Week Two: Keeping a Dominant Team Hungry

This week I’m focusing on my 7th/8th grade team. Week 2 can really only be described one way:

Complete domination.

NFL Flag has a mercy rule once one team takes a 28-point lead. We reached 28-0 in the middle of the second quarter, so officially, the score was locked. But the kids still wanted to play football. So we kept playing.

We stopped blitzing. It didn’t matter. By the time the game ended, the actual score was 74-0. We scored 11 touchdowns, including three interception returns. We finished with six interceptions total. Exactly half of our completed passes went for touchdowns.

Everything seemed to work. Almost nothing went wrong. So what’s the problem?

Sometimes Winning Creates Its Own Problem

Put simply, the team we played was not on our level that day. That happens in youth flag football. Every season brings new rosters, new coaches, and players who may have never played together before. When a team like that runs into a group like mine—players who have spent multiple seasons together and are now really starting to hit their stride—the difference can be significant.

Games like this can be great for confidence. But there is such a thing as too much confidence. Your team needs to stay hungry. They need something they’re still trying to reach. A game like this can easily create the feeling that, “Nobody can beat us.”

That is exactly the feeling I don’t want. Because hunger is what drives improvement.

Find the Next Challenge

After our game, I spent some time with one of my quarterbacks—who also happens to be my son—watching another team in our division. They’re legitimately good. They have multiple capable quarterbacks, good athletes, and a lot of team speed. We are going to need our A-game when we play them.

That’s a good thing. A strong opponent gives the team something to prepare for. It gives me something to point toward when practice gets difficult or when players start feeling like what they’re doing is already good enough.

Because the next lesson is simple:

“Good Enough” Is Not Good Enough

As the team improves, my expectations increase with them.

A dropped pass that should have been caught gets coached harder.

A seven-yard out route that should have been run at 10 yards gets corrected.

A missed read in practice matters.

Poor spacing matters.

Lazy footwork matters.

At the beginning of a season, sometimes the message is simply: Let’s get organized. Let’s execute. Let’s play a good football game. But once a team reaches a certain level, the message changes. Now it becomes:

Pay attention to the details.

Do things correctly even when you can get away with doing them incorrectly.

Demand excellence from yourself.

Winning by a lot does not mean there is nothing left to coach. Sometimes it means you have to look even harder for the things that need improvement.

Don’t Let Success Create Complacency

Fortunately, I have a perfect example I can use with this team. Last spring, we played a team we believed we were clearly better than. We knew it.

And we lost. We dropped 11 passes in that game.

Eleven.

It remains one of the best examples I can give these players of what happens when you lose your focus.

Talent doesn’t guarantee anything. A strong roster doesn’t guarantee anything. Past success definitely doesn’t guarantee anything. You still have to execute.

That loss is something I can point back to whenever I feel the team getting a little too comfortable.

Keep Them Hungry

Confidence is good. Your players should believe they can win. They should believe in themselves and in their teammates.

But confidence has to be paired with standards.

Winning should never become an excuse to stop improving. After a game like this, my job isn’t to convince the team that they’re good. They already know that.

My job is to remind them how much better they can still become.

Find the details that need work.

Find the next challenge.

Find the motivation.

And keep the team hungry.