My eldest was scouted for a tackle football club yesterday. The scout watched our flag football practice from a distance and when I had a moment of downtime he came up to me and asked me about my boy.
“That kid in the blue, is he yours?”
“Yep.”
“He’s the real deal. He is going to kill it in tackle football. Listen, I have a team that could really use a kid like him…”
It went on like this for a bit longer before I had to tell him about my wife and her, perhaps overzealous, fear of concussions. She feels he shouldn’t slap on pads till high school. I’ll meet her half way. In the meanwhile I am hoping to see his team perform much better than they did this past week. The team played the first half without 4 of our top 5 players and it showed. We ended the first half down 30 – 0. One of the 4, a QB (because we had no qb in the first half at all) returned to lead us to 14 points. We ended the game down 36-14. It doesn’t sit right in my gut, because I felt like I should have been able to do more with playcalling and the talent I had on the field. I relied on sweeps and hand offs and reverses that the other squad sniffed out as soon as they were called. From now on we are going semi-no huddle. I’ll show them the play and tell them the next two from that same formation. I expect them to be able to run three in succession, giving us a no huddle look, and perhaps catching the other team off guard.
This isn’t only about winning. This is about taking advantage of matchups so that my less talented players are going to have a chance to excel. When a team is moving so fast and the D is keying on the top talent the others are able to squiggle free and generate serious offense. It also doesn’t hurt that we get the rest of our talent back.
As for the 4-5 team, that situation is too funny. The kids are doing great and scoring at will. The other teams have scored on us, but sparingly. Just like with 8-9, we have the team to beat, and I am looking forward to developing some plays and football knowledge for those kids, so they all have a chance to rumble down the field and into the endzone.