Pursuit Drills

Have used a number of pursuit drills over the years. Still use them on occassion but very limited. LIke you, it is a good way to set the tone at the beginning of practice or sometimes a good way to end practice and use the drill as conditioning. But there in lies the problem with pursuit drills, players treat them like conditioning.

What I emphasize is that every snap from inside drill, 7 on 7 or full team is a pursuit drill. I demand all 11 players get to the ball and get a breakdown every time. Will also use the two whistle drill, 1st whistle blows, then all 11 are expected to be to the ball within a few seconds before the 2nd whistle blows.

Another good pursuit type drill is the intercept/Oski drill or whatever you call it. Line up the defense. Defense reacts to a pass read, throw up an interception. Emphasize the closest guy to the interceptor block the receiver he was defending. Rally to the near sideline, sprint to the endzone and get a break down. Can run with multiple groups, generate enthusiasim/set the tone and work on what to do when the ball is intercepted.

Coach Williams

I don't care for a lot of pursuit drills because we don't really teach our angles the same way you do them in the cone drills. We don't want our kids running to stop a touchdown, we want them stopping a gain, I think a lot of the pursuit drills just teach kids to bail out to the sideline which in a game can cause a lot of extra yards for a lot of reasons. We have our scout O backfield run a play from the other team's play list and our LB's and Secondary do an up-down then pursue to stop the play from there. We really stress proper angles to the ball and hustle.