Coach Campbell, Youth Zone Concepts, or any one who wants to answer

Coach,

I coach 5th/6th graders (10-12) here in Texas and began employing zone concepts a couple of years ago with our kids.

The progression I've come up with uses Coach Campbell's system/terminology and starts with teaching the drive block using the near ear principle. Coach Campbell refers to this as Vertical Push which I simplified to "Push" blocking for my players. We utilize this for inside zone with our FB and TB.

From there we teach them to double team and then try to evolve that to combos, in which one blocker releases to the next level based on who's "on" and who's "up". I've found that at the youth level, we can be successful most of the time running inside, if we can effectively block the defenders with their hands on the ground. Most second level players are not disciplined enough yet to recognize types of flow much less any keys they might be asked to read. By enabling us to get movement on down defenders, we are often able to restrict the defense's ability to pursue even when we don't actually release to try to get a block at the second level.

Our blocking schemes as a rule never ask an o-lineman to block the playside linebacker, except when executing a "push" scheme block. We would rather utilize our fullback to accomplish this and use this scheme to try to get our young o-linemen to visualize the concept of "not chasing" linebackers, but letting the defender come to them. We then attempt to teach them combos utilizing Coach Campbell's "Part the Sea" (slow rotating zone) and "Circle the Wagons" concepts (fast rotating zone) depending on where the ball is being delivered. We run primarily an I/Gun based, two back offense. One slight change that I made to Coach Campbell's system is to have all covered linemen L-step rather than dropstep even on outside runs. I made this adjustment because most of our kids were unable to reach their defender coming upfield aggressively, which is very common at our level of play. By L-stepping to their near ear we feel like it gives us a better shot at stopping or slowing down their penetration, while maintaining the opportunity for a cutback by our back, much like a traditional stretch play. We do try to teach a dropstep for those zoning playside who are uncovered or on the backside of the play. Those are the three types of blocks we try to teach as we have not attempted a "next man over" and prefer to block "stretch-like" runs as mentioned previously.

We don't try to utilize any line calls except when calling blitz pickups in pass-pro, choosing to focus our teaching on getting our o-linemen to first know where and how we want the football to be run and then how there block relates to making that happen. It certainly takes time and lots of reps before the kids understand the benefit of combos instead of base or numbered blocking but usually by the end of the season, most of them begin to really "get it". I wasn't quite as involved as I wanted to (or should have been) in coaching this year's o-line because we were a little short handed as far as the number of coaches on my staff, but I intend to make development of our o-linemen my top priority going into next season.

The bottom line is yes, I do think it is possible to teach zone concepts at this age level, but you are definitely correct in assuming that it does take a lot of time and reps to do so. I certainly haven't perfected the teaching progression just yet, but I do think we're on the right track at least! Would love to discuss this with you further coach as either a Youth Football or Offensive Line Play forum topic.

Dave Hartman
CYFL Coach