As coaches, we constantly place an emphasis on being disciplined, being accountable and doing the little things right. Most penalties can be attributed to lack of discipline or focus on details so we started this to “punish” penalty yards.
Big picture is the team runs for every yard the penalty cost us. For example, on offense if we have a holding penalty on a fifteen yard run its 25yds; on defense a facemask on a 5yd tackle for loss would be 20yds. I always run each penalty separate, announcing what the penalty was and how many yards it cost us. We never spotlight the player who was actually flagged; we play as a team, we get penalized as a team, we run as a team. The players “pay” for the yards 2 to 1 so that 25yd penalty is a 25yd there back. Assigning yards for dead ball fouls and penalties that erase points or turnovers are a little more difficult. We ran players very hard for after-the-whistle personal fouls. (I think we have only had 2 of these since starting this but we ran 2 full football field length gassers to pay for each.) Penalties erasing scores or turnovers are doubled so a holding penalty on a 20yd TD is 60yds, which again is “paid” with a 60yd gasser. Player quickly became more aware of penalties. The first time no player could recall any penalties from the game but by week nine every player could name most penalties. We often had players groaning over penalties during warm ups the first day back after a game. They quickly start to self-regulate and estimate the yards they owe. We always did this immediately after breaking down from warmups on the first day back at practice. For high school, if Mondays are typically just film and install, do this on Tuesday. Maybe we can’t attribute it all to this but by season’s end and going forward we did see a decline in penalties. It’s an easy and ‘fun’ way to emphasis the importance of discipline! (Also, its entertaining at times to watch players grumble alongside the coaching staff when flags fly during games.)
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I played football from 4th grade through my freshman year of college but I have never enjoyed the game from the field more than I do on the sidelines.
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