Offensive tid bits

Matthew Willard

Like any scheme, you have to have the right kids and coaches to pull it off. For an inside zone scheme to work, the offensive linemen must be strong enough to be able to press defenders and be decisive as to when and who engages color (backers). The running back must be able to read through the A-Gap to the near backer and have the patience to do this while also possessing the explosiveness to hit the second level quickly. In the outside zone scheme, the linemen have to be able to not only move quickly laterally, but be able to effectively engage and defeat linebackers on their own turf. The running backs must possess great sideline to sideline speed, and decisive cutback ability. In either case, the linemen must get positive movement (side to side, and/or forward), and the running backs MUST make the offensive line right with vision and explosiveness. This requires a level of talent not seen at the majority of high schools. Coaches must also be adept at teaching these things or the product will turn out to look like playground football no matter how talented your group is. We ran a lot of zone at Pima College when we could pick and choose our talent, but not so much at the high school level.

Man schemes are a bit more flexible to the talent you may or may not have on your team. Down Blocks, Traps, misdirection, etc., are facets of man blocking that zone blocking does not necessarily have. You can shoulder block most man schemes and run faster backfield actions if you cannot sustain movement. Power schemes, option (you can run different option looks like power read instead of zone read) are just a couple of avenues you can take with man schemes.These are things that can help smaller and/or weaker offensive line groups be successful. Fast actions, misdirection, and predetermined insertion points can also make a less talented running back successful.

We use man schemes because of these reasons. We generally do not have five offensive line kids big enough, strong enough, and quick enough to run inside/outside zone nor do we generally have a running back who can consistently create his own yards. We may have one or two at a time, but generally we have undersized or underpowered kids filling the gaps. But, we ran for over 2500 yards as a team last year employing man schemes with some offensive line kids that were not physically imposing and running backs who simply ran hard through the insertion point.