8U Youth Football Team Season Status Before First Game

8U Youth Football Season Status Before Our First Game 8U team 15 players mostly rookies with a top tier tailback, fullback, and lineman. We are down to 13 now. Two players quit. Our fourth-round pick quit because of rides and possibly another team issue as a promise, and then we had a rookie player that did quit he did not like hitting or really playing football that much. We had four weeks practice up until today and that is down from our normal six weeks of practice. So it's kind of been a rush into this first game.  I'm coaching with my longtime coaching partner, since 2010. I am just casually helping this season with the offensive line and some other things on Defense. We've got another coach that we've coached with in the past and a dad that we've turned into an assistant coach / helper. We have good group of coaches this Fall 2022 season. Some team absence issues we are facing early are that we've got our top players out for the second and third game and because I've started casually coaching, I'm out of the 3rd and 4th game.  Since these are early games, we should be fine to work around these issues.  Our strategy / goal this season is to be one of the top four teams to get into the playoff’s championship tournament since many of our players are rookies and we're going to have some key absences on a few early games. These player absences can help the less experienced players get much needed game time to improve.  Struggles & Weaknesses 1. shotgun snap 2. backfield timing 3. blocking rules 4. contain on defense 5. arm tackling 6. position alignments 7. special teams 8. Timidness and mean gene 9. overall defenses needs more time 10. huddling breaking the huddle timeliness to get to the line of scrimmage 11. learning plays in a new formation 12. too much talking during practice and a little bit of lack of focus is hurting us Strengths 1. got a great group of kids 2. blocking by our bigger veterans is pretty good 3. two top running backs 4. pretty good defense for the lack of practice we've had 5. overall, even though we're tempted we still are pretty good hitters Check out all the free content at CoachParker.org with close to 400 youth football articles and and my YouTube channel with over 300 youth football coaching videos.    You can also visit my new youth football site at  https://youthfootballcoachingtips.com/  Join me on: http://www.facebook.com/youthfootball/  http://twitter.com/coachparker_org  http://youtube.com/stephenparker  https://anchor.fm/coachparker  Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!   Coach Parker is a youth football coach in Fort Worth, Texas.  He has been coaching pee wee tackle football for over 20 years in football little leagues in Texas and Colorado. Coach Parker has written many digital ebooks; youth football coaching playbooks on defense, offense, drills, 7 on 7, 8 Man football.  Stay tuned for more free youth football coaching podcasts from Coach Parker.    Contact Coach Parker anytime at https://coachparker.org/about-coach-parker/contact-me/