Who knows the 4-3 pretty well?

[Die Hard]

Ha! Rocky is on the cover. I may actually do that...I really want to get into coaching youth at some point, and I know there are a lot of merits to a 4-3 at the youth level if you can coach it correctly to the players.

I know the basics of the 4-3 (strengths vs weaknesses), so I'm really trying to get more indepth now; learn who has what responsibility and why.

If you know the strengths and weaknesses of the 4-3.... then you'd have the knowledge to know that having a 4-man line in youth football is COACHING SUICIDE.

Offenses will eat that crap up all day.... unless you're team is completely overstacked with talent and you put it all on the defensive side of the ball.

If you want to learn how to understand defensive philosophies for certain levels of football... go coach and learn from an experienced coaching staff. I spent thousands of dollars on coaching materials before I began my coaching career.... but there's simply no substitute for experience.

It will take YEARS of implementing ideas/schemes.... over-coming mistakes... fine tuning things.... and paring things down (ie. minimalistic)... to become a decent coach at any level. Not to mention... it'll take you a season or 2 to see what all the offensive coaches at your level are running so you know how you'll want to attack it. Offenses at the youth level vary so much... and there's no way to teach the kids to be prepared for everything they are going to see -- especially if you're going in blind with no knowledge of what other coaches/teams are bringing to the table.

Instead of buying books and reading thousands of online articles.... coach if you want to coach. That's the best way to learn.

[Jacoby6644]

One thing that I picked up on through the years especially in youth/high school football is that you have to coach to the talents of your players. I see a lot of people here talking about running a 4-3 if you want to do this or a 4-4 for this etc...

For Example :if you don't have 4 good LBs, a 4-4 is not going to work. I had an incoming coach in high school that came from a program that used a 4-4. said this would be the best way to shut down the teams in our league. What he failed to realize is that we only had 2 really good backers. Needless to say all the other teams did was attack us on the perimeter with sweeps and passes to the backs. The coach would never change his Def plan so other teams just beat the tar out of us.

I don't believe in just running a single system. You should be coaching to stop what the other team's offense is trying to do.