No Youth Football Crack Blocks

There are so many different types of football plays in FirstDown PlayBook. However, there is one type of youth football plays that you will not find. That is a youth football offensive play with a youth football crack block.

FirstDown PlayBook draws football plays for coaches and players at every level of football. That means we have plays that can, and have been run on Sundays. We also have plays that are best run in your local youth football league.

We are very sensitive about the age of the player we are drawing the football plays for. Most of the time the main focus is about if the players’ age. Do they have the skill development to perform a block or a certain technique? Today we want to address a scheme that we feel like has it’s place at the high school level and above if properly taught, but not at the youth football level.

6 Sound Youth Football Defenses Recommended By NFL Coaches

We are talking about crack back blocks. There is certainly a place for a wide receiver crack blocking a safety who is coming downhill to load the box. For many offenses it is a standard rule to execute a “push crack” technique. Many option football teams use this to offset run heavy defenses.

This occurs when a receiver will come off the ball directly at the corner. The rule is to crack the safety if that safety fills quickly vs the run. Notice we are referring to crack blocking on a defender who is not in the tackle box and is coming downhill to defend the run. Even at the higher levels of football this defender has a chance to protect themselves vs a receiver crack block.

12 Youth Football Offenses Recommended By NFL Coaches

In our opinion no coach is going to be able to teach a defensive player how to recognize and defend themselves vs a crack back block. Especially when coaching 12 year old players and younger. This is why we don’t draw them in our youth football section. If you are running a crack scheme with your youth football offense we hope you take pause to think about this. We need to make sure that what we teach is safe and will encourage more kids to play not less.