Beginner Defensive Football Plays

Designed specifically for ages 8-10 or for inexperienced players and coaches. We have chosen the most basic defensive schemes from the following defenses:

4-3 Defense
3-4 Defense
5-3 Defense

This by no means indicates these defenses are not useful with older players, it simply means the basics of these defenses work very well based on our in-depth expereince.

An inexperienced defensive coach will often just pick a defense because it sounds familiar or another team has been successful with it, and that is a mistake. There are just as many reasons to choose each defense as their are NOT to choose a specific defensive scheme.

There are several factors to take into consideration:

Age and Skill Level of players
Size and Speed of defensive players
Number of potential defensive linemen (DTs,NT,DEs)
Your own defensive philosophy (stop the run, balanced or pass prevention)
Strengths and Weaknesses of the different offenses in your league.

It takes a lot of time and focus to really analyze the NEEDS of your defensive unit.

For example if you really only have 2 players that have the size and strength to play on the defensive line, should you really run a defense that requires 4-6 defensive linemen. If you do the players that are not built for down linemen will not perform and will serve no real purpose.

Our coaches have spent the last 20+ years working with countless youth football players and have had players of all shapes and sizes.

Choosing the right defensive playbook for your team is all about fitting the playbook to the players you have on your roster.

We can help you choose the right playbook for your team, we have organized our proven youth football playbooks so that you can eliminate the guesswork and use a playbook that has been proven "on-the-field".

Beginner Defensive Playbooks