It doesn’t take much to turn a well coached kickoff return into a hot mess and have free runners to your kickoff returner coming at him from all angles. We frequently mention it here that one of the difficult things about coaching special teams is that there is so much space involved with special teams football plays.

Today we have made you a short video that talks you through a teaching progression for one of the hardest special teams assignments in football. We are referring to the backside block on a kickoff return.

In addition to the aforementioned space issue, you also have all of the challenges of recognizing where the ball is kicked. How deep is the ball? How wide is the ball? Where is the returner? Oh yeah, and where the heck did the man I’m supposed to block go?

When you break down some teams on kickoff return you can see their front line blockers thinking about all of this so much that it is a definite case of paralysis from analysis. You have the number one thing that makes a football player play slow on display, thinking instead of playing full speed.

So today we take you through a little four word mantra that we think streamlines this technique and this block some for your front line backside blockers on kickoff return. There are still assignments and techniques that must be executed but it’s one way to help your kickoff return front line players quickly go through a mental checklist as they execute their backside blocks full speed!

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