Man vs Zone Blocking Thoughts

In my opinion, an effective offense has a combination of both zone and man-blocking schemes. The sole purpose of offense is to move the football and score. By utilizing both zone and man-blocking, a team's offense can execute against any defensive alignment.


In our offensive system, we use zone and man techniques in both the run and pass game. In the run game, we use zone scheme on inside zone, outside zone, and on the back side of most iso/blast plays. We use man principles in our gap (down blocking) scheme. These plays include power and counter (GT). The zone scheme allows for combination blocks and control of space. Controlling space instead of a defender allows the running back to find the best route to plus yardage. In our man scheme, we are trying to move defenders from the point of attack while bringing extra blockers from the backside. The advantage to man blocking is the extra blockers. These extra blockers outnumber the defense at the point of attack. Using both in the passing game is also helpful. Zone pass pro, or slide protection, protects space and not individual pass rushers. This allows for all blitzing lanes to be accounted for. Man pass pro is effective in the play-action passing game. Assigning defenders to the offensive line and backs allows for the run fake to be effective.


Without using both schemes, it is difficult to be effective in all situations. Your opponent practices too. They will be ready to take away your bread and butter. By implementing a variety of schemes, they will not be able to take away everything.


Steven

When it comes to the man & zone-blocking schemes, I believe they are both great, depending on the strength and weaknesses of your team. I had the opportunity to play on a team’s that utilized a heavy man-blocking scheme and a heavy zone-blocking scheme. In college, under one offensive coordinator, we ran the man-blocking scheme, and it was great but dull and one-dimensional at times. It worked well for us that year because we had two backs that were 225 plus pounds, and we had a solid offensive line that loved to play smash-mouth football and enjoyed blowing people off the ball. There were times when we ran into problems because the defense was blitzing and making pre-snap reads which led them to overload the gap and shut down the play. The man-blocking scheme also left us in shambles when we tried to run RPOs because the lineman was firing to the second level on run plays. In this case, I believe if you have a team that is more suited for power, and you want your lineman and running backs to do less thinking and play smash-mouth football, I feel like the man-blocking scheme would be the best choice.



Regarding zone blocking, I believe you can be more versatile with some power and finesse. While playing on a team that utilized zone blocking, I realized that you had to communicate much more than what you would have to do on a man-blocking scheme, and you had to have some patience as a back and let the play develop. You also had room for RPOs that could be thrown beyond the line of scrimmage. While running the zone blocking scheme, you can use combo blocks to help take care of defensive fronts that like to shift or move during pre-snap. Some cons I have noticed about the zone blocking scheme are that it allows for more busted plays because so many blocking assignments are decided on the fly. More assignments get missed allowing penetration to happen more frequently.



I would incorporate 95% of the zone-blocking scheme into my offense while utilizing 5% of the man-blocking scheme. I choose to use most of the zone blocking scheme because I like to allow my lineman to communicate based on what they see up front to execute the block successfully. I also would use the zone blocking scheme more often because I feel like I can be more versatile in what I want to do, and I can also run the zone read option, which will allow my Quarterback or my running back to run or we could even turn that into an RPO. The 5% of man blocking scheme would be utilized to throw off the defense or in short-yardage situations.

Ultimately, I believe you must do what works best for you and your team!

Robert