Back when we took over a program where we were at a huge talent deficiency, we needed to do things that would shorten the field offensively. We needed to lengthen the field defensively. Special teams was the way were were able to win games we should not have won on paper. A big part of this is blocking kicks.
If you look at big games of every level, special teams always play a factor. At the high school level special teams can give you an advantage over your opponent when you are at a talent deficiency. We won a lot of games over the years because we had really good special teams. We also lost a few because of poor special teams.
Block Kicks
Blocking kicks will help you win more football games. Get really good at blocking kicks. You can't just do this with scheme. You also have to teach your guys how to take the ball off the kicker's foot. When you block a kick, you are going to greatly shorten the field for your offense.
Most high school punt teams do not have an efficient operation. The snap is not necessarily very consistent. Every single punt should have guys going for a block. Few high school punters are good enough to punt a ball that is going to be returned. Less than 20% of the balls punted to us were returnable. That means on 4 out of 5 punts we were not going to have a chance to change momentum.
We made a decision we were going to block kicks. In our first year we blocked 9 punts. In our second year we blocked 11 punts in 11 games. We had one game where we blocked 3 punts. 4 blocked punts were returned for touchdowns. The other 7 gave us a short field.
We also blocked extra points. We won a game 28-27 on a blocked extra point. We won another game 36-35 because we returned an extra point for 2 points early in the game. Too many teams treat extra points as a play off. You can tell a lot about a team by the effort they give defending extra points.
