Double Duty for the Double Screen (Drill)

By Ray Butler
Head Football Coach
Boston Latin School
Twitter: @BLSFootball1635

Governing bodies have become more restrictive on practice time, amount of contact, types of drills and many other things.  Players and I don’t blame them, don’t like to run just for the sake of running during conditioning.  My staff and I, essentially, needed to come up with a way to accomplish conditioning needs and still get X & O football time out of all of our practice periods, no matter what time of year or type of practice. We think we accomplished this through running one of our favorite plays, the Double Screen.

We believe the Double Screen as a conditioner has allowed us to involve all positions to be involved in a meaningful way, work in play related skills and develop a “Big Play” potential play that everyone is confident running.

We also believe that this is one of our most adaptable plays as far as what formations we wish to run it out of and what defenses we like to run it against.

Repping the Double Screen Concept

When we begin on day 1 and go over our practice format for the day, we install our Double Screen out of a 2 x 2 set verse cones.  We do not set the cones up in a particular defense per se, but rather the areas we wish to see the players get to.

Coaching Points:

• We usually run this from the 25 yard line
• Cones usually go about 5 yards and 10 yards from the LOS
• After player passes the second cone, they run through the end zone
• Players peel off to their side of the field so the next group can go right now
• Q1 has the ball snapped to him and runs the cadence, Q2 has the ball in his hand