Hide-a-Bag Drill

Football: Hide-A-Bag Tackling Drill

Dick Moss, Editor

Hide-A-Bag is a drill of gridiron musical chairs that encourages full-blast pursuit by tacklers. It also teaches defenders to instantly re-orient themselves to the ballcarrier after they've been blocked. It can be used for either tackle or flag football.

Setup
Divide your defenders into three groups and place the first player from each group on a line facing the coach.

Two assistants, holding a tackling dummy, stand behind the defenders.

Execution
On command, the coach directs the defenders to perform belly flops, shoulder rolls etc. When the coach shouts “Up,” the defenders get into two-point defensive position, then spin, locate one of the assistant coaches and tackle that coach's dummy.

Since there are only two dummies, one of the defenders will not make a tackle. Give this player a 10-pushup penalty. If two players hit a bag simultaneously, they each perform 5 pushups.

Other Points

The assistant coaches move randomly behind the defenders as they're performing their drills. They should maintain some separation between them.
Encourage players from each group to celebrate when their teammate makes a tackle. All this cheering and high-fiving keeps the energy level of the drill high.
Adapt this drill to flag football by having defenders tag the assistants or remove a flag from their belt. Alternatively, you could have them block the dummy.

Flag Football Variation
For flag football, use the same drill, but make the players either touch or pull a flag to make a tackle.

References
1. Tom Gadd, AFCA's (American Football Coaches Association) Defensive Football Drills, Human Kinetics Publishers, 1996.
2. Football Playbooks, Youth Football Drills Playbook, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.

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