Viral youth football clip draws outrage from professional athletes and analysts
Where are the adults in this situation?
That’s what many are asking after a viral video clip was recently posted online featuring two children colliding head-to-head with their helmets.
As if the lack of proper fundamentals isn’t enough, there doesn’t appear to be any coach that intervenes and corrects the brutal head launching featured in the video below.
Perhaps even worse, the person that uploaded the video seems to enjoy watching these children potentially give each other head trauma.
Are they too young to be doing this drill? pic.twitter.com/lA8G9U86Wx
— Young Black Jesus (@Zeekncashe) May 11, 2021
After the video started to make the rounds, a mix of former professional athletes and analysts shared their thoughts on the clip:
This isn't funny at all. This culture at the youth level needs to change https://t.co/coO65QZlPY
— Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) May 11, 2021
Attention all parents! If your kid is doing this drill. Take your child off the field and don’t go back to those stupid coaches. Coaches like this aren’t safe and ruin the image off football. https://t.co/JkXnYRyeaf
— Torrey Smith (@TorreySmithWR) May 12, 2021
Words cannot begin to express my anger watching this clip…this is not football & whoever put this idiotic drill together & allowed an obvious mismatch should never be allowed near a football field or youth sports forever! This is child abuse disguised as competition https://t.co/hxFmECY2fS
— Joel Klatt (@joelklatt) May 12, 2021
Whoever is responsible for this 💩 should be put in jail. Immediately https://t.co/Sz7f2Ei6ej
— Taylor Twellman (@TaylorTwellman) May 12, 2021
If you truly loved football, let alone these BOYS, you would never allow this to happen.
These coaches should be fired yesterday. https://t.co/rs65RBvngt
— Ross Tucker (@RossTuckerNFL) May 12, 2021
Dummies gone Dumb (Coaches) https://t.co/ocjbOrpmyP
— Marcus Spears (@mspears96) May 12, 2021
Idk what organization or program this is but they all should be banned until they get proper coaching. Ridiculous https://t.co/TKeCGDkBOv
— Shawne Merriman (@shawnemerriman) May 12, 2021
Every coach associated with this – or who conducts drills like this – should be banned from coaching youth football. Despicable. https://t.co/LaTCtO5MYr
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) May 12, 2021
Anyone who's teaching kids—especially kids that age—to lead with their heads when they hit should not be coaching football. https://t.co/4B046hTvjv
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) May 11, 2021
If anyone is wondering Taylor Twellman was an outstanding US soccer player who’s career ended with a concussion at the age of 30. He’s been an advocate since for brain injury/concussions in sports.
I wonder if the Twellman family still has an indoor soccer facility in the northwest part of St. Louis?
Kids this a little younger than this can play tackle football by themselves, with no pads, on a grassy big mowed field and be 10 times safer using their own common sense. From 8 years old up to around 10 years old, if I’m remembering my own neighborhood games right. Then we played touch every saturday for about 3 years. We did this every saturday for about 5 years and didn’t have a single injury….not one. We knew by ourselves what was acceptable tackling and later one-hand or two-hand touch ended the play.
@the above comment about the drill. Here are adults with zero common sense, supervising boys. Sad that adults can be so stupid, cruel, un-natural, traumatic, and dismissive to personal safety and long-term-physical and mental health.
I know his cousin. Next time I see him I’ll ask.
I find it comical that professional athletes are condemning this. Every running back in the league lowers his head and makes contact with the crown of his helmet yet only the defender gets penalized and ejected from the game. If it’s contact with the crown of the helmet it doesn’t matter what side of the ball its on.
yep
If only there was a difference between young kids and NFL players
Exactly. There’s no such thing as targeting on a ball carrier. If anything he was running too high. If anything, coach the defender to go for the legs next time
Odd time for a rant against the targeting rule. These are kids, not professionals.
gators win, I’m not sure if you realized, but these aren’t NFL running backs. So what does or doesn’t happen in the NFL probably doesn’t apply here.
UrineIdiot
Gators (moral) win, you must be one of the coaches.
It looks to me like that the kid running the ball, even at that age, appears to have been playing at least a little while. The kid tackling is clearly just getting started and thus get completely trucked. This creates a couple of issues the first being the risk and the second being the potential loss of a kid to the game that doesn’t want a part of that again.
I am sure some of you will defend those idiots, but this drill has no application at that age and they are way beyond where they should be at this point with that kid on the right.
I have run these drills numerous times through the years. I have no problem with the drill in football practice. My biggest issue with this is how quickly the coaches laughed….as if they knew exactly what was about to happen. Not a fan of that at whatever age group this was….or lining up the more advanced kids vs. those just starting out….in this specific drill.
stupid, just stupid. the coaches should be fired.
Only thing wrong is buddy stay straight up if you got low you don’t get your dome rocked
Making a big deal out of nothing other than bad technique
They. Are. Children. First and foremost, that’s the only argument that really needs to be used here. But even putting that aside…
Idiotic comments like this will be the reason football dies. Head trauma is a very real, deadly issue in CFB and the NFL. It’s nearly impossible for the NFL to keep their insurance up because of CTE cases, and are only able to stay covered for now due to paying terribly high rates. It’s also been discovered that head injury in early years is a high indicator of having issues later in life, so much so that a ton of leagues are advocating for no contact before high school level.
When the entire sport is doing everything they can–investing billions into head trauma and safety research, revamping rules and instituting new ones to reduce collisions, educating all levels of play on safety expectations, etc–to keep football alive, it’s nothing short of idiotic to have drills like this.
And answer for your long reply .. fundamentals
And if you’re worried about your kids getting hurt don’t let them playFootball is a punishing game and it’s not for everyone
A short sighted response to a very dangerous situation. Some of these children do not have the experience yet to provide a fundamental tackle. The drill is dangerous because it requires the tackler to run around an obstacle before he can square to provide a tackle. The larger runner intentionally dropped his helmet to hit the smaller player. Then the coach appeared to encourage the play even when the tackler was obviously slow to get up. These are children, not playthings.
Making a big deal out of a coach who puts his players at risk. Bad technique from a 6-8 year old is terrible coaching. Your post shows you need better coaching yourself.
So Practicing angle tackling is a risk I wonder what they’re supposed to do in the game I could see it if it was 12-year-olds versus eight-year-olds but y’all are being ridiculous about football As part of the game you have to learn a tackle There are flag leagues all over the country For those that don’t want to tackle
Internet tough guys are just comical.
So enlighten me what are they supposed to do in the game
It’s a game one did write one did wrong one get punished for his mistakes The other got our appreciation for running Horne doing the right thing once again kids or Jesus does not matter football is the same fundamentals for everyone If you don’t think your kid is ready don’t put them out there When it’s game time you don’t get to pick your match up nine times out of 10 somebody across the line is gonna be bigger than you and stronger than you Faster than you and most of the time don’t wanna embarrass you worried about your kid put them in soccer or softball or whatever
At least throw in a random period every now and then just so we can try to make sense of it.
Thank you! Whew.
You are definitely WRITE about that. I thought I was reading William Faulkner except I’m pretty sure Faulkner knew the difference between write and right.
The fact fact that you don’t know the difference between write and right just shows why your uninformed opinion should be ignored. I’m going to take a wild shot and say if you ever even played the game it was no further than a benchwarmer in high school. Watch the clip again and explain why the coach congratulated the player who showed illegal fundamentals but never coached the kid that had bad fundamentals. “Get up your okay”,after being speared in the head just shows both of your and his lack of understanding.
Thank you, my sentiment exactly.
First, that is horrible to watch
Second, according to the rules that is the definition of targeting.
Third, since it was the ball carrier & not the defender that lowered his head that would not have been called targeting in college or the NFL.
If the big kid hadn’t slammed his helmet into the little guy this wouldn’t look so bad. Little guy that got trucked had his head up.
What you usually see in this drill is their stud DL or LB crushing some 7th string RB. Rarely do you see a coach putting his 1s against each other.
Why are there people on here with their panties in a wad? Have you never been to youth football games? Have you never seen a kid get run over before? This has been happening since the first football was made.
I didn’t let my 2 sons play until I thought they were physically mature enough to handle it. They played 4 or 5 years and decided that was enough. I could not have been any happier.
People are getting their panties in a wad for several reasons. If that play occurred during a college or pro game it would be targeting. Even more, there would have been plenty of people who would have wondered if he had a concussion after how he acted after the hit. What that kid got was a lack of obvious coaching and a “Get up, your okay”. It’s the total lack of understanding of the danger he put those children in that has me choked. That and the fact of lack of concern for when the child was injured.
Let me be perfectly clear. I in no way condone this crap. My point is why all of a sudden we have this moral outrage. These coaches are doing it because that is how they were coached.
You are also missing the point that the little dude didn’t have bad form. He had his head up. The brutality came in where the coaches paired a RB that was 30-40% larger than his tackler and he head butted the little guy. And how many RBs or lead blockers for that matter get targeting flags?
At this age, kids should be learning the game and yes, fundamentals. However, when you take a kid that is one clearly bigger and appears to have played some and another kid that looks like he is on the field for the first time and pair them off, it shows a complete lack of judgement on the part of the coach. It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out what was going to occur. I played, my son played, I understand the brutality of the game, but this wasn’t the time for it. Laughing and going nuts about the hit just shows what boneheads are coaching that team.
Facts!
I’ve been saying this for a while now but this is why there are less kids participating in football. Parents are choosing to enroll their kids in soccer, basketball or baseball because of the risk of serious injury in football. Eventually the lack of talent reaches to college football which makes the games less exciting.
Hmm…not sure. The physics of doing this to a 40lb kid is a bit different than with a 200lb man. I would need more details before outright condemning it.
Someone below pointed out that the coaches are coaching the way they were coached. And they’re correct. That said there is no league out there unless it is so remote they don’t have the internet where the coaches attend a meeting and the danger of head injuries is pointed out and there are policies outlined. Interested to know what the parents think on that team. You might find out they all think it’s nothing, they might be outraged.
That’s NOT a drill! That was an ERROR by Coaches and the kid! No way should you be teaching the little ones to lead with their head. The little guy PLAYING defense was essentially DEFENSELESS! No excuse for this if it happened more than ONCE!
The coach was fired in 2020 when the incident happened. Obviously SDS, analysts and pro athletes don’t do their research. It’s almost like they look to Lebron as a leader when it comes to saying something without researching it first.
Why is this world filled with such pansies nowadays. People who have never even stepped on a football field are now telling us to quit tackling drills because someone might get hurt. Same mentality that made us get put on house arrest for a year. These kids need this kind of activity in their lives. They probably learned more in that five second drill than they learned through an entire year of online school.
Probably because scientific data has proven that repetitive concussions cause serious brain damage. It’s not a difficult concept.
Jock sniffers like this POS has no business being near a football field. Kids this age can play tackle ball, and can run this drill. The problem is there needs to be substantial time leading up to this by utilizing heads up training. Guarantee this guy never played ball or if he did he was riding the bench the whole time.
Too bad Bills pop Warner coach didn’t stop this prior to his drain bamage. Woulda been great if he coulda retained a bit of his faculties to enable a lucid thought once every few years.
Don’t you have a war to lose, freeloader…Too bad you didn’t become a statistic yet.
Young Black Jesus? Are you kidding me that kid is a freaking dipsh!t straight up. Sad to see kids getting taught improper technique but not nearly as sad as the goob who posted this.