What are the best red zone plays in 5v5 flag football?
Double slants. Inside the ten there is no deep route worth running, so the answer is two receivers breaking inside on the same side, both catchable within five yards. At 5v5 the defense still only has four players to compress, so the quick inside break beats them before anybody can rally to it.
Three answers, in the order to try them
- Start here
Quick Slants
Start here
Two inside breaks live within five yards. The near defender cannot take both and there is nobody behind him to help, because at five a side there is nobody spare to put there.
- If they collapse inside
Spot
If they collapse inside
A corner, a sitter and a flat route squeezed into one quarter of a short field. It gives the quarterback three options at three different spots without asking any receiver to run past the end line.
- If one defender has the corner alone
Smash
If one defender has the corner alone
The same high-low as anywhere else, run with the goal line behind it instead of open grass. The hitch sits at the goal line and the corner breaks toward the pylon, so both routes finish in bounds and in the end zone.
What changes at this size
A short field with only four defenders in it
Everybody says the red zone shrinks the field, which is true, but at 5v5 it shrinks the field for a defense that was already short of bodies. Four defenders covering a twenty-yard-deep space is tight, but it is not the wall an eleven-a-side red zone is, and that changes which plays are worth calling. Quick inside breaks still work here because there is nobody sitting in the middle waiting for them. What genuinely disappears is depth: every route that needs more than about eight yards to develop is now running into the back of the end zone, so the vertical concepts that carried your drive stop existing at exactly the moment you need points. The other thing to know is that the goal line itself becomes a defender. A receiver running a route that finishes out of the back of the end zone has taken himself out of the play, which is the most common wasted call in youth flag football.
When not to call it
Outside the twenty
These are all short-field concepts. Run them at midfield and you have voluntarily given up two thirds of the field you were allowed to use.
When your routes finish out of the back
The most common wasted call in youth flag is a receiver running a route that ends behind the end line. Check the depth of every route against the distance to the goal, every single time.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the flag football play creator, collect them in the football playbook maker, and print football play cards so every player knows them come Saturday.
Draw any of these in about a minute
Open the designer, change the routes, save it to your playbook.
Open the designerRelated questions
What are the best red zone plays in 5v5 flag football?
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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.