DB Technique

Coach F. can you explain the footfire technique..Don't you have to plant the back foot to break on any ball? I coach the secondary at Westwood High School in Austin, Texas and we teach planting the foot and breaking on the ball. We also teach a speed cut, which is faster than pivoting and breaking, but the only bad part of it , is we lose sight of the football for an instance. Thanks for your help.

Coach oneonone, I'm certainly no expert on this but from viewing the tape of Penn state, their DB coach was teaching the DB's that when they are in their backpedal and must break to the ball or to their man, what he coaches is for the DB to footfire (term he uses) and pump his arms, turn the belly button to the ball and go. I had never seen it before so I tried it myself the next day, and I'm no DB in shape or form, but it felt very comfortable and doable. One of his points on using this technique was that he felt many times when a player plants that back foot he ends up having it slip further back and can't regain his position for coverage. When my def. coor. played with it, he also liked the feel and made a point that the DB's feet are always moving and would make it easier to react to the out and up as an example. Hope I explained it as clearly as possible. Do me a favor and work with it and let me know what you think. Thanks. How's Jerry doing? He's a good man.

What I personally do is teach a quick foot movement without any plant. In my opinion planting causes the DB to make circles rather than angles on breaks. I have found that if the DB rapid fires his feet he will make a more direct angle to the ball. Whether it would be called footfire or not I realy don't know. I have been a DB coach for more years than I would like to remember and I find the biggest mistake of DBs is round off cuts and not create angles. I have never emphasizes the "don't get beat deep concept". What I do show them through physics and geometry is that if proper intereption distance is kept and you make angles and not circles there is "no such thing as a great pass", it is a screw up by the DB, either mentally or physically.