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Kick Return Team: The Cage Drill

By Coach Dave Weitz, Youth Football Online, 10/20/17, 12:00PM PDT

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Work on a more effective strategy to maximize your talent

When looking at a kickoff return team it is very easy to simply assign a blocker for every defender on the kickoff team and tell your best athlete to find some space. 

Many teams rely on this as a simple way to install the kickoff return team and think this will be enough to bring the ball out to the 30 or 35 yard line. While this may work against inferior teams if you are playing a team that has equal talent on their coverage unit these 1 on 1 blocks have almost no shot at being effective.

A much more effective strategy is to pick specific members of the coverage unit to double team. On most coverage teams there are 2-3 players who make the majority of the tackles. If the return team can effectively stop these players from being a factor in the return they have a great chance to break the play for a long return. The Cage Drill is a great way to practice this double team.