I signed up to play in a youth football league in 4th grade after I found out that the best guys I played no pads nerf tackle every day with had been playing & figured I needed to close the gap with the 2 guys who were better than me.  I mean, I envied their ability to beat someone over the head with the ball and maintain balance in order to shed tackles - I couldn’t do that.

We had moved in between my signing up & getting my getting picked so I got notified after inadvertently missing the first 3 weeks of practice.

I remember being in line watching a tackle drill on my first day of practice and each one I watched convinced me more & more that everyone on our team sucked on offense.

It was finally my turn - In my head I already had it planned out, I’m faking hard left, then going right.  And that’s what I did - basically a jump stop a yard before contact leaning left with a hard sideways cut right.  I pushed the guy by me with my left hand & sprinted upfield & started to hear the entire team laugh.  (Turns out the guy I juked was the best player on the team & he didn’t even touch me).

i went to the back of the line - still thinking the entire team would get picked last in our neighborhood backyard games when the coach stopped me.

’this is a tackling drill, son.  You need to run straight at the defender so they can practice tackling’

Me:  Are you serious?, coach?

he was serious.

Dumbest drill I could imagine.  Make yourself easy to tackle to help others learn to be good at tackling.

same dude blew me up (he was much taller & heavier than I was) on our next attempt.  It hurt a bit but, nothing I hadn’t felt before physically.

just mentally - to this day I think that drill is stupid.  No sane running back runs directly at a larger player with the same momentum without a juke.