4 Wide Gun, Half Roll Protection

SW,

I slide protect by sliding to the call side, alot. I know the conventional thinking is to slide away, but who says it is written in stone?

Coach Easton

Being a passing team, we see twists and stunts fairly often. Because of that, we practice for it every day. We have a drill called the 4.5 Second Drill. My 5 o-linemen get in the huddle and call the snap count. I take the other linemen who are not in the drill and arrange them into a 6 or 7 man front. I have about 15 different kinds of twists, stunts, and blitzes written on cards that I show to the defense before every play. Then I take a kid and have him stand back where the QB would be in our shotgun formations. The purpose of the drill is very simple - the o-line has to keep the defense out for 4.5 seconds. The kid playing QB only has two options. #1 He can step up in the pocket or #2 he can roll right or left if the OT seals the DE into the C gap. If the defense tags the kid playing QB before 4.5 seconds, the o-line has to do pushups. If the o-line holds them out, the defense has to do pushups.

As far as technique goes, we have three pass protection techniques we use depending on allignment of the defensive player to be blocked:

1. Soft Post - This is used when the guy you are blocking is head up on you. Basically, you just pop up out of your stance and let the defensive player come to you

2. Hard Post - Used when the guy you are blocking is outside shade to gap allignment. On the snap, you take a hard lateral step to the man and let him come to you.

3. Kick Slide - Used by an OT to block a defensive player in a wide technique (wide 5 to an 8 or 9). Player will drop their outside foot while keeping their shoulders square to the LOS.

Also, our rule for d-line stunts is that the o-lineman whose man "leaves" is responsible for calling out "Switch". The o-lineman next to him will stay with his man until he hears "switch" and then will pass his man to the o-lineman next to him and wait for the twister to come. For example, let's say we have d-linemen in a 2 and a 5 technique. The 2 tech crashes the B gap hard and the 5 tech loops to the A gap. In this scenario, the OG will stay with the 2 tech. The OG does not know that there is a twist on. For all he knows, the 2 tech is just shooting a gap. When the 5 tech loops to the inside, the OT must call out "switch" because his man has left. When the OT calls out "switch", the OG will pass the 2 tech to the OT and then wait for the looping 5 tech to come to him.

IMO, the most important way to beat the twist or the zone blitz is to get your kids to stay home. Twists and zone blitzes work because o-linemen have a tendency to lock in on one player and then want to chase that player. When your hogs are chasing players, that is going to leave a vacated area that a twisting D-lineman or a zone blitzer will readily fill. In my admittedly limited experience, the only way to accomplish that is to practice it every single day so that it becomes committed to muscle memory. Eventually, the kids will pick up the twists and zone blitzes automatically without even thinking about it.

SW,

some teams will do that hal roll protection when being threatened with a double A gap blitz. The QB will roll to the call side and the line will block the the gap to the roll side. A back or TE is reponsible for the edge. Actually the Qb does more of a 1/4 roll, just enough to get him away from the potential of having a guy coming free on the backside.

Another thing that we do to get our guys fired up is to make them look forward to blocking teams that blitz alot.

Rather than fostering an "Oh no! Here they come" mentality, I want my big uglies saying, "All right, here they come! We're gonna pick up the blitz (or the stunt) and then we're going to score!" When my guys get a little panicky, I just tell them that eventually, the defense is going to pay for sending 6 guys and trying to cover our 5 receivers man-to-man or by doing goofy stuff on the LOS.

Get your guys to believe that when the defense blitzes, that is a tremendous opportunity for a big play or even a TD for the offense.

What a great group of posts, guys. Thanks.

Govertical, I love that drill. I was trying to envision the best way to do it, and that makes a lot of sense.

One of the things that jumped out at me while watching film was that it was supposed to be a half-roll setting up behind the T, but in reality the QB was pulling up in the B-gap, or even over the G. What was happening was that (1) the roll-side T was working to the outside hip of the DE, inviting the inside rush, but then he'd get into trouble because the QB would not be getting to the appropriate aiming point, and they would get front side pressure, (2) the backside people were using a hinge technique, but because the QB wasn't getting far enough over to the front side, this was creating a substantial amount of backside pressure, and (3) the combination of the set up point, uncovered OL pulling out to the backside, and DL twists created pressure up the middle.

I think that in addition to adding a zone element to their big on big protection (uncovered guys staying home and looking for twists rather than pulling out to the BS, and covered guys passing off twists using "switch" calls), we really need to pound into the QB that the protection only works if he gets to the point we're trying to protect. In fact, I agree that using some full sprint as well as the half roll would both help the protection scheme in general, by discouraging the inside twists and stunts, and help the QB, specifically, to get used to getting a bit further out on his drop.

Coach Easton,

I am with you 100%. That is exactly what I said when I first looked at their tapes. I think with some small tweaks to their protection scheme, and strict adherence by the QB to setting up on his "spot," we can correct the few problems they had last year and do very well. Thanks again for your input.

I love that play. What is your protection scheme for it out of 4 wide?