Zone Blocking

HEY COACH,

SURE GOES AGAINST ALL THAT I KNOW ABOUT ZONE BLOCKING PRINCIPLES. IN CONVENTIONAL ZONE BLOCKING WE HAVE RULES FOR BOTH COVERED AND UNCOVERED OLM'S. I HAVE 42 YEARS ON FIELD EXPERIENCE AND JUST RETIRED IN 2004 DUE TO HEALTH REASONS, WITH A GREAT PERCENTAGE OF THOSE YEARS AS A HEAD COACH. BUT, I MUST CONFESS I DON'T REALLY GET IT.

Coach Easton-TIGER ONE

WDEISTER: Would be happy to share 27 years of experience in zone blocking on all 3 levels, IF you PHONE 804-378-0116 (up to 10 PM/EDT). NO ONE has the typing time it would require to do RIGHT "in-season"!

DWEISTER,

GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW AND FEEL COMFORTABLE COACHING. IT SEEMS TO APPEAR TO BE A WELL THOUGHT OUT SCHEME. BEST OF LUCK WITH IT.

Coach easton-TIGER ONE

Zone blocking once understood and your linemmen understand that they are tracking second level defenders you are half way there. Zone schemes are dictated by the way the ball gets delivered from QB to RB. Coach Campbell

Old article:


Hunched over in a chair in front of his locker, Broncos right guard Dan Neil speaks in hushed tones to a reporter, constantly peering over his right shoulder. It's a few minutes after a late-morning September practice, and Neil is the first offensive lineman to emerge from the showers. That means it's safe to talk. For now.

Two minutes later, Tom Nalen enters the room. The senior statesman on the Broncos' offensive line, the 11-year vet glances quickly at the tape recorder and sits down at his own locker. Red-faced and mangy-haired, Nalen, a five-time Pro Bowl center, is a guy you definitely don't want to anger. And by talking to the reporter, that's exactly what Neil is doing.

The two linemen's cubbies face each other, five feet apart, and as Neil continues to gab, Nalen's face grows redder and redder. His knuckles, wrapped around a Gatorade bottle, turn whiter and whiter. Like the ultimate guard dog, Nalen sits absolutely still and silent, waiting to pounce. Feeling his teammate's seething glare, Neil, an eight-year vet, abruptly ends his conversation. Approximately 1.3 seconds later, Nalen springs out of his chair and heads across the room toward Denver's PR director. Speaking almost in tongues – think Tasman-ian devil on Ritalin – Nalen demands to know where the reporter comes from, what he's writing about and when the article is supposed to run.

Clearly, somebody in Denver has something to hide.

When Mike Shanahan came to town in 1995, he took over a franchise with an historically weak ground game. Between 1970 and 1994, Denver cracked the league's top 10 in rushing just five times. The season before their new head coach arrived, the 7-9 Broncos ranked 23rd out of 28 teams, depending on some guy named Leonard Russell – all 620 yards of him – to carry the ball.

Since then? The Broncos have churned out 1,000-yard rushers more often than Fox churns out reality shows. Terrell Davis, Mike Anderson and Clinton Portis each broke the 1,400-yard mark at least once between 1996 and 2003. Even Olandis Gary gained more than 1,100 yards in 1999. That's 320 more than he's gained in four seasons since. This season, Reuben Droughns, who began the year as Denver's starting fullback, is just 156 rushing yards short of 1,000 through Nov. 21, despite barely touching the ball until early October. At times it seems as though an escaped con cuffed at the ankles could gain 1,000 yards behind the Broncos' offensive line.

This success can be traced to one of Shanahan's first moves as head coach: luring then-Chiefs offensive line guru Alex Gibbs, an old friend from the SEC when Shanahan was a Gators assistant and Gibbs was at Auburn, to the Mile High City. "I've always believed that the teams that do something in the playoffs are the teams that can run the ball," Shanahan says. "That starts with the offensive line, and nobody was better than Alex."

Gibbs is a 5'6'' drill sergeant of a coach with a doctorate in education from Auburn. His first order of business was issuing a gag order to his men in the trenches, among them an impressionable second-year guy named Tom Nalen. "Alex wanted to create an us-against-the-world mentality," says Brian Habib, a Broncos guard from 1993 to 1997. "Not letting us talk to the media was a huge part of that. He always felt that even if we did talk, nobody would understand the system anyway."

Ah, yes, the system.

Despite what Nalen and his pals think, they're not protecting state secrets. The rest of the NFL knows what Denver is doing. They just can't do it as well. Essentially, the Broncos have become experts at zone blocking. Instead of being responsible for individual opponents, each man on Denver's line has the task of keeping his assigned area free of run-clogging debris. "We used to call it the whoosh," says Chuck Bresnahan, the former Raiders defensive coordinator who's now with the Bengals, "because their whole front side just comes whooshing down on you. It's very basic, but they challenge you to stop it."

How's this for basic: two plays. That's essentially the sum and substance of the Broncos' running game. The plays are called wide zone and tight zone. Sometimes the linemen whoosh right and sometimes they whoosh left, but no matter which way they whoosh, Shanahan expects his backs to make one cut – and one cut only – before heading downhill at full speed. "You can dance around and hop outside," says Mark Schlereth, a Broncos guard from 1995 to 2000. "You just won't play for Mike."

The plan remains the same, regardless of who's in the backfield. Before the ball is snapped, the running back has a target. If it's a wide zone play, he focuses on the outside hip of the offensive tackle. On a tight zone, he aims for the guard. On his third step, the runner reads the tackle's block. If the defensive end is outside the tackle, the runner cuts inside; if the tackle has the defensive end locked inside, the runner goes outside. Either way, it's one cut and go. Either way, whoosh. "They don't have negative runs," says Schlereth. "That's the philosophy. A one-yard gain is a positive play. If they end up getting positive yards on every play, then they've got a positive run game. Eventually the D starts guessing and overpursuing. That's when those one- and two-yard gains early on become 40 and 50 in the third quarter."

The majority of NFL teams employ zone blocking to some extent. But the Broncos are so much more successful because they're willing to cast against NFL type. Denver opts for linemen who can run sideline to sideline, even if that means giving up the beef that causes virtually every other O-line coach to salivate. "Most teams shy away from the kind of smaller, athletic linemen that it requires," says Shanahan. "We don't." To wit: the average NFL offensive lineman weighs 309 pounds. But 338-pound tackle George Foster, the Broncos' 2003 first-round pick out of Georgia, is the first 300-plus-pounder Shanahan's ever had in Denver. The other four starters (Nalen, Neil, eighth-year tackle Matt Lepsis and fourth-year guard Ben Hamilton) all weigh 290 pounds or less. None was drafted higher than the third round.

When they're orchestrating the scheme properly, every lineman on the front side looks identical in his hand placement and body position. Says Schlereth, "Just like trained seals." And it's hard to argue with the results: since 1995, the Broncos' rushing attack has ranked in the top five every year but two, and only the Packers have won more games.

This year has proved to be more of the same. Diminutive second-year back Quentin Griffin started just one game last year, then opened this season by gaining 156 yards against the Chiefs. When Griffin sprained his ankle in mid-October, Droughns picked up the slack, going for 193, 176 and 110 in his first three starts at running back. "It's the commitment from all 11 guys," says wideout Rod Smith. "The system is great, but if you don't have commitment, then the system ain't worth crap."

What kind of commitment? Look at the quarterback. On virtually every handoff, Jake Plummer runs a full-speed fake bootleg the other way just to keep the defense guessing. Tight end Dwayne Carswell has become such a strong blocker that the Broncos auditioned him at tackle this preseason. It even extends to the sideline, where Smith, a two-time Pro Bowler, says he still fears for his job if he doesn't block on a third-and-two.

So why don't other teams copy Denver's MO on O? Two words: cut block. As effective as the Broncos' zone blocking is, it's their zealous commitment to this technique that separates – and alienates – them from the rest of the league. Installed by Gibbs to eliminate backside pursuit, cut blocking requires linemen to dive at defenders' knees and knock them down like bowling pins. Some teams employ it every once in a while, but the Broncos have raised cut blocking to an art form. In 2001 alone, the NFL docked Denver's O-line nearly $200,000 for on-field activities, including a block by Neil that broke then-Patriot Bryan Cox's leg, and another by Lepsis that broke the ankle and ended the career of Chargers defensive tackle (and former Bronco) Maa Tanuvasa. "Those guys run around just looking for guys to cut," says Falcons defensive tackle Rod Coleman, who faced the Broncos twice each season during his five years as a Raider. "I'm surprised they don't cut the referees."

No need. As long as the O-lineman's head is in front of the defender's body, cut blocking is legal. At least for now. The technique has become such a hot-button issue this season that the NFLPA recently announced it will ask the league to outlaw it entirely next season. "I hated cut blocking people," says Schlereth, "but that's what we were told to do. Every Sunday, I'd line up across from the defender and say, 'Dude, I don't want to cut you, but it's mandatory. Our line coach over there is crazy.' "

Although Gibbs has since taken his kamikaze blocking philosophies to Atlanta, his successor, former special-teams coach Rick Dennison, has been with the Broncos since 1995. Ditto for running backs coach Bobby Turner and offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak. And, of course, Shanahan. No other staff in the league comes close to that kind of continuity. The chain of command is unbroken, and therefore unchallenged.

That was never more apparent than at the Broncos' Oct. 25 Monday-night game against the Bengals. On a third-and-one late in the first quarter, with Denver trailing 7-0, Plummer scrambled right. Just as defensive tackle Tony Williams changed direction to chase Plummer, the 6'5'' Foster dove at his legs. Legal? Yes. Popular? Hardly. "The play wasn't anywhere near him," says Eagles defensive lineman Hollis Thomas, who watched the game on TV. "To cut somebody like that, when he's got no chance of making the tackle and doesn't see you coming? That's crap. That's how careers end." Or seasons, anyway. Williams is done for the year after having surgery to repair a broken and dislocated ankle.

So why, when it appeared that a traditional above-the-waist block would've gotten the job done just fine, did Foster go for the cut? Because that's what he's required to do. Doesn't matter if it's third-and-one or third-and-31. Every time a Broncos lineman is on the backside of a running play, that's what he's required to do. Says ex-Bronco and current Bengals cornerback Deltha O'Neal, "If they're teaching him to do it and he refuses to do it because he doesn't believe in it, they're probably going to release him or bench him."

When Foster and his teammates are doing their job, backside defenders either a) end up on the turf; b) become so obsessed with avoiding cut blocks that they don't pursue the ball-carrier; c) play tentatively because they enjoy having all their bones and ligaments intact; or d) all of the above. That's when holes start to open. "It's more than a hole," says Bresnahan. "It's a two-car garage."

Just ask Droughns. After averaging 2.4 yards per carry as a rookie in Detroit and two more years in Denver as a fullback, he'd never seen anything like it. "My first start against Carolina, I was like a kid in candy store," Droughns says of the day he rushed 30 times for 193 yards. "It was like, hey, I'm not getting hit in the backfield. This is fun."

Very fun, in fact, judging by what's happened in Atlanta. After finishing 14th in rushing last year, the Falcons' ground game has catapulted to third this year. If you asked their offensive linemen to explain the success, chances are they'd utter two words: Alex Gibbs.

If they were allowed to talk, that is.

www.ehow.com/videos-on_...ch-offensive-line.html

Very good videos (free to view) on zone blocking.

BRONCOS WIDE ZONE VIDEO:

www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-...s-zone-blocking-scheme

Teaching Zone Blocking:


1. INDIVIDUAL: (bags OR live)


A) INSIDE ZONE

----1. Drive Block DLM
----2. Drive Block LBer

B) OUTSIDE ZONE

----1. Reach Block DLM
----2. Reach Block LBer

**********************************************************************************************************

2. SMAll GROUP: (INSIDE & OUTSIDE ZONE TECHNIQUES - vs. bags OR live)


A) "2 vs. 2" (uncovered man & covered man work vs. a lLer & DLM).

-----1. DLM widens & LBer steps inside of DLM
-----2. DML pinches inside & LBer scrapes outside
-----3. DLM anchors on covered man & LBer moves behind DLM (reading the RB)

***************************************************************************************************************


3. LARGE GROUP: (LIVE)


A) "5 ON 5" (Live - NO bags)


-----------M
-----E--T----T--E
-----O-O-C-O-O
----------Q

----------R

4-3 = Gives the Center a chance to zone with Guards (on zone TO callside)



----------B-----B
------E-----N-----E
------O-O-C-O-O
------------Q

------------R

3-4 Gives the Guards a chance to zone with Tackles (on zone TO callside) or Center (on zone AWAY callside)


B) "7 on 7" (Live - no bags)


-----------W----M-----S
--------E-----T-----T-----E
--------O-O-O-C-O-O-O
----------------Q

----------------R

4-3 = Gives the Tackles a chance to zone with the TE's (on zone TO callside), or the Guards (on zone AWAY callside)


NOTE: The "5 on 5" & "7 on 7" should be your best ("O") vs. best ("D"). Full speed with no tackling the RB. Benefits of these:

1. COMPETITIVE DRILLS VS. DEFENSE;
2. BLOCKING TECHNIQUES VS. BLOCK REACTIONS;
3. TEACHES TOUGHNESS!!!!!

GETTING 3 "VERTICAL" DOUBLE TEAMS ON INSIDE ZONE PLAY TO "WHITE" SIDE:

OBJECTIVE: PUSH LEVEL 1 (DLM) BACK INTO THE LAPS OF LEVEL 2 (LBers)

----------------------------W/S

C----------------------------------------------S/S-----------C
--------------------W-------M------S
-----------------------E-----N---T----E
----------------------O-O-O-C-O-O-O
O-----------------------------Q-----------------------------O

-------------------------------R

INSIDE ZONE LEFT:

LE & LT = (ZONE) DOUBLE DE (#2) TO WLB (#3)

LG & CTR = (ZONE) DOUBLE NOSE (#0) TO MLB (#1)

RG & RT = (ZONE) DOUBLE DT (#1) TO SLB (#2)

RE = (MAN) CUTOFF DE (#3)

RB = 1st. STEP LATERAL WITH PLAYSIDE FOOT, ROLL, CROSSOVER, AND AIM NOSE FOR OUTSIDE LEG OF LG. CRAM B GAP

QB = OPEN TO 7 O'CLOCK. AFTER HANDOFF — FAKED NAKED FOR 5 STEPS AWAY FROM P.O.A.

WR'S "PUSH/CRACK" FROM CORNERS TO SAFETIES

John Glasper

My personal preference would side with the zone blocking scheme for high school and college level if I had only to run one. The first reason is that the offensive line in the zone scheme allows the line to create multiple running lanes with their tracks. I believe the reason I do not prefer the man scheme is because you have to win every battle upfront in man as it is designed to hit a specific lane. In the zone scheme mistakes can occur, and you can still have success due to the runner having multiple running lane options to either bend it outside, bang it inside, and cut it back.



My other reasoning is that I played in a zone scheme at Mira Mesa HS, San Diego, CA. It takes time to learn this scheme but depending on who is teaching it makes a big difference. For example, at Mira Mesa, we would not move on until inside zone was run correctly against all fronts as freshmen. This trend continued when I came back and coached at my high school, and we were even able to get the youth coaches to introduce this concept at the oldest youth level as well. We have a system there that we fully believe in.



Now my last two years of high school coaching at Effingham HS, IL. We were a power and gap scheme program that also ran the zone to throw teams off up front. I loved this a lot, and I believe it was the major component to our success in 2017. We started off teaching Power and gap first; then we jumped into inside and outside zone. Explaining the power and gap scheme was extremely easy cause we would just down block every down lineman; have the fullback kick out block on the play side, and the tight end would either down or climb to the second level depending on the defenders' alignment to him. If I remember correctly head up to inside the tight end he would down block, anything outside of him he would climb to the play side backer. Our backside guard would pull around, and he would blow up the first man he saw inside, and we gap seal hinged the backside. We would still run our power and gap scheme from the gun and mess with teams with our zone scheme as well. We would do Tuesday power and gap for practice, and Wednesday as our zone practice days. Our Power/Zone scheme worked out great for us as we could switch between both easily from all of our formations when needed.