Using Motion in Youth Football

Many youth football coaches fear using motion. Unfortunately we have all seen teams attempting to use motion that have had poor results: offsides penalties, motion penalties, poor mesh points, flubbed handoffs, traffic jams in the backfield, lots of Keystone Cops type stuff. It really doesn't have to be like that.

Here are the reasons most good coaches like to use motion to improve the effectiveness of their football plays:

1) Gain Numbers advantages at the point of attack

2) Isolate their best players on weaker defensive players

3) Get better attack angles

4) Confuse the defense into hesitating or into the wrong responsibility

5) Allow you to run your base plays with a different look, allowing you to run it more often without looking as predictable

6) To isolate a strong defender away from the play

7) Cause the defense to scheme and use practice time to adjust to your motion

8) Give your ballcarriers a head start ( Jet Motion)

Here are some reasons not to use motion in youth football:

1) Because it looks cool and more like what you see on TV on Sundays

2) To get a minimum play player out of the action

While many youth football experts such as John T. Reed do not use motion in their offenses, my teams use motion on about 35% of our football plays. We have consistently scored significantly more points than what other experts teams have scored, even with very restrictive "mercy" rules in place and playing all our players liberally.

This season my age 7-9 all rookie team used motion on about 25% of our football plays after our 4th game and there are coaches from all over the country using my system and using motion with kids as young as 6 years old. You can effectively run my offense without any motion at all, but when you go beyond the base "Sainted Six", the motion buys you so much. In youth football, motion gives you much more than what the High School and College teams get from it.