PeeWee Football Game 1 Recap, Loss 40-6

Background: I coach a JV football team aged 6th-9th grade. We're a small private school nearby my work site. I was recruited by the head of our storeroom.

Thursday Night we got beat. We got beat 40-6. Our opponents' first two plays were shut down. On third and fifteen, they converted with a 35 yard strike down field. We had some big time busted coverage. They scored on the ensuing play and never looked back scoring 40 unanswered points.

Defensively, we ran a 4-3 Cover 1 Under. Our rover would play the tight end or a second receiver on either side of the field. We left our corners on opposite sides of the field to defend the sweep. Our rover has never played football before and was the one that got beat on that big third down conversion.

Our offense was inept and couldn't execute. We tried to run power run plays at a team that was beating us physically on the line of scrimmage. The entire first half we started two sixth graders on the OL but they were continually beat off the ball and lettin' the defenders loose in the backfield. We had so many busted plays off tackle I can't even count 'em all.

Needless to say, we scrapped our entire playbook in 10 minutes during halftime. Our 6th graders on the OL were relegated to the bench or tight end while the veterans moved in to key positions on the line. As the OC was shouting all night, "You guys aren't forming a pocket for [our QB], you're making a coffin."

Offensively, we had started with a basic two back I-formation and a single tight end. One of the two wideouts was our fastest and most talented skill position player. After the first half, we pulled our starting left tackle and left guard. They were put at tight end and water boy. Our fullback went to guard. Our tight end went to center. Our center went to tackle. We put in two slotbacks similar to GT's option and created an unbalanced flexbone.

Our fullback's lack of speed was giving the runningback no time to find a hole and get yardage so moving the fullback out of the way gave us a little help. Spreading out the defensive ends gave us more time to develop the play. We only ran three plays in the second half: QB keeper through the 1 and 2 holes, tailback dive through the 3 and 4 holes, and a wide receiver screen.

The wide receiver screen was pretty simple. The tailback would go in motion, getting up to 75% speed towards the wide receiver. The QB'd snap the ball. After he snapped it, the motioning tailback would block the shit out of the corner covering our wideout and we'd hit the receiver behind the tailback's block.

Goals for Monday's practice: cut blocks for our small offensive linemen, DB coverage, and basic offense/defense schemes. Next game is our home opener on Thursday the 17th.