Another great issue of The Huddle is up, this one on footwork. Here's a basic thing from Chris Talarico's entry that struck me:

As for individual footwork "moves," one that can help make cuts sharper is planting off your inside foot instead of your outside foot (or a cross-over step). For example, say you're setting up a cut to the left by heading to your right. When you're ready to change direction, the typical move is to jab your right foot out to plant and push off to the left. Try this instead: place your last step with your left foot under your center of gravity, or more to the right of where it would land if you were running straight ahead. Rotate your hips hard to the left, and swing your right leg around to make your next step roughly 90 degrees from your original path. It will also help to get low and dip your left shoulder as you make the move. You should see that this will allow you to change direction quicker than with a jab step.

I can't believe this has never occurred to me. I've always been a "plant-and-push off the outside foot" guy. You'd think all those years of cleats blown on the outside seam would have been a tip-off.

Anyway, I had to take this idea for a test drive. I laced up my cleats, warmed up, and ran a three-cone drill my old way. Scored my usual pathetic time. Then I ran it the new way and took off a half-second. On my first try. While actually having to *think* about where to put my feet. Cool.

So I went back and read my old turning post, and rewatched the Jackie Battle combine YouTube video, replaying his three-cone bit over and over. Sure enough, his turns drive entirely off the inner foot. It really looks like his outer foot just taps down. I should have noticed that earlier.

I continue to mull over Turning It, which I linked to a couple days ago. If you blew it off then, go read it now. I particularly like the "Strength Before Speed" section, but there's all kinds of gems in there:

One of the fastest ways to increase a football player's speed and running efficiency is to get him to run with his eyes. The head acts as an anchor if the eyes aren't first looking at the target. This forces a runner to get out of position when he changes direction, causing the shoulders to line up improperly and affecting body orientation. So we stress that when players set a foot to turn, their eyes should immediately find the target. This simple cue can fix some of the most complex problems in running mechanics.

That leapt out at me, having just been advised the day before that I should work on "finding the back cone." I used to know how to do that, before 15 years of handling took over my game. Should be a fun skill to rediscover. Anyway, this is what really got me thinking over the past couple days:

There are far too many good drills out there to cover them all. They can be as simple as the pro-shuttle that the NFL Combine uses, where athletes sprint back and forth over a specified distance (typically 20 yards), or as complex as a cone drill with five or more turns. The key is to remember that football speed is the ability to change direction and accelerate quickly, not how quickly someone can run a 40-yard sprint. We focus on the drills that will develop fast-twitch lateral movement over straight-line speed.

So what are these drills? I e-mailed the guy for a list, but haven't gotten a response. Oh well. I did find a couple interesting things in Googling around, though.

First up is this YouTube video of Jackie Battle's performance in the NFL Combine. The three-cone drill (which Battle demonstrates at 2:02 of that video, and which is described here) is one I'm definitely going to add to the mix.

Second is this Michael Boyle article on NFL Combine training (PDF), specifically focusing on the 40. Great article, too much good stuff to excerpt any one paragraph, but the key observation here is that the 40 is a test of acceleration, not speed. You should take that into consideration, along with the size of your playing field and how you move on it, before deciding how you want to strike the balance between acceleration, speed, and endurance in your training.