Re-Routes and Jams to Disrupt Receiver Routes

In this football clinic excerpt, coach discusses the importance of physicality to disrupt the timing of receiver's routes.

For our linebackers, we talk about re-routes and jams. It's a big part of what we believe in and being physical with the receivers. So with our re-routes, we feel like it's a lost art. We want to create the culture and perfect this art and see how we have the success in the passing game. Primary focus is being able to get into the receivers, disrupt the timing of their routes, but also get in the receivers' heads they're not going to want to be running routes when they're getting hit on every single play. And for us, that allows us to kind of work right into our pattern match.

We want to send messages to receiver when the ball's in the air, look to intimidate, de-cleat and be physical. Jam receivers on the line of scrimmage. We'll constantly change it up, whether we're going to be up press or we're going to be off, not allowing the receivers to really get in any kind of groove at the line of scrimmage. Our intent to defend the passing game is to remove the receivers from the game from a physical standpoint and really be physical from them getting on the line of scrimmage to releasing and rerouting them.

We want to reward and celebrate re-routes and jams. That's something that needs to be a culture and you need that to be a part of the culture because that's just as good as anything else, sending the message with reroutes and jams. Okay?

So, for us, in our linebacker drill, when we're doing it, we're just going to drop. We're going to have a receiver. It could be a linebacker, and we're just going to drop, open up our hips, look to collision and get our hands on. Be physical, hands on them, squeeze them, and then try to rip them down.

And DB drills, we'll do the same thing. They're going to work on their mesh drill, backpedaling, open it up and getting meshed with the receiver. Goal is to stay hip-to-hip with the DB placing inside side arm in a receiver's armpit. Jam initially to knock off course, chop thigh board of receiver to maintain mesh. So we want to make sure we have our hand on that thigh board. Stay meshed, hip-to-hip, eyes are on receiver's arms. Catch indicator when raised. Can run variables speeds.