How do you stop the sweep in 5v5 flag football?
In 5v5 flag football you stop the sweep by giving one defender outside leverage and never letting him lose it. Nobody may block, so the sweep is a pure footrace to the corner, and the only thing that beats speed in a footrace is an angle. Your outside defender attacks the ball carrier's outside shoulder and turns him back inside; everybody else rallies from the inside out, to a point behind the ball rather than at it. Rushing harder makes it worse, because in a five-player defense a rusher is a fifth of everything you have.
This is where the down was lost. Your LB took the shortest line to where the ball was, which is always a line that finishes behind where the ball is going. Once it is outside your outside man, nothing on this field catches it, and every yard after this point was conceded three seconds earlier.
Why the sweep keeps working in 5v5
There is nobody to beat, only somewhere to be
Blocking is illegal in 5v5, so the three players who are not carrying the ball can only run their own defenders away from the play. Your edge defender is never going to be contacted and never going to be held. That makes contain the easiest technique in this format to execute and the easiest to talk yourself out of, because standing still while the ball runs at you feels like doing nothing.
Five defenders and four eligible receivers is the whole budget
Every defender you assign to the run is a defender not covering somebody, and there is exactly one spare. Give the edge to a player who also has the widest receiver and you have quietly asked one child to do two jobs on the same snap. The reason a sweep beats a 5v5 defense is usually that nobody was free to take the edge, not that the edge player was slow.
A rusher costs you the answer
Send one player at the quarterback and the four who are left are matched one for one with four receivers, which means the edge belongs to somebody who is also chasing a route. Teams that rush every down and cannot stop the sweep are not two separate problems. They are one problem, and the sweep is where it shows up.
Contain is a job, and nobody was given it
Every coach knows somebody has to have the edge. Almost nobody says a name out loud before the snap, so on the play it turns out to be whoever guessed. A responsibility that is understood in general and assigned to nobody in particular is not a responsibility, and the sweep is the play that finds that out first.
Running at the ball feels like defense, and it is the thing that loses
It is the instinct every child has and every adult rewards from the sideline. But running at where the carrier is now is running at where he used to be, and the shortest line to a moving target always arrives behind it. The defender who wins the edge is the one running to a spot the ball has not reached yet.
An angle is the only thing that beats speed
You cannot coach a slower player into catching a faster one, and pretending otherwise is why the same team beats you twice. What you can do is stand somebody where the fast player wants to go and make him turn. A turn costs him more than it costs you, and every yard of that turn is a yard your slower defenders get back.
The same play, fitted two ways
Same offense, same eleven-or-five defenders, same alignment. One defender's angle is the entire difference between the two pictures.
- The wrong angleBefore5v5: the LB crosses the carrier's face and the run gets past him.
The LB goes to the football. By the time he arrives the football has moved, and there is nobody behind him.
- The right angleAfter5v5: the LB keeps his leverage and turns the run back inside into the rallying defender.
The LB works to a spot the ball has not reached yet and keeps it inside him. The run turns back into everybody else.
The turn is the tackle. Nobody has touched anybody here. The carrier has simply run out of the direction he wanted, and the defenders arriving from inside get to him while he is deciding.
Three ways to own the edge, and what each one costs
There is no version of this that is free. Each of these takes something from somewhere else on the field, and which one is right depends on who your fastest player is and what the offense has shown you so far.
Force with the corner
Where it excelsYour fastest defender owns the edge, so the ball never reaches the sideline and the sweep dies where it starts. It is the simplest version to teach because the player doing the hard job is the one most likely to be able to do it.
Exposed · deepThe corner who forces is the corner who is no longer behind anything. Sweep action followed by a throw over his head is the counter, and a team that has it will find this within two drives. In a format with one spare defender, that throw is usually uncovered rather than contested.
Force with the underneath defender, corner stays home
Where it excelsYour deep shell never breaks. You will not lose a game by giving up a forty-yard touchdown while chasing a running play, which at this age is the worst way to lose one and the one coaches remember.
Exposed · the flatA slower defender is now alone on the edge against their fastest player. The sweep still gets turned back inside, but it gets turned back eight yards downfield instead of two, and on a short field that difference is a first down every time.
Spill it inside
Where it excelsThe outside defender takes an inside path on purpose and everybody rallies from the inside out, turning a sideline race into a pile of bodies. Against a team with one fast player and nothing else, it is the most efficient answer on this list.
Exposed · the middle underneathSpilling means your inside defenders are moving sideways on every snap. A counter, or a carrier patient enough to cut back, runs straight through the space they have just left, and there is nobody behind it because you spent your spare defender on the edge.
At 5v5, force with the underneath defender
You have five defenders and four eligible receivers, so you cannot afford to spend your deep help on a running play. Give the edge to whoever is already nearest that sideline underneath and leave the corner where he is. It concedes a few yards on the sweep and concedes nothing over the top, which is the right way round at this size. At 7v7 you have the bodies to force with the corner instead, and at 11v11 you have a safety to clean up behind him.
What to say at practice
- 1
Name the edge out loud, both sides, every snap
One player on each side says "I have the edge" before the ball moves. Ten seconds a down, and at this age it is most of the fix on its own. A job nobody has said out loud belongs to nobody.
- 2
Aim at the outside hip, never at the ball
The edge defender runs at the carrier's hip nearest the sideline, not at the football. The check a coach can shout from thirty yards away is simple: if you can see the sideline over his shoulder, he is in the wrong place.
- 3
Everybody else runs to a spot behind the ball
Inside defenders do not chase the carrier, they run to a point a few yards behind where he is going, so the turn the edge forces runs him into somebody. Chasing from directly behind is how five defenders end up in a line, all of them one step late.
- 4
The edge man is never the one who pulls the flag
Say it exactly like that. A defender who wants to make the play is a defender who leaves his post to go and get it, and the moment he does, the sideline is open. His job finishes when the ball turns inside.
What a good offense does about it
They start motioning to get the edge before the snap
Motion is how a 5v5 offense turns a sweep into a head start. Your answer is not to chase it: the edge belongs to whoever ends up widest on that side when the ball moves, so the two outside defenders trade the job as the motion crosses. Practise the trade at walking pace until the handover is boring.
They run it at your best defender on purpose
Good coaches do this, because they know you will not move him. If your edge player is also your best cover defender, the sweep is a way to make him choose. Put him where the ball is going and accept that somebody else has to cover, rather than asking him to do both and watching him do neither.
It works once and you change everything
One sweep for fifteen yards is not evidence of anything except that eleven-year-olds are inconsistent. Change your call after the second one, not the first. A defense that reacts to every play stops being a defense and becomes a sequence of guesses.
When this is the wrong fix
When the sweep is bait
A good offense runs the sweep to make you widen, then throws or runs back inside the space you left. If a team has scored on the sweep twice and comes out in the same look a third time, expect the counter. The fix is not to stop playing the edge, it is to make sure the inside defenders stay home while the edge does its job alone.
When your edge player cannot be trusted to stay outside
The whole answer depends on one defender never letting the ball get outside him, not once, not to make a highlight. A player who cannot resist chasing the ball is the wrong player for the job however fast he is, and no amount of repetition fixes it inside one season.
When you are already winning by three scores
Selling out to stop a two-yard run is how a comfortable game becomes an uncomfortable one. Play the deep part of the field, make them run it, and let the clock do the work. A sweep that gains six yards and stays in bounds is a sweep that helped you.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the football playmaker, collect them in the flag football playbook builder, and print wristband play cards so every player knows them come Saturday.
Draw it for your own team
Open the designer at 5v5, put your defenders where this page says, and print it so everybody shows up on Saturday knowing the same thing.
Open the free play designerRelated questions
How do you stop the sweep in 5v5 flag football?
Should I rush the quarterback if they keep running the sweep?
Who should have contain in 5v5 flag football?
What is the difference between containing and spilling a sweep?
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Coach Ray Carroll
Coaches 5v5 flag football from kindergarten through 7th grade in San Mateo and San Carlos, California, and built RC Football to design, teach and print the plays his own teams run.