Overflow Drill
Setup
This drill consists of one ball carrier, and four “defenders” holding onto a blocking pad. The defenders stand on the one yard line and spread out two to three yards from each other. The ball carrier starts the drill on the six yard line.
Purpose
Focusing on a goal line or short yardage situation, this drill teaches ball carriers how to cut back against the grain when the defense is overflowing to the side. Often times, the defense can do too good of a job of flowing to the outside to prevent a sweep. This drill teaches runners to use the defense’s flow against them, and how to find a gap in between defenders to cut back against the flow.
Drill Description
Upon the start of the drill, the ball carrier begins an angle to the corner of the drill. All the defenders begin running sideways to cut him off from running around to the outside.
This drill is set up so that the runner will not be able to actually outrun the defense, and will need to find a gap to shoot through.
The defenders can use contact to hit the ball carrier backward if he does not do a good enough job of finding a gap and gets too close to the defenders.
Multiple repetitions of this drill will increase your ball carrier’s awareness and give him the toolset to respond and attack a defense that is overflowing.
