Youth Football

I'm looking for some help with using the I formation with youth teams. We have run the I formation for a couple of years now, and we have been able to use a pretty good passing game, and some of the option game at the youth level(8-10year olds). One of the more successful positions that we have been able to use is the TE. In youth football he is one of the forgotten positions, and we use the TE a lot on end arounds, and passing plays.

One thing that we seem to be lacking is a good misdirection game. I have found that we can achieve some good results by varying the sets. For example going to single back sets, offset I sets, etc. But with 8-10 year olds we can only do so much. I'm looking for some help from people who use the "I" set at this level, and how you can achieve a good balance of power and misdirection.

Also, I'm looking for a way to keep the plays and sets to a minimum, since we are coaching younger kids. We seem to always fall into the trap of having too many plays and sets to be able to work with both the first team and second team.

The blocking assignments that we have used is basically, gap-on-backer...that seems to work pretty well, and we have the TE take the DE wherever he wants to go, and we call the play based on that.

I haven't found many coaches that run the "I" at this level, and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks