Tackling

Coach CUI,
We do tackling every day. We circut our players. We do all form tackle never going to the ground work on feet elbows grab jersey etc... We do angle tackle, bag tackle, one man sled tackle (to the ground), side line tackle we also do turn over circut with this.

Coach,
We start off every practice with a conditioning, tackling and turnover circut. We change them up so we work on different areas each day. For example this is how we start our defensive practice.. There are 2 things we must do to be a great defense. #1 Tackle #2 Pursuit

Station # 1 Bungi sprints #1 Latter
#2 Wt sled sprints #2 Striders
#3 mini hurdles #3 Pro-Agility
#4 Bag agilities with partner tackle (turn-over) #4 Knee Tackle
#5 Side line Tackle #5 One man sled Tackle
#6 Angle Tackle #6 CPR Club Punch Rip Circut

This would be an example of Monday and Tuesday. Wed and Thursday we will change our tackling and turnovers with change up on some of our conditioning stuff. We do this before defensive practice 5 min stations 30min. We then start our defensive practice, we tell our kids we run hard tackle and creat turn-overs. This puts us in the right frame of mind before defensive practice.

I a secondary coach; I have to do open field tackling. I do tackle every day, but the BC is not put on the ground. The tacklers simply wrap-up the BC and drive him back 5yds.

One drill I do has the BC and tackler about 15 yds apart. The tackler sprints 10yds to a cone that is 5yd from the BC. When he reaches that cone, the T must drop his hips and chop his feet. The BC must wait until the tackler reaches the cone and starts chopping feet. The BC then takes about 3 steps forward and breaks to either side of the cone. We teach the T to stay on the inside V of the BC's neck as the BC is going east and west. The T will then slide laterally in front of the BC and make the tackle. Once the kids get the hang of it, I let the BC fake one way and then cut back, or start in one direction and then cut back.

This drill teaches the tackler to :
1)drop his hips and keep his feet chopping until the BC makes his break
2) slide laterally (do not turn shoulders) until BC starts upfield
3) maintain lateral position on the BC

This has definitely helped our open-field tackling at all positions.

we teach tackling from day 1.
all the "little" things that help make guys good tacklers.
eyes.
knee bend.
arm placement.
chest to chest.
hip explosion.
finishing.