crossover step in zone/toss

Your second step crosses beyond your center of gravity, but not beyond the outside foot.

REACH BLOCK

PURPOSE: Used to prevent a defender a defender from escaping laterally to playside. Drive defender off the ball and reach him later.

1. Step up and out with the near foot.
2. A.P. = playside arm pit.
3. 2nd step bisect the crotch.
4. Inside hand to chest.
5. 3rd step – outside defender’s shoe and upfield.
6. Control the playside shoulder.
7. Knock defender off the ball – work to get hips square.
8. Footwork – 1, 2-3, 2-3.


PS: This is how Nebraska taught it when they were great under
Osborne:

II. OUTSIDE ZONE BLOCKING (SPLITS NO MORE THAN 12-18"):

Our main objective on the outside zone play is to initially try to get the ball outside. With that in mind, we are trying to force a hook block on all down defenders.

All of our linemen that are covered with a down defender executes what we refer to as a “rip-reach block”.

To execute such a block, we have the covered linemen take a hard lateral stretch step to the call side. We want to out-flank the down defender on that first step.

On the second step, we allow our covered linemen to use a crossover step to the callside.

The next thing we have him do is rip his inside arm through the callside armpit of the defender, similar to the rip that a defensive lineman will sometimes use on a pass rush.

We want our covered lineman to lean on the defender after he rips through the armpit and force his stomach upfield. If he does not do this, then his stomach will be facing the sideline and he loses sight of the linebacker. He will now try to escape for the linebacker.

If the playside guard and tackle are both covered, the tackle would have his defender by himself. He would go through the stretch, crossover step and rip technique, and then lean on his man, not thinking about escaping for the linebacker.

The backside tackle, upon getting to the line of scrimmage, checks if the backside guard is covered. If he is, the tackle will work with the guard even if he is also covered.

The uncovered linemen use a technique that we refer to as “pull and ovetake”. Before we can overtake the down defender to the call, we first must get our helmet past him, then get on him and roll him upfield.

The pull must be a lateral pull. We want to gain depth and distance on our first step on the pull. The one foot split is essential if you are going to get the overtake.

There will be occasions when the covered linemen can’t get un-hooked from the covering defender. If this does happen, the pull and overtaking offensive lineman should keep pulling and at times will have to come all the way around for the linebacker.

As mentioned earlier, the backside tackle works with the guard if the guard is covered. This means he would pull and overtake the man on the guard.

Some teams use in-line stunts to try to disrupt our zone schemes. The secret offensively is technique. If two adjacent offensive linemen are covered and the proper stretch is taken on the first step, it will become natural to pick up slants and loop-arounds.