DEVELOPING A FRESHMAN QB

At the youth level passing is a problem because, unless you have a lot of players, it's hard to have somebody who can throw and somebody who can catch both on the same team. And if you do have a lot of players the one kid that can catch will probably be standing on the sideline while somebody else, who can't catch, gets in his minimum number of plays at his position. I average about 20 players per team and have been coaching 15 years and only twice have I naturally had a kid who can throw and a kid that can catch at the same time. Even then, it doesn't do you a lot of good. The other team simply assigns it's one good pass defender to your one good receiver. So, if you want to average more than one pass completion per game, you need more than one kid who can catch the ball. Many coaches use the SE position to hide a weak player(s). It's not unusual for me to see an opponent, in a passing situation, line up an entirely different kid at SE (such as a running back) in order to throw to him. When I see that, I can tell my CB's that they don't have to cover the SE on their side UNLESS he's #41 (or whatever) and, if they do see #41 he's there to be thrown to, so let's put double coverage on him and blitz. This kind of coach has no chance of getting a pass off against me. So you can't just substitute in a kid who can catch for one who can't. We have to train kids who play the positions to catch a ball. There are four phases to catching a ball. They are 1) Position on the ball (Catch the ball at its highest point) 2) Eye contact 3) Hand contact and 4) Put the ball away (pulling it in).

The importance of catching a ball at its highest point increases with player age. If the defense has no one who can catch (i.e.intercept) it's not very important. But when the other team has someone who can intercept, you can't have a player standing and waiting for the ball to come to him. Someone will come across in front of him and - pow! - Intercept! If a low pass is coming at a receiver, he needs to come towards the ball. It makes it hard for the defense to intercept if the receiver runs towards the low pass rather than stands and waits for it. Similarly, if a lob ball is coming from high to low, the receiver does not want to catch the ball at waist. If he does, a defender can step between him and the pass. Again, he must move closer to the QB and catch the ball at the highest point he can. Once again, this makes it hard for a defender to come across in front of him and intercept. Coaches call this "catching the ball at its highest point" but it really means, "Once the ball is in the air, catch it at the closest possible point to the QB." Leave no room for anyone else to come between you and the QB. I'm sure all of us have had the experience of having a pass thrown to us, dead on, and while we're waiting for the easy catch some guy comes flying across our face and intercepts and you're standing there flat footed and looking like the south end of a north bound horse. If we had thought to step towards that ball instead of just waiting, we'd have gotten it. To get a receiver to reduce the distance between himself and the QB AFTER THE BALL IS IN THE AIR, when our receivers play catch before practise starts we'll have a coach stand right beside the receiver and try and knock the ball away. However, the coach can't move his feet. The receiver learns real fast to step away from the coach and towards the ball to make the catch.

Eye Contact: Many kids take their eyes off the ball just before they catch it in order to have a "look around" to see who's coming. Often times, the more wide open the receiver is, the greater the chance he'll drop it. A lot of kids will also drop a pass on command. For example, my CB's, if beat by a receiver who is now about to catch the ball, are trained to yell "Drop it!" About 30% of all kids will drop the ball on command (You can try this yourself kids playing catch and watch what happens). Dropping a ball on command or taking the eyes off the ball are both focus problems. The receiver must focus on the ball and nothing else. To teach a receiver to focus, he must be subjected to distraction from the front, from the side, and from behind. To distract a receiver from the front, one or two other players stand ahead of the receiver and are allowed to wave their hands at the incoming pass, but not to touch it. The receiver must learn to ignore the waving hands by focusing on the ball and making the catch. If this becomes too easy, the distractors are allowed to touch one finger to the ball to deflect it upwards and the receiver must catch the deflected ball. Distraction from the side is verbal. As the ball approaches the receiver's hands, a coach or other player yells at him, "Drop it!" or "Butterfingers!" or things like "Watch out for that tree!" and "Stay off the grass!" or quietly say, "Did you know there's a bee on your back?". Distraction from behind is physical. A hand shield is thrown at the receiver from behind and timed to hit him just after the catch. You have to THROW the handshield and not be holding it when you strike him. This is for safety reasons. The player is vulnerable at this point and some assistant coaches are just stupid enough to really nail the kid. But he is entitled to throw it hard so long as his hands are no longer in contact with the handshield when it strikes the receiver. And we're talking about a handshield - Not a tackling dummy! Once a receiver can deal with each form of distraction seperately, we give him all three at once.

"Hand Contact" is how we learn to to catch. A receiver must learn to keep his hands soft. A receiver with "iron hands" will have the ball bounce off. To teach soft hands have the player work both hands opening and closing and then toss a ball to him while he's doing this. The actual catching of the ball is taught with putting the little fingers together for a low pass and the thumbs together for a high pass. We teach this by putting the receivers in a 10 foot circle and let them toss a ball back and forth. They must toss it high, low, and off to the side. Use 4-6 players max in the circle to give them plenty of room. If the kids find this boring and master it too easily, add a second ball.

"Pulling the ball in" is done to prevent fumbles and shoulder injuries. To teach pulling the ball in, two receivers face each other on their knees, 10 feet apart, with a football. They deliberately throw the ball off to the side of each other. Staying on their knees, they catch the ball, pull it in, and fall on their near shoulder on the grass. As they get better, we switch to a wet football. One other drill we use is to have the receiver stand with his back to to the thrower. As the thrower throws the ball to him he calls "Ball!" and the receiver turns around and catches it. This teaches quick reactions. Again, you can also use a wet ball in this drill. Finally, and this is VERY effective, have your ends carry a football with them to school and to every class. Everybody will knock it out of their hands and have fun making them chase it. After about one to two weeks of this, your receivers will have hands of absolute GLUE! You won't be able to pry that ball out of their hands after that.

The question now becomes what level of success will this program achieve? I work my receivers as a group, separate from the line and backfield. We do offense twice a week, two hours a night. The ends will do these drills for 30 minutes, then run actual pass routes with our QB's for 40 minutes. I start them at this at age 9 but we don't actually call pass plays to them until they are 10. There were eight kids in the receiving corps. None could catch a pass on the first day. By the end of the season we had one 9 year old who could outcatch most 13's. We had four who could catch at about the average 12 year old level, one that could catch at about the 10 year old level, and one who could still not catch at all. The receivers seem to go through three phases 1) catch nothing 2) catch half 3) Catch all. There doesn't seem to be any means of predicting progress, or where it will come from. My two best receivers I would not have predicted, to look at them, and progress rates varied widely.