zone blocking

COOL CLINIC TAPES ARE THE BEST!

Steve Snider

First and foremost, I would say that both methods have upsides and downsides. Year in and year out one may fit your players better than the other will. For myself and the current team I coach for I would say a man blocking scheme fits us extremely well. Now I do believe that different man blocking schemes have different rules and they all work if they are taught and executed correctly. The type of many scheme I have helped coach over the past five years is that of the traditional Delaware wing-t man blocking scheme.



This is a blocking scheme that utilizes leverage over anything else. There really is only one rule that is taught to guards, tackles, and tight ends. This rule is very simple Gap, Down, Backer (GDB). If there is a player in their gap they block down on him, if there there is no player in their gap but their is one on the guy down from him he blocks down on him, if there is nobody in his gap or on the guy down from him then he will block down on the linebacker. 85% of the time in this scheme our players our down blocking. That is where the leverage advantage comes in. On almost every play we have a down, down, and pull-kickout. This man scheme has allowed us to use smaller quicker offensive lineman. Because of how we teach our lineman to use leverage in these techniques it has been very successful. There are other pieces of the puzzle to make this scheme work. Another huge piece is our splits. We all have two foot splits and get a lot of depth off of the center. This allows the entire machine to work. This allows leverage to be gained with our down blocks and kick out blocks. If we tried to muscle up with any team that we played on the offensive line we would not fair to well.



I will also say that we teach some zone blocking principles in our scheme. In all of our 80 series plays we are teaching our backside offensive lineman the basics of an inside zone play going away from them. The front side is still utilizing there man rules. The two seem to work together very well in all of those plays.





The team that we have had success with this is a very undersized team of about 35 players freshman through senior. We do not have a lot of time to work just offensive line. Because of this we tried to teach the most simple scheme that we possibly could. The kids embrace the scheme and know most of the time they will be over matched in size and strength by the defensive line across from them. They have also learned that proper technique and utilizing their speed can allow them to beat bigger stronger opponents and run them down over the course of a long game.



In the end I do not believe either scheme is superior but again both have advantages and disadvantages. If both are coached and executed then they will be successful if you cannot teach your players the scheme regardless of what it is then you will struggle.

Our Outside Zone = ATTACHED:

billmountjoy@yahoo.com