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American Football Monthly: Youth Coaching Expert
How to Evaluate Players Correctly the First Time – Part 2
By Head Coach David Marco
Last month I presented the survey and player measurables that a capture and utilize during the
evaluation period of training camp.
Player Evaluation Drills
Now that we have our player measurables its time to put the players through some drills to see what
they can really do. In Figure 2 Joseph, Connor, Giorgio and Ryan were on the Silver team. Of this group
Giorgio barely missed making the Gold team; however, he was the best player at the Silver level. Our
Force Score certainly ended up being a good indicator. On the other hand, look at Luke. He is small,
short with some level of speed. His Composite Score is OK and his Force Score is poor; however, this kid
can play. He was 8 years old on a 9 year old team and he is the most fearless player I have ever coached.
If I asked him to tackle a varsity player on the high school team he would hit him with everything he had.
He’d need medical attention but he has no fear and is very aggressive. When you have a player like him
you throw out the statistics because you can see he can play.
Runner
(Y/N)
Pass
Rec.
(Y/N)
Blocking
(Y/N)
Tackling
(Y/N)
y
YY
Y
YY
Y
Y
Y
Gianni
YY
YY
YY
Gold
Christopher
YY
YY
YY
Gold
Peter
YY
Y
Team
First Name
Gold
Luke
Y
Gold
Kevin
Y
Gold
Emmit
Gold
y
David Marco © Since 2007
QB
(Y/N)
YY
YY
Y
Kicker
(Y/N)
Punter
(Y/N)
Y
y
Y
Y
Comments
Tough kid. No fear.
GREAT attitude.
Very small
Kid hits! SMART.
Good speed. He can
throw!
Good athlete.
Smooth. Seems to
move better to the
left
Great hitter. STUD.
He can block very
well. Fighter. Nasty
attitude
Will be out of town
until Aug. 4. Great
ATHLETE. SUPER
FAST
He can really throw!
Tough kid. Not
afraid. Has solid
athletic ability
Gold
Primo
Silver
Joseph
Silver
Connor
Silver
Silver
Giorgio
Ryan
Y
Y
Y
y
Y
Strong arm. Moves
pretty well. Great
low base. Make a
great Center
Silver player. Will
miss practice Aug.
18
Coordinated. Has
potential. Missing
Aug. 4 - 9. Not a
great thrower but
could be a silver QB
Age 7
Silver player
Figure 1: Additional Evaluation Criteria
The following are the drills that I primarily use to evaluate players. If I know a player has previously
played the position at a high-level I still run them through the drills to ensure that their skill set still
exists.
QB & WR Drill
Identifying a QB and the players that can catch a football is a time consuming task if you allow it to be. I
show up 30 minutes before practice and most of my players end up coming early too. What I do is I ask
who can really throw a football well. The players that say they can I put in the QB line. The rest of the
players will be the receivers. Once enough players get to practice I expand it to multiple lines. If no QBs
are in the initial group then I will throw the ball.
During the pre-practice drill I set out cones to show the receivers the route I want them to run. Of
course I select a route that we use a good deal in games (we never do anything in practice that we don’t
do in the games, if you are doing Barrel Rolls you are violating this rule). I then have the QB throw the
ball and I watch the throw and the catch. Of course I make notes on my spreadsheet to identify who can
throw and catch.
If a player in the QB line cannot throw well then I have them move to the receiver line. I will provide
coaching points on how to pass but realistically it is very time consuming to change a player’s throwing
motion. Just ask Phillip Rivers of the San Diego Chargers. He is the son of a coach, had an amazing
college career and has been a good NFL QB. On the other hand, his throwing motion looks more like
Uncle Rico then John Elway. Clearly no one changed his motion even at that level of football.
During the first practice I will ask all of the players that want to try out for QB to come with me. I make
sure the short list of QBs that I identified in pre-practice are in this line. I run the same drill as I did in
pre-practice. It is important to note that I not only look at how well a player throws but I also look how
they carry themselves. The QB is an extension of the head coach on the field. They are your leaders and
they have to be able to handle that pressure. This is difficult to find, especially at the youth level.
Keep in mind that you have to continue to evaluate your players even after they are placed into their
positions. For example, when I first evaluated Luke (Figure 2) as a pass catcher he really didn’t stand out.
David Marco © Since 2007
He is very short which makes him a small target. As practices went on and we continued to throw passes
in pre-practice I noticed that Luke didn’t just have good hands, he had some of the best on the team. He
had 3 interceptions last year at CB. Every one of them was spectacular whether he was high pointing a
ball or laying out and diving head first for it. I can say that I’ve never seen him drop a ball.
RB Drill
At the youth level every player thinks they want to play RB. On my surveys I will have 98% of my kids
mark down that they want to play RB and/or QB. However, very few kids can take the punishment that
is common for the position. I use the time-honored, old-school Gauntlet drill to find out who can run
and handle the contact. In Figure 2 you can see that Gianni and Christopher really stood out in this drill.
In future articles I will walk through this drill in detail.
Blocking Drills
On day 1 of practice we teach all of the players stances and correct blocking form using hand shields. On
day 2 of practice we go over stances and blocking form but then we take it up a notch as we introduce
full speed, man-on-man blocking. During the second half of day 2 we have a team wide blocking
competition, the winner of which will be named King of the Hill. I break the team into 5 – 6 smaller
groups (depending on how many coaches I have). By now some players should be standing out so I make
sure they are not all bunched into the same group. I have these groups go through a series of one-onblocker blocking battles. Whichever player can get the lowest, hit the hardest and push the other player
backwards will be the winner. Then the top 3 blockers from each group advance to the playoffs. In the
playoffs each player goes against the top guys of the other groups while their teammates cheer them
on. I personally manage the playoffs as I really want to make sure that the drill is correctly executed. At
the end we have a finals where the top 2 players go at it and a winner is named. As the drill is going on I
mark down in my spreadsheet who blocked well.
On day 3 we go through ALL of our blocking drills including King of the Hill again. On day 3 the intensity
goes way up as players want to be the champ. This is a great way to see who is the most competitive. As
you can see from Figure 2 three of the players received “YY” which shows they can really block at a high
level. These guys were all starters on my offense. In addition, I look for particulars with players. For
example, Primo was a first year player that had good size and blocked well but he was not a player that
was great at moving the other player. On the other hand, no one could push him backwards. He had a
great low base. I marked in my comments that he would make a great Center and he did!
Tackling Drills
Tackling is a critical drill to teach as the majority of youth injuries during games occur while a tackle is
taking place. We use several tackling drills which allow players to first learn the correct form using a
step-by-step approach. As players show that they understand the form they graduate to a drill I call
Splat the Bug. It is a fun and safe drill as RBs run down a sideline and a defender gets to tackle them
from the side into a soft pit of pads. We start splat the bug with me walking the player into the RB.
When then progress to 50% speed and then full speed. The players that can tackle at full speed will
David Marco © Since 2007
progress to live angle tackling. We NEVER do helmet-to-helmet, straight tackling. To digress for a
moment, no coach should be conducting helmet-to-helmet drills. Unfortunately, most youth coaches
still conduct these drills because they did them as a player. We have a coach in my suburb that ran the
13 years old level. I was watching his team warm-up before kickoff and they were running helmet-tohelmet, straight line, live tackling drills.
No player is allowed to go to live tackling until they can do Splat the Bug at full speed with correct form.
The players that graduate to live, angle tackling. Last year I had 15 players graduate to angle tackling. Of
course 14 or those 15 made my Gold team.
Kicking Drill
Time, or the lack there of it, is the great enemy of any football coach. The kicking and punting game are
great examples of this. It would be great to try and teach every player how to kick and punt but that
would take a tremendous amount of time. In addition, for ages 11 and younger I do not like to punt, nor
do I like to kick deep. In my last 21 games I have punted a total of 7 times, 5 of which occurred in the
same game. 75% of my kickoffs would fall into the onside or squib category as I have no interest in
letting the fastest player on the other team have the entire field to use against my team (more on this in
future articles). For kicking I ask the team which players think they can kick well off of a tee. If they have
no idea how to do it then don’t try out for kicker. I then give each of the players 2 opportunities to kick
the ball off the tee. The players that do well stay in the competition and the ones that don’t do well join
the rest of the team in drills. We continue the competition until we have a good idea of who has a
natural kicking ability and we know who our starting and backup kickers are.
Punting Drill
Much like the kicking drill I ask who would like to try out for punter. All players want to show that they
can punt but most have no idea how to do it. I state that anyone that tries out for punter and doesn’t
know how to do it will run laps. We run tons of laps so players have a strong desire to avoid them. I then
demonstrate the correct punting form and I state that if you throw the ball up and punt it you will run
double the laps.
When I run this drill I first start out by having the players punt the ball straight forward; however, once
we have the top guys identified I then change the drill to angle punting to the left. In the rare times I do
punt I love to punt it at a sharp angle which finds the sideline and goes out of bounds. I would rather
have a 15 yard punt that has no return then a 25 yard punt that allows a return.
If you have a good technique for evaluating players please feel free to email it to me. I may put it in a
future column.
David Marco © Since 2007
Coach David Marco – Biography
Coach David Marco has published dozens of football coaching articles for
American Football Monthly magazine and USA Football Magazine. In addition,
he also served as American Football Monthly’s Youth Football Coaching Expert
and currently still writes a regular coaching column (Takeaway/Giveaway with
Larry and David) for USA Football Magazine.
He has created 4 technical coaching videos on the Double Wing offense for
USA Football and has been their lead instructor from 2007 – present at the
annual USA Football/Chicago Bears Youth Clinic at Halas Hall where over 300
youth coaches attend each year. He is also the author of the Double Wing
Playbook published by USA Football. Coach Marco is also a USA Football
certified football coach and one of only 20 USA Football Master Trainers for
the NFL sponsored Heads-Up Program.
Coach Marco is currently a Head Coach in the Chicagoland United Youth Football League
(www.chicagolanduyf.com) which is the largest league in Illinois with a national championship held
annually in Florida. He was also a Head Coach in the Bill George Youth Football League
(www.BGYFL.org). BGYFL is one of the largest and most competitive leagues in northern Illinois. As a
head coach, his teams have earned 2 Super Bowl Runner-Up trophies and 1 Super Bowl Championship
trophy in his last 4 seasons coaching. These teams previously had been perennial sub .500 teams that
had never won a playoff game before. Over his last two years of coaching Coach Marco’s teams have
recorded 16 shutouts in 31 games. Coach Marco utilizes the Double Wing on offensive and the 5 – 3 Flex
on defense.
Coach Marco is currently the Head Coach for the Westmont Wildcats of the Greater Chicagoland Youth
Football League. He has an MBA from DePaul University. He can be reached at
CoachDMarco@gmail.com
David Marco © Since 2007