate the players that may have looked good in non-conatct football drills. Another great use of football drills, like Oklahoma, are to get your players in the proper mind-set for full contact practices, especially in pee wee, high school and college where many times the football players have gone several moths participating in only non-contact football drills.
Below is a great video of these type of football drills, with this version using only one offensive and one defensive lineman. In this video a quarterback is used to hand-off to the running back making football drills like this more realistic. Football drills like this can be aggressive and you need to make sure your players do not beat each other too bad when using these football drills.
Football Drills – Angle Tackling Drill
Align two cones five yards apart. Divide defenders in to two single document lines five yards apart facing one another and designate 1 group as the ball carriers and the additional group as the defenders. The coach appears behind the first defender and signals the direction to the ball carrier. On the coach’s cadence, the football carrier takes off the designated cone. The defender closes the distance and executes a perfect angle tackle. The actual football drills should be carried out so that all defenders work position tackling to both the right and left sides.
Football drills, like the angle pursuit drill can be run from a closer distance, as shown in the video below.
Football Drills – Bull in the Ring Drill
All players get into a circle around 1 player (for large groups create 2 or 3 circles to keep exercise moving). The coach tosses the football to a participant standing in the circle. The player that catches the football must try to run to the other part of the group. The player in the center of the ring should stop the athlete with a good strong heads up tackle. If the ball carrier makes it across the circle, the player in the middle stays in the middle. When the player in the middle helps make the tackle then he takes the runners position in the group and the runner becomes the tackler in the middle and the drill continues.
The video below show bull in th ring in action, proving it is one of the more intense football drills. Certain football drills, like bull in the ring, have been banned in certain states.
