Run North & South to Avoid Football Tackle

Series Summary

It seems so natural: some big guy is chasing you, so you run away to avoid him. Easy enough, right? But on the football field, there are eleven of these big guys chasing the person with the ball, and if you happen to be the ball carrier, you have to stay on the field until they tackle you or chase you off of the playing field. Unless of course you score a touchdown, then your own teammates might try to tackle you, but you will be so happy to have scored that you will hardly notice. But your team will not make it into the end zone on every play, so the ball carrier must try to stay standing for as long as they can in order to move closer to a touchdown on every play.

In this free series on football coaching, our championship coach Sean Hobson will show you ways to avoid being tackled so you can gain as many yards as possible when you carry the ball. He and his players demonstrate the jab step and stutter step to avoid contact altogether, then show you how to stay up once contact is made with such moves as the hit-and-spin and the stiff arm. You will also learn how to read your blocks and when to accelerate to avoid a tackle. Watch this series of videos and leave the defense in the dust.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about now is how to avoid being tackled. Now, that's easier said than done. But, one thing you can do is, obviously, just try to avoid the contact as much as possible. However, the main thing you always want to remember when you're running the ball is go north and south, up and down the field not side to side on the field (video demo). If this man is coming up, he can try to avoid the tackle by trying to out run him to the outside but we don't want him to go so far to the outside that he's running to the sideline. All this guy's going to do is continue to pursue him to the outside and make him run out of bounds. Now we have no gain. If he had just run up the field we would have gotten a good gain. So, you can run up the field and try to avoid being tackled but we want you to go north and south, not east and west and run us out of a play. Make sure you always remember that when you're trying to avoid the tackle."