Special Teams Football Drills - Kicks and Punts

Special teams are sometimes overlooked and not practiced enough. But they are one of the three facets of every football game along with the more obvious offense and defense. To make sure your team excels at special teams, you should include special teams football drills that they perform regularly.

The special teams football drills should work on kicking off, receiving a kick, punting the ball, receiving a punt, and field goals.

Kicking Off

There are two main things you need to work on when kicking off. You want to make sure the entire team stays onsides before the ball is kicked and you want to make sure every player covering the kick stays in his own lane.

Too often kickoffs are returned for touchdowns because one or two players failed to stay in their lane. To teach players to stay in their lanes and to stay onsides, you can simply have the kickoff team kick the ball and run down the field. Then blow the whistle as they are a third to half way down the field. Make sure they are still in the proper lanes. Blow the whistle again once they run about 20 more yards and stress lane assignments again.

Receiving a Kick

The key to a good kick return is the wedge. The wedge is a group of blockers who get together and stop the majority of players covering the kick. The wedge is a wall of blockers that precedes the kick returner.

A special teams drill to practice the wedge is simply to have the players line-up at their spots. Then blow the whistle and throw the ball to a spot behind them. Then the players must come together in the correct spot and look to provides blocks. You can also add players running into the wedge once the players get their positioning down.

Punting the Ball

The key to punting the ball is for the players to make sure they provide protection for the punter and to make sure they go down field to cover the punt. So players on the punt team must first block for the punt, then wait to release to cover the ball until the ball is punted (most of the players), and then stay in their lanes as they run down the field.

You can break down each of their jobs into individual drills and if a punt team is lacking in one area then you’ll have to do this. However, usually the best special teams football drill is to simply have the punt team actually run plays as if they were punting in a game.

Receiving a Punt

There are basically two different things that a punt return team can do. They can try to block the punt or they can fall back and block and try to get a good punt return. Of course these two types are known as punt block and punt return.

Usually a team has a couple different ways that they’ll try to block a punt. So drills should be designed to work on each of these types of punt blocks.

Usually a team will also have a couple different methods for returning the ball. These ways should also be practiced to make sure all the players know where they need to go and what they need to do during the play.

Field Goals

Almost every season at least a couple games will come down to a field goal. Sometimes the field goal will need to be kicked with very little time remaining on the clock and no timeouts left.

Therefore the best field goal drill to run is to have the field goal team line-up on the sideline (the players who wouldn’t be on the field for offense) and then on the whistle the players should sprint to their positions and the ball should be snapped and the ball kicked with just a few seconds. Every coach can have their own goal for how fast the field goal team should be able to get on the field but a common goal is about 10 seconds.

Special teams football drills need to focus on every aspect of special teams. Every team should regularly practice drills that involve kicking off, receiving a kick, punting the ball, receiving a punt, and field goals.

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