Welcome to 5v5flagfootball.com. I’m Coach Craig, and I drop flag football knowledge for FREE.
Competitive Football Background
I love football. My playing career began at age 7 and continued through high school and college; earning All-State, All-Conference, and All-District honors, recruiting visits, scholarship offers, etc.. The tackle game was very familiar to me. However, my only experience with flag/touch was from 7on7, and I had never formally coached. That changed quickly when my son decided to switch from soccer to football in the 3rd grade.
Learning the 5v5 Flag Game
He played for another coach his first season. I watched from the stands. It was immediately apparent why the flag game is growing so quickly. It’s fast-paced, accessible, and a great intro for new players. He had a lot of fun running around with his friends. They learned how to make handoffs, pull flags, catch a football, and score touchdowns. As he got older, I noticed a disturbing (to me) trend.
As soon as the kids were old enough to effectively throw the ball downfield (around 4th grade), the offenses changed. The best play for most teams was simple: the QB throws it to tallest receiver. Every team called it, over and over. It’s boring, and it reduces most of the kids on the field to bit players.
After watching that play out for as long as I could, I decided to leave the comfort of my folding chair for a spot on the sideline as Head Coach.
Our team is a rec-level team is made up of a bunch of neighborhood friends. We play in a YMCA league and compete in the occasional tournament. The tournaments are serious business. The select clubs (some that compete at nationals) typically beat up on the rec teams in pool play and then face each other in the knockout rounds. Most of these select clubs teams take the strongest, fastest kids in the area to win games through sheer athleticism. The rec teams brave enough to enter the competition are typically going home early.
That’s not really football, not the kind I love to play, coach, and watch.
A Fresh Approach to Flag Football
Football is a game of strategy and skill. If we were going to compete with the tournament teams, we had to develop a new system that would allow us to keep the score close without resorting to recruiting, tryouts, cuts, high fees, or a huge time commitment.
Here’s what we did:
Step 1: Recruit other dads to help coach. An Assistant Coach (or Coaches) makes a world of difference. They can help you organize practice, run drills, game plan, make adjustments, etc.. Our Assistant Coaches make sure everyone on the team gets better every week.
Step 2: Search the internet for flag-specific playbooks that score points while also scheming every position open (even the slower kids or the shorter kids or the ones who can’t catch reliably yet). The options we found were pretty minimal. Some of it was obvious AI slop (it takes a lot of nerve to charge money for that). Almost all of it was locked behind a paywall.
Step 3: Create new offensive and defensive playbooks that set players up for success no matter how naturally athletic they are. Everyone has a spot.
1I got Air Raid Certified under Coach Hal Mumme, the co-founder of the Air Raid Offense. That’s 80+ hours of coursework plus countless reps on the field. We also dove deep into defensive schemes to make our team unique and challenging to play against. The biggest influence on our defense is Coach Joe Daniel. I learned the 4-2-5 defense and Umbrella Principals from his podcast.
Step 4: Distill all those concepts down to an age appropriate 5-man playbook for flag football. We focused on the strategies that would spread the ball around, score a lot of points, keep our opponents out of the end zone, and give each kid their moment of glory (or at least a chance at it)!
The Results Speak for Themselves
Our team has had a lot of success with this system over 7+ seasons. We have never finished below .500 (including a couple of seasons with just one or two losses). We give the competitive teams a run for their money, and every now and then we take one down Little Giants style.
The playbook continues to evolve as our kids mature and the game changes. My hope for this site is that the playbook will live online after our boys are finished with flag. So I’m posting it all for the benefit of other coaches and their players.
The full playbook, the formations, all of the plays, drills, practice plans, install method, and other content are all FREE. If you want all of the content in a printable format with pro-style call sheets, player rotation tools, and wristband inserts; I charge a small fee for the download.
I hope you’re able to find something here that makes you a better coach. Feel free to share what you find with others. Together we can grow the game and build the next generation of champions.
PS- I help coaches and parents 1:1 too!
Email me at 5v5flagfootball(at)gmail.com