Dean Pees on Drills

Dean Pees, the DC from the Patriots. He gets asked all the time about drills. He said, I don't have set drills, I look at what we need to teach, or game plan, and make drills up. He also said drills like the tip drill is worthless.
The one thing I will tell you is find out what coverages and concepts you are going to put in. Then devise your drills around them. Sometimes we get caught up in the idea of drills and not necessarily how this is helping my kids get better at what we do(tip drill).

I break up my drills into 2 different parts:

1.Basic DB technique
-backpedal / basketball shuffle
-transitions and breaking on the ball
-defending a receiver
-getting off blocks

These drills can be used daily in your indy period, I have set drills that I use, and we do them every week. If we need to get better at something we emphasize that drill by using it more often.

2. Coverage concepts and progression
- these drills are a progression of how you are going to teach Corners and Safeties the specific coverage concepts you are going to use. I break the positions up and teach them while using the other as WRs to help. These are your made up drills or drills that teach specific coverage skills.