Reducing Fumbles

Two things we always stressed with our backs...
#1 Every day in practice, we ran the old hand-off drill as a warm up for our individual time. We actively checked that the kids were making a correct pocket, they were folding over the ball correctly, and they had enough room to transfer the ball to a single hand before they had to hand off to the next man in line. I know the drill seems very elementary, but I don't know of another that is better.

#2 When we ran our option mesh, we told our dive backs to make their normal pocket, but the bottom hand was simply left flat, not curled around the nose of the ball whatsoever. If the read was for a give, once they felt that hand come off their belly, they simply had to curl those fingers over the nose of the ball, and they had it securely. Stressing that really limited the want for our backs to "grab" at the ball.

When you run option, you need to expect a fumble or two per game with highschoolers--especially early in the season. But I feel these two things helped us.