special teams goals

Brian Barnes

Monday - specialties and PAT/PAT block

Tuesday - punt and punt return

wednesday - KO and KOR

thursday - run through everything if possible, but a lot of our ST players play in the JV game on Thursdays


Desired

Monday - specialties 15mins

Tuesday - specialties, kickoff, punt return and pat block - 30mins

Wednesday - specialties, KOR, punt, pat - 30mins

Thursday - review all

I feel that it is a good idea to have the specialty players work on technique every day, even if its only for 5mins. Ideally, we'll have one coordinator in charge of all special teams, with one coach assisting in personnel decisions. This way there are 2 coaches on the field that know the depth chart for each special team. We'll have all coaches, besides Oline, be in charge of a specialty group.

Specialties: returners, kickers/holders, punters, long snappers. Most of the time, our offensive linemen are not on special teams besides PAT, so I like having their coaches not being assigned a group, so they can use the time for walk-through or extra work.

We try to model our kick returns off our basic run plays, so players understand concepts and we can put in multiple variations. For punt return, we'll do a single back safe return most of the time, but we also mix in a double returner alignment. Based on what the other team does, we mix up our block schemes, but we always have a base block installed. Our PAT is basic. Our base PAT block can be run from either side, and sometimes we'll adjust based on the other team.

On punt, we have 5 "line", 2 gunners, 2 slots, and an protector. From the middle of the field, we'll be balanced. From a hash, we'll motion one slot to the wide side. This makes the defense have to pay attention, and gets our players some more space to cover. We'll have run fakes and pass fakes, all very basic.

On kick-off, we will have 9 players between the hashes, with one extra player on the right. On a deep kick off, players will fan out to their lanes, then adjust to the ball. This alignment allows us to get a numbers advantage for onside kicks. We will onside middle, left or right. Each week, I'll scout the other teams return to see where we should pooch. We tend to pooch a lot, and try to get the kick off team to buy in to pressuring and trying to recover.