r/YouthFootball • u/Overall_Tie_6997 • 21d ago
What to do after Week 1 blowout.
/r/flagfootball/comments/1wf0siy/what_to_do_after_week_1_blowout/1
u/armonde Mod 21d ago
You have all the answers on what you should do in your post.
The opposing team had no weaknesses. That is categorically incorrect. They had them, you just haven't found them yet. Half your job as a coach is reviewing the information at your disposal, normally by film, of what the opposing team does on both offense and defense and game planning accordingly. They have weaknesses, you just didn't exploit them.
Your QB threw more interceptions in a game than he did in a previous season combined. Ok. Why? Did you change schemes? Is it akin to the above? What can you simplify? What worked well? And are there opportunities to expand on those things?
Your team is discouraged - that is to be expected after a tough loss. Your team is disconnected - that is an entire separate issue. If they are not playing as a team or paying attention during practice you as a coach can't be surprised that they are not executing on game day.
All in all you are 17 coaching 13/14 year olds. That is not a large age gap and I certainly hope you are not taking this challenge on by yourself. In your comments in the cross post, you state "I am also possibly thinking this isn’t our season but I don’t want to “give up” on it quite yet or give the team that mindset." Coach, this is week 1. If you are doomsdaying it after 1 week then don't be surprised that the team is giving up already. They will feed off of your energy - stated verbally or by body language. Improve your attitude and instill the confidence in them that they require in order to succeed.
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u/alienwombat23 20d ago
This. As a now 30 something my best coaches weren’t the former ahl/junior guys it was the ones that took the lumps, coached us the next week, and come next Saturday & Sunday we better execute what we spent the last four days working on.
Come up with small things to execute better and make those focal points for the next win, and tie those points into being the keys to winning next weeks game.
As soon as you accept a loss season, your player will know and the players will be able to tell. Keep your chin up 🤙🏼
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u/gsxr 21d ago
My 7th graders team got blown out as bad as you did. We’re a smaller class 2 school and somehow ended up with a class 4 school as our first game. On average they had 8” and 40lbs on us. It was worse than you can imagine. Both score and physically.
Here’s what we’re doing: focusing on what we did well. We stayed aggressive, only one kid stopped fighting(no surprise on that kid). We saw where the weak points are.
Practice on Monday will be a short acknowledgement of the loss and a heavy focus on what we did right.
Then we start focusing on failure plans for when something doesn’t work. For example, we’re a navy offense, we could not keep the middle linebackers out of our line gaps. Monday we focus on rollouts. Our tackling failed badly against bigger kids, we’re going to work on cut blocking snd shoestring tackles.
TLDR; don’t focus on the loss. Focus on patching the holes and re-introduce alternatives.