How do you beat the rush in 5v5 flag football?
Throw before he arrives, and remember he started seven yards away. In 5v5 there is no blitz: the rules put the rusher off the ball, so a quarterback who gets rid of it on his third step is never under pressure. The answer is a concept where the read is made before the snap, not a concept that beats extra defenders, because there are no extra defenders.
Three answers, in the order to try them
- Start here
Quick Slants
Start here
Everybody breaks inside within three yards and the quarterback picks his receiver before the snap. The ball is gone on the third step whatever the rusher does, which is all that is ever required against a rusher who started seven yards away.
- If the rusher is fast
Bubble
If the rusher is fast
Stop trying to beat him and remove him from the play. The receiver steps back behind the line and catches it immediately with the whole field in front, which turns a rush problem into a defender-in-space problem for them.
- If he is beating you to a spot
Sprint Out
If he is beating you to a spot
Move the launch point instead of standing still. A 5v5 rusher taking a straight line at the quarterback has committed to where the quarterback WAS, and sprinting out means he arrives at an empty patch of grass.
What changes at this size
There is no blitz at five a side
This is the most misunderstood situation in flag football, because coaches import the word from the eleven-a-side game where it means something else. A 5v5 rusher has to begin seven yards behind the line, and most leagues allow one. That is not pressure, it is a countdown, and it is generous: a quarterback has roughly two and a half seconds without anybody doing anything clever. So the problem is never that you are outnumbered. It is that your receivers are running routes that take longer than the countdown, or that your quarterback is waiting for somebody to come open instead of throwing to a spot. Fix the timing and the rush disappears. If a league does allow two rushers, the arithmetic flips in your favour rather than against it, because two of their four defenders are now not covering anybody.
When not to call it
When the rush is not actually the problem
Most 5v5 drives die because a route took too long, not because a rusher arrived. Before you rebuild the plan around pressure, count out the seconds in practice and check that the rush is really what is beating you.
Against a defense that drops everybody
If they are not rushing at all, these concepts give away free yards underneath and nothing more. Against a four-man drop the zone page is the right one.
Take it to your team
Draw your plays in the flag football play creator, collect them in the playbook maker, and print printable 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
How do you beat the rush in 5v5 flag football?
Related guides
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.