Chapter Three – Football + Physics

So we’ve had a brief look at how people learn, let’s start to take it back to football a little, and understand how physics can help us block better. When I started writing this in 2015, I done so because my background is civil engineering, and physics and maths make sense to me. So because it was the easiest way I could think to describe how bocking should work, that’s what I done.

I note here, that since that point, LeChalres Bentley has done a much better job in explaining an OL stance, and why physics is important in football. If you haven’t seen his stuff, I thoroughly recommend you look at OLP (OL Perfromance), as they have some fantastic information out there.

Fundamentals

One of the advantages I think have, along with most non-US based coaches, is that I was not brought up with football, but played a variety of other sports that all include different movements, body types and ranges of motion. I feel this has freed up my mind to accept ‘different’ approaches to football problems.

OL play is based on inertia, momentum, physics, and understanding your body as an OL. We must make our movements the most efficient for our bodies, whilst obeying the laws of balance and physics. Effective blocking is essentially based on 3 things:

1. Power comes from driving through the ground
2. Hips must be set
3. Hands and hips have to be in sync.

That’s it, 3 fundamental principles. We succumb to making the game more complicated than it is. Effective run blocking is based upon force generation and proper angles. How we use our body to create momentum, and how we transfer that momentum into the defender is the key. We’ll build on those points from the ground up.

The Basics – Stance & Movement

In order to be great OL coaches we first must study and understand movement, balance, joint position and movement quality.  Only with effective balance and joint positions can effective movement quality be achieved. Not only does improper balance lead to less than optimal blocks, it more often than not also leads to overuse injuries.

In order to instill proper movement quality, we must understand how people learn, and how the body learns to move. A big part of the DN4 is to maximise motor learning to manipulate the external environment around the athlete. This means we use cones, hurdles and other tools to encourage proper posture, balance and rythym. We find that manipulating the environment, in combination with learning cues, is more effective than using only cues to effect movement quality.

Joint Alignment

Also known as centralising, or stacking, joint alignment essentially means that at any particular phase in the block, the joints are in the optimal positions to create the desired body position for that segment of the block. When the joints are aligned in a proper fashion, the athlete has the best chance to express optimal movement quality. Note, the joints don’t actually do the work, they aren’t the equation so much as they are the guide, to show you that you are getting the right answer.

In order to achieve these balanced positions, both athlete and coach must first understand what correct positions look like throughout the block, from stance through to finish, there are non-negotiables that must be correct. There is no universal boilerplate stance or block, where the feet should be x inches apart and the toes should be pointed at y angle. These positions depend somewhat on each athlete’s specific body type, coordinative qualities, strength and their basic principles of motion. This simply means there is no one right way to block; however there is a range of acceptable positions (a band width) of acceptable positions for each athlete to incorporate body type and movement style, whilst still being governed by the laws of physics.

The Stance

For years now, the coaching points for an OL stance have been:

• Ensure feet are pointing straight ahead.
• Slight offset in the feet – toe to instep alignment
• Shoulders square

These are outcomes. They don’t actually tell the athlete the how, only the what. As coaches it is our job to makes things as translatable to the athlete as possible. Explain what we are expecting and then tell the athlete how to do. I’m not going to copt the OLP stuff in here, but I genuinely believe it to be the best stuff available on the stance, so have a look at that!

The key to it is the process they go to to build each athletes stance. It’s about how the athlete feels, the cues they give athletes are like ‘Offset your outside foot back, far enough that if I pushed you from the front, you would feel strong in that position. That’s your strength position‘. Again, these aren’t external coaching commands, they are intrinsic to each athlete individually, but it allows you the functionality to coach multiple people at the same time. This is what we discovered in the last chapter, we give declarative (explicit) instructions, combined with non-declarative (implicit) associations for the athlete, and we immediately create something that is much more learnable.

The DN4 System

Firstly, as an edit to the book, I massively regret using the word ‘system’ in this. It’s puts me in a similar place to people who are offering accreditions to a ‘system’ for $500, and I don’t want to be a snake oil salesmen like that. Again, a big part of the reason why i’m putting all this out there, in the hope someone finds it useful. Anyway, back to the book….

Earlier, we noted that in essence, blocking can be boiled down to three key ingredients:

1. Power comes from driving through the ground
2. Hips must be set
3. Hands and hips have to be in sync.

I would also add the generic term ‘finish’ to that list. It’s not a term I particularly like using, but it will suffice for now.

So there we have it, the DNA of blocking, four terms that covers everything we need, if we follow these steps, we will have executed a great block. Note here, there is no mention of first step, helmet position, or any coaching ‘terms’. We aren’t simplifying to make things easy, we are educating the players and giving them a better understanding of not just ‘what’ is expected, but ‘how’ the can accomplish that.  When players understand how to achieve a certain movement they can execute correctly, consistently, when they can execute it correctly, they become natural movements.

Let’s look at each term in turn, and how we can simplify it to make it easy for athletes to remember, and create key coaching points that can be used quickly on the field during practices.

1 – Power comes from driving through the ground

Again, we aren’t talking about a first step here, what we are talking about is initial power generation, the torque our body creates to get us moving. It is everything up until the first step lands. That initial burst, the explosion, the initial…

PUSH

2 – Hips must be set

Direction is irrelevant at this point, what is important is the angle we set, we keep our hips on. This is important as the angle we set must take into account the worst case scenario for the offensive lineman based on what he can see in front of him, and what he has studied on game tape. What is just as important is that we stay balanced and strong in that position, and that we continue to generate…

POWER

3 – Hands and Hips in Sync

We have developed a lot of momentum over the first two stages; we must now transfer that into the defender. In order to do that, our hands and hips have to fire in sync, ensuring the most efficient transfer of energy into the defender. We must develop a great…

PUNCH

4 – Finish

An extremely generic term that tells no-one anything, We can finish strong (pancake blocks) or we can finish weak (throw the defender away because we have lost the battle), these are very different things. What we want to see after the punch is an OL staying engaged with the defender, staying balanced and control the block, We are looking for…

POISE

(It doesn’t take a genuis to figure out I mean balanced here, but that didn’t fit into the marketing of it all, so Poise was the best I could think of).

Here we have the 4 key words, easily learnable, and more importantly, enable us to identify in each phase of the block exactly what has went wrong, and convey that quickly to the player during a practice.

PUSH, POWER, PUNCH and POISE.

Before we move onto looking into these terms in more detail, we must understand the physics behind what makes a successful block

UNDERSTANDING THE PHYSICS

In order to successfully block someone, we must understand how blocking works, this means gently delving into the world of physics. I’ve always loved maths and physics; it’s what drove me into gaining my Masters Degree in Engineering. I am aware however, that I am somewhat in the minority, so I hope to break it down in a way that makes it simpler to understand and worthwhile.

For me this is a necessary evil, especially as a coach. We need to understand the individual elements of a block, how they piece together and how they can be harnessed. This is the coaching equivalent of working from first principles (in maths). In theory, as long as we understand the governing principles behind a subject, we should be able to solve any problem.

Newton’s Three Laws are:

1. An object will remain at rest, or at a constant velocity, unless acted on by a force.
2. The magnitude of force of an object is equal to the mass multiplied by the acceleration of the object
3. When one body exerts a force on another body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force back of equal magnitude and opposite direction.

I get that’s all boring and no-one is massively interested in it, so let’s have a look at the governing principles behind blocking and how everything fits together.

Vectors

“A Euclidean Vector (sometimes called a geometric or spatial vector, or – as here – simply a vector) is a geometric object that has magnitude (or length) and direction, and can be added to other vectors.”

Vectors are fundamental in physics and engineering. I was first introduced to them when discussing bridge deck loading at university, and they are at their core, incredibly simple.

We use vectors as a way to represent the forces acting on something. Vectors are drawn as an arrow, which has a direction and a magnitude, so the bigger the force, the bigger the arrow.

Let’s look at an OL dummy in a stance:

All the forces within the lineman (i.e. his weight (mass x gravity)) are put through the ground, through the inside of his feet, the red vectors. The ground is placing an equal amount of force back (green vectors), this in turn keeps the dummy from sinking into the ground.

This is summed up by Newton’s Third Law above. The ground exerts and equal and opposite force, so everything stays at rest. Things start to get a bit funky when we when need to move.

Let’s look at the same dummy, having stepped with left foot:

What we can see here is that the force exerted by the dummy is much bigger (Newton’s first law), and this gives us an overall movement as shown by the big red arrow.  This is how we achieve movement, by exerting a large force into the ground through our bodies.

So if we want to move quicker, we must exert a larger force. This ties in perfectly with Newton’s Law, F=ma. We can’t gain weight during a play, so mass is a constant; that means if we need to create a greater acceleration, we need to focus on creating more force.

This is why the DN4 focuses on the push, rather than the first step. The first step is the outcome; it tells players what you are expecting, but not how they do it. What we have shown above is that where the first step goes is almost irrelevant, what is important is how much force we can put into the ground quickly, to move our bodies in an explosive manner.

Resultant Vectors

The above examples look at vectors in a simple format, but what happens when two forces act on an object, but not in the same plane?

We simply add them together, so let’s look at this example of a ‘good’ block, and then we’ll evaluate it based on physics and what we know.

In this case the offensive player (in white) has ‘shot’ his hips, and is ‘rolling’ his hands over the top. He has clearly won this battle against a much smaller opponent. We can represent the offensive player by two vectors, the force of him ‘shooting’ his hips (V_S) and him ‘rolling’ his hands (V_R), as shown below (estimated forces and vectors):

This shows the force generated by ‘shooting’ the hips, in an upward and outward motion and the force generated by ‘rolling’ the hands.  The force created by ‘shooting’ our hips is much larger than that created by our hands, due to the larger muscle groups at work. We can clearly see that these forces are working against each other, which will reduce the Resultant force (i.e. what the defender feels) as shown below:

What we can see above is that the forces created by the offensive player actually reduce the lift and torque that is naturally created by the ‘shooting’ of the hips. This means the vectors are working against themselves reducing their effectiveness, so the resultant force, or the force that is delivered to the defender isn’t as efficient as it could be. The resultant force is now more horizontal as a result of combining the two forces, and this is the plane of most resistance (i.e. The plane the defender can push back on the most). We want to reduce our opponents effectiveness, not reduce it.

We know that ‘lifting’ a defender is vital to a good block, but do we really understand why? Let’s have a look at power angles, and how they tie into vectors, and then we will revisit this block again.

Power Angles

Power angles are a common phrase used throughout football, and the ‘Z’ position is the most commonly taught.  Let’s have a look at our OL dummy again in a good football position:

What we can clearly see is that we have two power angles in our body. When we remain in this position, with our muscles in tension, we have lots of potential power we can release into a defender. This is an optimal position to be in, when blocking someone; our hands are in front of our face, and have punched the defender before our bodyweight gets close (removing the head from contact as much as possible), our chest is close to our knees, our knees are inside our ankles, and our butt is close to level with our knees. This position is the most efficient and optimal way to block someone.

This isn’t new knowledge, OL coaches have been talking for decades about the ‘Z’ in the legs for decades; but the same knowledge also applies to how we block a defender. This position is powerful because it tightens all the biggest muscle groups in our body, and gets them primed to exert big forces. Our posterior kinetic chain (Hamstrings, Glutes, Calves, Lower Back) in addition to our anterior kinetic chain (Quads and Abs) house the engine of our bodies, these are the big muscles, the power generators. You don’t see many great OL who skip leg day is the point I’m getting too, the same can be said for Defensive Linemen. So how do we block these guys?

Simple, we segment, or separate, both power angles.

The simplest and best way to block a defender, in physics terms, is to remove the power units from the defender. If we can remove the power angles from his body, we remove his ability to fight back, therefore he will provide less resistance, making our job simpler.  So how do we segment the power angles? We lift!

In these examples we demonstrate how the lifting of the body affects the two separate power angles. By pushing the upper body back, we increase the angle in the hip, therefore reducing the tension stored in the hips, glutes and quads, the biggest power storage units.

By lifting the torso, we also increase the angle between the lower and upper leg, reducing the power stored in the hamstrings and calves. It also means the defender is unable to readjust his weight, lower his hips, and get back into a strong position.

So we can clearly see that lifting increases the angles within the body and reduces the effectiveness of the defender to fight back. Again, there is nothing new here really, we’ve known for a long time that raising the centre of gravity of a defender is a good thing, but what this does do is redefine how we think about blocking. Let’s quickly go back to the vectors, and see what’s changed.

Resultant Vectors

The previous example of what is commonly described as a good block produced the resultant force shown. This is the angle and magnitude of the force that is transferred into the defender. Given what we have just learned about power angles, we can immediately spot the flaw in this technique.

What we can see is that the horizontal force generated by the player is more than enough to knock the defender back (V_H), however there is insufficient lift (V_V) to increase the lower body power angle, so the defender will be able to sink his hips, and fight back.

So we need to increase our vertical lift to better separate both power angles, and produce a resultant force similar to that shown. This force, when transferred into a defender will jolt him backwards, separating the upper body angle, but will also lift him upwards, separating the lower body angle.

Now we understand this, we have to rethink how we block people. Shooting our hips into a defender is great, but if we are still rolling our hands over the top of the defender, we are working against ourselves. Not only are our hips rising and our hands pushing down, a very uncomfortable position, but we aren’t being efficient, we are working against ourselves. We are exerting an inordinate amount of energy to do very little work. We want to maximise our output. A more efficient method would be to utilise our hips and hands working in a similar plane.

Chapter Two – Learnability

One of my goals when I first became a coach was always to make things as simple for the players as I could. Again, the players at Ouse Valley and the Great Britain Under 19’s Offense will attest that I done a horrible job at this, however every coach needs to learn from their mistakes, and I’ve made a lot of them.

Simple to me meant explaining plays and techniques to players in the best way I could think of to make them understand. This led to a wide variety of terms and language that I had to use, to make it simpler for each player, and ended up with a lot of different terms being used for the same thing.

In my quest to make thing simpler, I was over complicating things.

In 2015 we ran the ball 311 times, for 1946 yards and 24 TD’s in 9 games (1 playoff game) in our first season together as a group of players and staff. Whilst delighted with these statistics, as a staff we didn’t feel like our run game was something we could hang our hat on. It was explosive against weaker opponents, but wasn’t consistent, and in the playoffs and against better teams, we needed it to be consistent.

We gave the team a survey to gather feedback from them, and the evidence was clear. The players liked what we were doing as a system, but they were struggling to understand it, and adapt quickly in games. A situation we’ve all been in at some point in our careers.

So I sat down with my OL and asked them what the problem was. It was the same problem I’d identified myself, the use of different terms for different players meant they couldn’t communicate to me, or each other what the problems were. My scheme was simple enough, but the language I was using to teach it was wrong.

As coaches and educators, one of the biggest questions we face is how can we best present material so that it is optimally ‘learnable’ for the different students we are trying to reach.

So we had a think as a group, and came up some terminology for our Inside Zone scheme that was easy for them to learn and understand. Since then we have a dramatic rise in the consistency of our run game in practices throughout the off-season. It really is something we rely on.

This left me with some bigger questions:

• Why did these key words mean so much more to the players?
• Why were these key words so much easier to learn and provide such a rapid response in performance?
• Could I replicate this learning to performance process for different schemes and different positions?

There is so much information on how people learn that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out coaches have been ‘doing it wrong’ for years. Our understanding of the human brain has increased so much over the last few years that football has somewhat been left behind.

We don’t expect players to do 2 a days in 100 degree heat without any water any more. Science has proven that that is counter-productive to what coaches were trying to achieve.

Coaches were trying to get the players tough and fit. I’d like to think that most coaches by now have a basic understanding of nutrition, and that giving the players adequate breaks and water will allow them to play harder for longer.

We are now at a similar point in time with our understanding of the human brain. It is now much more advanced that a lot of our practices as coaches would suggest. That means there needs to be a fundamental shift in how we coach our players.

How do we Learn?

At the moment, in football, we generally assume that everyone learns at the same pace. (i.e. I can install my offense in 4 weeks). We think of learning as an equation. Without trying to get too mathematical, this is what we have:

T = S / L

T = Time taken to install schemes

S = The amount the players need to know (i.e. the scheme)

L = Learnability of the scheme

Time is obviously a constant, therefore cannot be changed, that leaves us with two variables; two options:

• Reduce S, or the amount the players need to know (i.e. simplify what you are doing)
• Increase L, the learnability of your material.

Up until fairly recently the vast majority of coaches have simplified their scheme, making things so simple that people cannot get it wrong. That was fine initially, and a lot of good innovations have come from simplification, such as no-huddle offenses utilising concepts as a great example.

However, it also limits your scheme. There are a lot of things you can’t do if you simplify it too much. So the only other option is to increase the learnability of the system. How simple is your system to understand. For most offensive linemen, the answer to that is not very.

In order to better understand how to increase the learnability of our system, we must first have a very brief understanding of how people learn and the different mechanisms for this.

Implicit vs Explicit Learning

To be an effective teacher and educator, we must have good teaching strategies and styles. Every coach and every teacher is different, and individuality is a good thing. Conversely, there are various styles and learning strategies.

Ultimately however it all boils down to Implicit Learning vs Explicit learning. Traditionally in football, we use instruction to augment demonstrations and practice reps. It’s been at the forefront of most sports coaching programmes over the years.

Explicit learning, in traditional coaching methods, uses verbal instructions to coach a player about how to perform a skill. This generally results in player being able to verbalise the skill, without guaranteeing the player can execute the skill to the required standard.

Implicit learning tends to contain no formal instruction about how to perform the skill, yet result in the player being able to perform the skill very well.

So we have one player who can’t execute, but can tell you exactly what he has to do, and one player who can do everything, but can’t explain how he does it.

In general we’d prefer the second player. But we’d love players who have a both traits. Obviously that isn’t particularly common. So we need to teach certain parts of our scheme explicitly, there is no way around that, but how can we guarantee performance if we allow players to learn implicitly?

The famous iceberg analogy can be used to explain the difference between explicit and implicit learning. The explicit section of the iceberg (referring to the conscious mind) is the part that is visible above water.

The submerged part of the iceberg refers to the implicit section, or the subconscious mind.

We need to split everything we do into explicit and implicit to better get a grasp of where we can effect some changes to how we coach.

Explicit learns for football

• Scheme Footwork
• Line Calls
• Pass Protection
• Double Teams
• Snap count
• Defensive alignment
• Blitz pickup
• Defensive Personnel Awareness
• Snap count

Implicit Learns for football

• Make the hit
• Take control

What we can see is that, things like scheme, terminology are explicit learns for a player, they are things that need to be taught, whereas technique tends to be implicitly learned. We guide the players to the right path, but ultimately the best players find out how to do it themselves.

This article has explicitly told you some of the examples, leaving you to implicitly figure the rest out for yourself.

Specialists define learning as a process that will modify a subsequent behaviour.

Memory, however, is the ability to remember past experiences

Human memory is fundamentally associative by nature. That is to say, you can remember a piece of information better if you can associate it with previously acquired knowledge that is already firmly anchored in your memory. And the more meaningful the association to you personally, the more effectively it will help you to remember

Declarative or Explicit Learning

Episodic memory lets you remember events that you personally experienced at a specific time and place. (i.e. Remember that touchdown you scored to win a championship etc.)

The key here is that you see yourself as an actor in these events. That means you memorise not just the events themselves, but also the entire context surrounding them.

Semantic memory is the system you use to store knowledge of the world. It is a knowledge base that we all have and much of which we can access quickly and effortlessly (i.e. If I were to ask you who won the last Superbowl, or who the current president is.)

Semantic memory also includes our memory of the rules and concepts that let us construct a mental representation of the world.

Non-Declarative or Implicit Learning

Procedural memory is perhaps the most well known implicit memory in football terms, as it allows people to gain motor skills and gradually improve them. (i.e. Do something with enough reps and you’ll be an expert.)

For example, a person with amnesia who can’t remember their name, can often remember how to write their signature. This is procedural memory.

Priming is perhaps the most effective way to achieve implicit memories. Priming is where we form memories without being aware we are doing so. We can increase the speed and accuracy of decision making, by first exposing someone to information that relates to the same context. (i.e. Asking a QB to decide which route to throw on a Smash concept is difficult. Ask him who to throw to vs Cov. 2 on a Smash will speed his decision up.)

Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour that shows an increase in knowledge, skills or understanding thanks to recorded memories. In essence:

Human memory is associative. We remember things better when they are associated with something, especially if it’s something that is already firmly anchored in memory. The more meaningful the association, the more effectively it will be remembered.

This explains why the players were able to remember the key words for the Inside Zone plays, it was because they created them and instinctually, they had associated each word with a movement and position that they knew already from memory.

This is what really drove the thinking behind the ‘system’. Even a brief understanding of how people learn shows you that football is going about it in an old-fashioned way. Yes, reps matter, in fact I think players generally speaking undervalue the importance of them. All I’m saying is that if we can teach a system that actually relates to our players, that they understand at a deep level, then that will decrease the time it takes us to install what we need to install.

A lot of people already do it for plays and playbooks, make similar plays along a theme (i.e. Vegas might be your 4 Verts plays, and Nevada could be 4 Verts concept, with 1 receiver running a shallow Cross instead). But we aren’t considering it for teaching fundamentals. In short, focus less on coaching the explicit, and coach more on the implicit (i.e. What the player should feel in their body when they execute a skill right).

 

Chapter One – Creating an Understanding, Create Your Field

Strap in folks, this is not a 30 second read while you’re on the pan!

In all honesty, Chapter one was essentially a dissertation on concussions in the NFL, but that’s not something anyone needs to go through really. In short, the takeaway from it was that the term ‘concussion’ is massively overused, and often does not even begin to describe what is going on, and despite the money in the NFL, there hasn’t been significant progress over the last few years in terms of research on this.

We use NFL statistics because, as they are the most well-funded, they also have the most readily available statistics, but I do concede that any level outside of the NFL, these numbers aren’t massively appropriate, and don’t transfer well.

What we saw was that the decrease in concussions from 2012 to 2019, has been minimal, with a drop from 261 in 2012 to 224 in 2019^(1). There were highs and lows in that period, but for the most part, the percentage has had a slight decrease, but nothing statistically relevant. I did note that the peak rate in that timeframe was in 2017, which when the numbers fell back to the norm in 2018 resulted in the NFL publishing articles about how the concussion rate had dropped 28% in 2018, when the reality was more that 2017 was a statistical anomaly. Naughty NFL!!!

After a fair bit of research and digging through a tonne of very very dry scholarly articles , the thing that stood out most to me was a thing called RHI, or Repetitive Head Impacts. From the book:

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Purdue University undertook a study of high school football players in 2010, to better understand the effect RHI can have on the human brain. What they discovered was a “previously unknown group of players who, despite showing no clinically-observable signs of concussion, were found to have measurable impairment of neurocognitive functions, as well as altered activation in neurophysiologic function on functional MRI scans.”

Now I’m not a neuro-surgeon either and a lot of terms in that quote went way over my head at the first time of reading too. So, having a look at the actual study, there a few conclusions we can draw about the process:

• A fMRI (Function MRI) provides a live look at what parts of the brain that are activated during cognitive testing;
• Players were measured at the start, middle and end of each season, along with data coming from helmet sensors and player interviews;
• Players undertook simple neurological tests to establish a baseline (pre-season) and then comparisons were made over the following two tests.
• What it showed was 3 distinct categories:
  • Players who had been diagnosed with a concussion and showed concussion related symptoms, that exhibited changes in brain function;
  • Players who had not been diagnosed with a concussion and showed no concussion related symptoms, that exhibited no changes in brain function; and worryingly
  • Players who had not been diagnosed with a concussion and showed no concussion related symptoms, that exhibited changes in brain function.

A quote from Larry. J. Leverenz PhD, a clinical professor in Purdue’s Department of Health and Kinesiology, shortly after the study was published said “(the study) meant that players were:

1. ESCAPING DETECTION: Because they have not suffered damage to areas of the brain associated with language and auditory processing, they are unlikely to exhibit clinical signsof head injury (such as headache or dizziness), or show impairment on sideline assessment for concussion, all of which test for verbal, not visual memory, Leverenz said that “there is no way right now to identify” the group suffering sub-concussive blows to the head that may be dangerous.  Hence, they will likely continue participating in football-related activities, even when changes in brain physiology are present, which studies show likely increases the risk of future neurologic injury;
2. DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE INJURED: If working memory deficits are sufficiently small, a player may not be aware of the additional effort required to complete everyday tasks, and therefore not think to bring the problem to anyone’s attention (although at least one of the players in the impaired group seemed to have figured this out, and played with better, heads-up techniquethe next season, reducing the number of hits he took to the forehead); and
3. FACING AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE.  Even though the players in the Purdue study who suffered short-term cognitive impairment from repeated sub-concussive blows exhibited results on fMRI and ImPACT tests administered before season #2 comparable to the baseline results before season #1, their return to baseline does not necessarily mean that there was 100% recovery.  It is possible that the damage will only be known over the long term, years later.”

Before the last few years of research, we all commonly believed that that only head injuries resulting in a concussion or worse were serious enough to lead to long-term problems.  What these recent studies show is that it’s not only the concussive hits that take a toll, but the ongoing sub concussive hits that players endure multiple times throughout practice and games, from pee-wee right through to the pro’s.

• – https://www.playsmartplaysafe.com/newsroom/reports/injury-data/

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The whole point in it was to set up the safety aspect of the book, so people could understand why it was important. What I will say now is, I think we need to understand one simple concept, and ensure our players know it too:

We cannot remove the head completely from contact, what we can do, is make try and make the impacts more incidental as opposed to significant. The only way we will do that is through a better understanding of how people learn, and the physics of blocking.

And so we begin as many good stories do, with Chapter Two:

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Create and Understanding, Create Your Field

We must set boundaries of what we can expect as coaches. These boundaries then dictate what we can and cannot do, almost like a football field. The sidelines determine how wide we can go, The endzones determine how far we must go to score, and the defense dictates how difficult it will be to score.

At the moment, think of teaching any skill as a blank field, there are no sidelines, no endzones, nothing, just an empty field, a blank canvas. The limitations are endless, and as such, are overwhelming; we must add structure to that field in order to simplify what we can do.

We must make it football specific; we must create boundaries.

Just like there are boundaries on a football field, there are boundaries for us as coaches also.

Setting the Sidelines

There are two sidelines on the football field, and there are two boundaries that we must understand.

• FOOTBALL IS NOT A SIMPLE SPORT.

Flip Right Double X-Jet 36 Counter Naked Waggle @ 7, X Quarter

Now you tell that to a 10 year old, or a kid from Gowkthrapple who has only seen the NFL on TV, then start your cadence. Your about to be disappointed!

The premise of football is simple, but football itself is extremely complicated. We must understand that very basic premise. What we are teaching is not soccer or darts; it cannot be picked up in an afternoon, and performed at an acceptable level. Players must learn a lot of verbiage and a lot of drills before we can even contemplate putting them in pads and a helmet. It is a lot to take in.

In other words, we must take time with the basics of the game and the fundamentals, don’t assume players know anything until you are used to working with them. Simple things like explaining what the mirror drill is, or what a 3 tech is will go a long way with players; it also means you’ll never hear the phrase “but you never told me that coach!”

• COACHES KNOW MORE THAN THE PLAYERS

Seems simple, but you’d be amazed the amount of coaches who talk to players and expect that they know the exact same thing as them. At some point you must understand that you know more about what you’re talking about than your players, that’s why you’re the teacher. More importantly, coaches also want to learn about football more than most players. Players (generally speaking) either want the explicit rewards that football can bring:

• Scholarships;
• Highlight Reels;
• Fans,

or the implicit rewards such as:

• Friendships;
• Confidence;
• Being part of a team.

They are almost exclusively not interested in the fine details of how many different ways you can run an inside zone play or the window dressing you have found for running the smash concept. As I can attest to after many season of trying at Ouse Valley! I apologise again Eagles!

So there we have the sidelines to our field. Football is not a simple sport to play, and the coaches will always know more than the players. If we stay within these lines, we have taken the first steps to scoring. Taking it out the metaphor, we follow these two rules, we have a very good chance of creating well educated athletes who can execute because they know and understand the basics.

This starts to define our field, but at the moment, we just have a very long expanse of grass, that could be endless. So what we have said so far is that football is not a simple sport to play, and that coaches know more than players. This then leads us on two questions:

How can I simplify the sport/offense/playbook?

How can I get the players excited about learning?

I’m sure these are questions you have asked yourself over your coaching career. Let’s continue setting up the field first, and come back to those questions later.

Endzones – Time and Time Management

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst” William Penn

As coaches we must realise the difference between investing our time, and spending our time. And it is something we must preach to our players. I love listening to Saban talk about consistency and discipline, he’s a terrific motivator, and he’s been talking about the same stuff for years:

https://youtu.be/47jhAcCB1Z8?t=880 – Nick Saban 2019

https://youtu.be/6-hpIWVMbes?t=409 – Nick Saban 2014

https://youtu.be/XMCpDd0NB9M?t=270  – Nick Saban 2011

Now you could argue that that is a tremendous lack of originality in Saban’s script writing there, but for the best part of a decade, and probably longer, it’s been the same key message; you can either invest time, or spend time.

Time is also the one thing we don’t ever have enough of as coaches. We always want to spend more time coaching the kids, imparting knowledge, hoping that something we say will suddenly unlock everything for them and they will just ‘get it’. Sadly that is never the case. We are constantly limited by time.

Time management, therefore, are our end zones. How well we manage our time will determine how far we will go as coaches, as players and as a team.

I’m sure we can all think of a time when we didn’t really get to finish all the reps we wanted, or get through all the progressions we wanted to. I’m also sure we look at videos of FBS schools practices with envy as to how efficient there practices are.

Practice planning is an art form, it requires skill, foresight, and sheer determination to sit down and do it. It is also one of the most important things you will do.

Time management in a game situation is also vital, how many of us are fed up with delay of game penalties? Or the other side of that coin, wanting to run a no-huddle offense, most of us will practice 2-min drill and 4-min drill, evidencing how important time is, we have even named parts of our scripts after it.

If we manage time well enough, we can get very familiar with the end zones!

Now we have a field, but we need markings on the field to define it as a football field.

The markings – Progress and Focus

Culture is more important than scheme. No-one ever has long term success by nailing themselves to one scheme. Culture is what wins games, it is the team culture that defines toughness, physicality, smarts. Whether you are a Single Wing team or an Air Raid team, the plays you run aren’t going to win you a game, how you execute those plays will win games, and that is defined by the culture you create within your team.

Being focused is vital. Coaches, Players, Staff all must be focused on the same goal, no matter what it is. Keeping your focus on the ‘straight and narrow’ is vital, as the players will follow that lead. Whether your goal is to have 90% of your team with a 3.0 GPA, or to have 100% attendance at all off-season camps and practices, make sure you are explicit with your expectations, and don’t veer too wildly away from that goal.

Focus is much like the hash marks on the field. Straight and Narrow. It doesn’t matter what goes on outside of them, this is the only area the ball can be spotted. Much like your focus, it doesn’t matter what’s going outside, you must always keep your focus in the hashmarks.

Progress. Something I continually go onto my team about is progress. The quote I use is “Some quit due to slow progress, never realising that slow progress, is still progress”; which is an rewording of a quote from Ancient Greek Philospher Plato, who said “Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”

I love this quote, and it’s part of the culture I bring to our offense. The more you work at something the better you’ll get if you put in effort. It’s impossible to not make progress, but if you’re focused on the bigger picture, you may never see that progress. It’s important to track progress, so you can always see you’re getting better at something. And if you aren’t getting better, you aren’t putting in the effort, and that comes back to the culture you have.

The lines on the field track your progress. No matter if it’s a 1 yard gain, or a 50 yard gain. It doesn’t matter if your tracking progress on the 1 yard lines, or the 5 yard lines, the point is you’re making progress, be excited by that, and keep going. Much like in football, if you keep going, eventually you are going to break through.

It’s easy to progress up the field in chunks without a defense, in much the same way as it’s easy to call in plays. The defense is there to stop you progressing, and so is your system and communication if you don’t get it right.

The Defense – Learnability and Communication

How we communicate with our players and coaches is vital, and the details matter. This includes everything from how we call plays in a game, to how your playbook is presented, to what you are calling routes and steps.

Language is the single most important tool in our arsenal as coaches, and by neglecting it, we are neglecting our players. Having a system that is both easily communicated to the players, and easily learned by the players is vital. Unlocking this is like unlocking a defense on the field.

Therefore, communication and learnability are our defense. If we can create a language that is easily understood and learned, that is us unlocking the defense, and making the road to the end zone easier.  If our system is too complex, that is us making the defense more complex and harder to score against.

Taking it outside the metaphor again, what we are saying is that by having a lot of verbiage, or a lot of different verbiage across the program, you are working against yourself, you are making it harder for your players to learn and execute, therefore you are making it harder to score.

Now we have created and understood the boundaries, we must create a system that exploits them; we must find the most efficient way to work within these boundaries. This book will focus on the run game, specifically, run blocking. To continue the metaphor, we will learn how to:

• Stay in Bounds
• Beat the Defense; and
• Score Touchdowns

Not only are these the keys to winning football games on the field, they are the key to winning games off the field too.

STAYING IN BOUNDS

The two sidelines “football is not a simple sport to play” and “the coaches know more than the players”. These statements define our limits.

In order to stay in bounds we cannot make the scheme or system too complicated, or the players won’t understand it.  If the players don’t understand it, they can’t execute it at the speed we want them to.

We must have a structured system, combined with a structured teaching process that can create goals throughout a pre-season to constantly challenge your lineman and make them better players.

Each run blocking scheme is defined in the first 3 steps. A gap scheme does not take the same 3 steps as a zone scheme for example. The steps and body positions are very different, and this causes the first problem, having to learn a multitude of terms, different styles, and techniques.

We must find a way of simplifying this, and get a way for our guys to get excited about learning this stuff. That’s the key to staying in bounds.

BEATING THE DEFENSE

By separating the DNA of run blocking, we create terms that can be quickly and explicitly coached on the field. Correcting players without stopping drills is essential with today’s no-huddle offenses, especially in practices. This is managing our time.

With applications like HUDL and DVSport, coaching is moving from on the field to in the classroom. How we coach must adapt also. The application of the DN4 gives you the key phrases to be able to quickly correct players on the field, without stopping reps. We can then slow things down in the classroom to reinforce this teaching.

This shift in coaching mentality allows practices to run quicker, with more reps; coaching on the move, rather than pulling players aside to have a word with them. We don’t have time for that anymore.

Time is a luxury we don’t have, and this is a problem for high schools and colleges in America also. We created this system to help our Offensive Line learn blocking schemes and steps quickly, whilst understanding the timeline and body positions required.

We created this system in a way so that if a player misses one or two practices the terms and phrases he see’s in our playbook, are exactly the same as the ones on the field, so he’s never really not learning. We provide videos of our all our drills to our players, and all the drills are named, so that when the players hear this name, they can jump straight into the drill. Thus saving time!

Creating a language that your players understand is the key to beating the defense, create your own system.

“Coaches who can outline a play on a chalkboard are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their players heads and motivate” Vince Lombardi

MANAGING TIME TO THE END ZONE

Now we have created a simple system, and engaged the players in the learning process, all of which is backed up by a systematic language that everyone can communicate in. It becomes easier to manage your practice time.

I am a firm believer in the 3/2/1 practice scheduling. This is a fundamental learning methodology that ensures players understand a skill or drill. This is especially important when it relates to fundamentals, and importantly works so that you can get down to 3-5 minute focused periods after a few weeks practice.

3/2/1 is a great tool to really focus on fundamentals in practice, but can be implemented throughout an entire offense (or defense) for any part. It’s a pretty simple idea:

Practice 1: The first time you teach a skill, spend 3 periods just on that skill (assumed 5 mins per period). You should be able to cover the basics of that skill in 3 periods. If you can’t, you’re trying to do too much.

Practice 2: Next practice, spend 2 periods recapping what you went through in period one, and 1 period taking that skill onto the next progression of it.

Practice 3: Spend 1 period going through what you went through in Period 1, 1 period doing what you did in Period 2, and 1 period on another progression of that skill.

Practice 4: Spend 1 period doing what you did in Period 2, 1 period doing what you did in Period 3, and then period on another progression of that skill.

This process ensures that, over the course of 3 practices you have spent 6 periods on one fundamental, and 3 periods teaching the progressions of it. This is an excellent way of managing your time, and teaching fundamentals.

Importantly, this is also an excellent way of getting players and coaches used to using 3-5 minute blocks effectively. We would then take Period 4 forward as what we do in that period for the rest of the season.

Let’s look at an example.  Say we are teaching a Base Block for OL, in the first practice that is all I would focus on, a full 3 periods on just that.

The next practice, I would spend 2 periods re-coaching the base block, and 1 period introducing a drill, say a straight up drive block on a defender. (Let’s say we called this drill Straight Up)

The next practice, I’d spend 1 period re-coaching the base block, 1 minute on the Straight Up Drill, then I’d introduce the next progression, which would be a Base Double drill (using the Straight Up drill, and introducing a double team element.)

The next practice, I would spend 1 period working the Straight Up drill, 1 period working the Base Double drill, and 1 period working the next progression, which would be Double Off drill. (Using the Base Double drill, but introducing a LB).

This is what we do in pre-season, and it really drives your playbook design also.

If we work backwards from your current playbook, how many sessions would it take for each position group to go through a 3/2/1 progression for each fundamental they required?

So for OL, how many separate block types do you have?

WR’s, how many different routes do they have, different stems, different ways to catch the ball?

RB, how many different types of handoffs, runs, routes and pass protections do they need to know?

QB’s how many different handoffs, drops and throws do they need to make?

I’m willing to bet for the majority of you, with 2 hours a day coaching, you’ll have well over a week’s worth of practices just doing this by the time you lay it all out.

So in turn, your practice schedule dictates your playbook. Using the 3/2/1 principle, you’ll understand how many skills you have the time to teach. That will then in turn affect how many plays you have.

This is proper time management; let the time dictate what you can do effectively and properly, don’t try and squeeze things in.

Also, respect the time you have with your players, don’t trick them into more time. I hear a lot about pre-practice and post practice drills, who are we kidding? If you’re doing drills you’re practicing. So it’s not pre and post practice at all, all you have done is extend practice time.

If we are preaching time management to our players on the field, how they must give effort and respect the team and all that good stuff, how can we stand there and disrespect them by adding onto practice. What are you saying by doing that?

It tells the player that you can’t fit in everything you need to in practice. It tells him that you don’t practice what you preach. He is investing his time into that practice. If you say you have a 2 hour practice, make every player work hard for 2 hours. Not a second more. Respect your time and your player’s time. Organise time better.

 

Long Time, No Blog…

This is my first personal blog post in over 3 years, and this year marks the 5 year anniversary of me starting BigSkillPosition, and also marks the 4 year mark since I really did anything with it.

Why start blogging again now? Well it was actually Facebook memories that started this all off again, reminding me of the “book deal”. The story of how this “deal” actually came about is a strange one, but I think sums up how far and how quickly things in football can open up to you, if you meet the right people, and are incredibly (un)fortunate / naive.

The “Book Deal”

Back in 2015, this small time blog writing stuff was coming along OK, I had some ideas I wanted to get down on some Inside and Outside Zone stuff, as at the time, I thought that was all you needed to be a great offensive football team; I have since changed my mind on this. Anyway, this was getting up to 500 views a day globally, which is small time, but felt huge, and as it turns out, was because a number of other sites had ‘re-blogged’ my site. Most were really good, and linked to my page, and gave me full credit, but  one gentleman in particular didn’t, a coach in the US called Rick Stewart didn’t, and had published it on his blog making it look like he’d written it (he has updated it here, but I have a copy of the original webiste without it). There was no mention of me or the blog in there at all, I was outraged. Needless to say, I got in touch with Coach Stewart, and the problem was very quickly rectified. No harm, no foul.

Coach Stewart however said he thought my stuff was good enough to publish, and recommended me to Coach Keith Grabwoski, who at the time had one of the biggest blogs for coaches, https://coachgrabowski.wordpress.com/. He was also the OC at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, and has since went on to work for USA Football, where he hosts the Coach and Coordinator podcasts. I was introduced to him in his role with Coaches Edge Technologies, a company which produced ebook, or ibooks essentially. These were books that you could insert videos and  PowerPoint slides into, very advanced for 2015. After a few chats, we decided to work together, and I signed a legitimate book contract to write a series of books, much of which was to be centred around ‘safe’ blocking techniques.

I would say here that naïve does not even begin to describe what I was like going into this process, but excitedly I ploughed through months of research, and the book was really filling out a lot. I was researching what a concussion actually is, trying to better understand how people learn, and what the constraints were so that I could create something that was applicable to every offensive line globally, and not scheme dependent.

Since then, what I’ve realised is that writing books, especially in niche markets like Safe Blocking for Offensive Linemen, is not a huge money maker. At best, the writer gets 15% of the selling price of the book, and I was doing all this before the LeCharles Bentley stuff really exploded into all it’s awesomeness, and USA Football hadn’t worked with Scott Peters to get their contact system in place. So if you think it’s niche now, it was super niche then!

Coaching for Cash

It’s from this point that I started questioning things. Let me clear, I was never, and am still not in this for the money. But I did figure a book deal would net me more than 15%. So 85% of my work was going to other people. Even if I sold the book for $30, how many coaches are going to buy this, let’s be optimistic and say 1000, that’s a maximum of $4500, which isn’t to be sniffed at, but by the time, I get it into GBP, and take tax off it, it wasn’t a huge amount. I was really getting bogged down in the 85% part, rather than the actual numbers. I just couldn’t believe that was the industry norm, and in such a niche market, I made the estimation that I would need to really market and continually push the book to get any kind of numbers out of it. In essence, my hourly rate would have been absolutely appauling, and literally pennies when you consider the research and writing that went into it.

After writing the book, and much chatting with Keith, including a podcast recording which has never came out (presumably you can’t subtitle audio only podcasts!), we both decided that we wouldn’t do this through Coaches Edge Technologies. I was then directed to Coaches Choice through a mutual friend, and I thought I’d really hit the big time here. But no, it was the industry standard 10%, and they wanted more words. Eventually, after signing that deal, and letting it lapse on time too, we were well into 2017, and quite frankly, I wasn’t really feeling it anymore.

Since then, what I’ve done is take a step back, and really look at what’s going on in the coaching marketplace now, especially in the books/videos/packaged systems available on the market today, and I’m a bit ashamed of it all really, as a coach, and someone who enjoys blogging about football.

We have videos of coaches talking for 35 minutes on one play (not even variations, just one play) that you can purchase and download for $45!! For the non-mathematicians out there, that’s just shy of $1.29 a minute, or a whopping $77.14 / hour; not a bad minimum wage if you can get it! Obviously the coaches who do these videos don’t get all of that money, but someone is, and quite frankly, while I imagine you can take a little from each of them, they never represent value for money for me.

Then there are whole systems you can buy, that cost several hundred dollars for access to everything. I am ashamed to admit that I bought one of these systems, which promised to be the solution to all our problems on offense, we’d be scoring TD’s for fun, and all our players would fully understand what we were to do. Then I started looking at it, and realised the system was exactly what we were already doing, with different terminology. An expensive mistake, but one that I have most definitely learned from.

I didn’t, and don’t want to be like those coaches. I don’t feel I’m on the moral high ground either here. I got swept up in something I thought I wanted, only to peek behind the curtain, and realise that whilst it’s not a scam, it was getting very close. When I had discussion about someone publishing paperback versions of my book, but I would need to buy them up front at cost, then I could sell them at whatever price I wanted, I knew this wasn’t a business I wanted to be involved in.

And now….

So this left me, with an idea, a book written and ready to go, but morally I felt wrong about trying to sell this, for a number of reasons. Firstly, why would anyone buy what I’m selling? Secondly, my family isn’t reliant on me making a killing writing books, I have a job already and it isn’t coaching, and finally if I did want to make any real money from it, I’d need to publish it myself, and that’s a whole load of tax/business hassle that I don’t want in my life.

So that leads me to here and writing this post. I don’t want to be another name with a book/video. I don’t want to be a snake oil salesman at conferences around the US/UK and Europe trying to sell my system and proclaiming to know it all. That isn’t who I am. So what I’ve decided to do, against some advice, is simply publish it as blog posts on here, and let you guys, as coaches and readers decide if it’s worthwhile or not.

I’ll always be available to discuss it, the positives and negatives of it, and I will be honest about it. My ego is not tied up in this, if it doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t help anyone, but at least I’ll have done something with it. If no-one else takes anything from this experience, at least I get to put it out there, and see the genuine opinion, and discuss it with coaches, rather than talking at them!

And so, here we are. Stuck working from home, in a coronavirus-stricken world, twiddling our thumbs. Getting the blog back had been on my mind, and this is the perfect opportunity. And so we begin again, with honesty up front. I’ll publish posts weekly from the book, and then as and when I have stuff to write about. We begin again…

 

6 Tips for Training Big Guys

Nutrition. Conditioning. Strength.

NCS is critical to being a modern Offensive Lineman, so we asked Khrys Speed, a former professional and international rugby player and now rookie running back for the Ouse Valley Eagles to give us his 6 top tips for training as an Offensive Lineman.

Khrys is a High Performance Coach, building everyday people and athletes into the best they can be by encompassing every facet of performance into the approach – strength training, mobility, speed, conditioning, nutrition and overall lifestyle are worked in detail with him.

Whether it’s tight five players in rugby or the line players in American Football you can’t train the big bangers the same way as you do speed players. For one their skills are chalk and cheese, punching up on an opposing lineman isn’t the same as pushing off a DB or LB at the line. There’s a ton more resistance to press up on, and there’s also a lot more constant contact at the line. For these reasons our big dudes, need to carry as much muscle as possible, as much close quarter speed as they can (first and second step agility and acceleration is everything), and repeat power and strength (the ability to pancake a guy once isn’t worth much if you spend the next 10 plays recovering from the one big block you made).

1. Go close grip on your bench press, and do speed work (55-70% of your 1RM) more than heavy work. (85% and over).

The reason you want to go close grip is because it mimics your punch, John Welbourn referred to it as having your hands on the steering wheel. If you practice benching with a wide grip, way outside the shoulders and chest, flared elbows it’ll start to creep into your blocking ‘punch’, so whilst I agree the bench isn’t a sport specific exercise, it’s what we call GSP, or General Specific Preparation which is something that helps transfer your raw strength and fitness into your game skills. So when we say close grip it should mean your elbows are tucked close to your sides and your hands are shoulders with or a tiny bit narrower; a grip like this will help you keep things in close to your torso and have a better pop to your block.

Let me make a few points before I delve into the idea of ‘speed work’, let me just say you do need to be strong. But there’s a level when strong is strong enough. For a big dude you should probably be able to bench press close to 1.5x bodyweight. This means you can’t be a super chubby guy because fat won’t push the weights you need. Once you are hovering or have smashed that 1.5x BW (Body Weight) number you need to transfer that pure grinding strength to power. Most of your time should be spent hitting weights in that 55-70% range, for sets of 2-3 reps, and bands or chains aren’t a bad idea. Why is this? The weight is heavy enough you have to focus, get a little aggressive and punch against something and produce a lot of force, but it’s light enough that you can move pretty fast against the weight. That should sound familiar, having to be aggressive, fast and produce a ton of force through resistance (that’s a good block in a nutshell).

Now you should still hit some heavy work but never really circa (90-95%) or true max territory (100% and over), but it shouldn’t make up a bulk of your sessions or be a large focus of your program. You need to be strong, powerful and move fast. So you need to make sure you cover those three things. Get strong enough, then get fast enough and powerful enough, and just a hint you are never powerful or fast enough.

2. Don’t sprint over 20 meters/yards, and don’t run long distances or ‘pound the pavement’

You are probably around 250lbs+ if you play line at a high amateur level in the UK, and in the States you are probably breaking the scales with how much you weigh. Look at marathon runners now look at you, look at the runners, now back to you, you have a lot more weight to carry than them, and thus a lot more stress to put through your bones and tissue. The stress produced is not really worth what it would give you (a higher level of aerobic fitness) and there are other ways to build your work capacity and aerobic fitness anyway.

Think about your speed and conditioning work as specific to your position, when do you run a 2-5 yard sprint? The answer is damn near every play. How often do you go up to 10 yards? A little less often than the 2 to 5 yard burst. And how often do you run 20 yards or more? Not very often at all, so your sprint work should be up to that distance but no more, your agility work should focus primarily on that 2-5 yard box you are aiming to blow up your opposite man in. So your speed work should consist of 5, 10, 15 and 20 yard sprints with a focus being on either high quality speed work (long rest periods) or a conditioning effect (short rest periods that slowly get shorter as your fitness improves).

Your aerobic conditioning should be low joint impact to unloaded joint stuff. So med ball throws, barbell or dumbbell complexes. Some blocking drills done with short rest periods, workouts on the concept rowers or even a step machine or hill machine are good options. Anything that lets you perform a lot of work without making your knees creak is good.

3. Work for explosiveness and balance

You want twinkle toes, a quick first step and a solid punch. Every sport has a guy who can wreck you with one hand if he gets a hold of you, but he can’t move fast enough to get anyone! Linemen need to be fleet footed ballerinas in cleats and lids as well as brutally powerful guys with a punch on them. So because of this, you need to perform quick feet drills, ladder drills, rapid response drills, lower impact plyometric type movements and some game specific footwork drills are what you need to focus on. Simple things like learning to jump rope, perform basic ladder drills and rapid response drills (similar to ladder drills where you’re trying to move your feet with maximum speed and accuracy but without moving too far). You need to have that mobility to manoeuvre in a 5 yard box like no one else on the field can, so make sure that your practices and even some of your gym sessions include some footwork practice.

4. Get your protein in

I realise that big boys will be big boys, and especially those of you who are actually having to overeat (past your natural appetite levels) to hold your weight up where it should be will have to eat things that wouldn’t be on a nutritionists healthy foods list; try to add that stuff on top of a basic foundation of good food. Get in a ton of lean protein (at least a gram per lb of bodyweight) as it helps with recovery, muscle mass, health and it actually elevates your metabolic rate (you can eat more to maintain weight). Try to get your protein target covered before you start eating the rubbish food to make up calories.

5. Recover as well as you Train & Play

You’re a big dude, so you not only have more potential to smash up other players but you put a ton of stress on your own body when you move around and hit people. So you have the most potential to get injured, so it’s important you spend time recovering, the smaller guys in the slot, out wide, the pocket and running the ball can get away with training hard, playing hard, going to eat after and leaving it there to recover and just let passive rest help them recover, but you big guys are going to find hard training and playing more unforgiving, you need to be doing some kind of soft tissue work, whether this is simple mobility work like Yoga, Kelly Starret banded stretching, foam rolling, hot Epsom Salts or a sports massage, just do something twice a week that is going to speed up your recovery and make you feel better. Don’t underestimate how much just feeling better does for your actual physical recovery!

6. Hydration is key

Whether you want to gain weight, lose weight or recover as efficiently as possible, taking in the right amount of water is vital. And when we say water, we mean water. Not tea, not juice, not coffee, straight out the tap water!

As a general rule, be looking to have 2 pints of water with every meal, it’ll keep you hydrated, and aids digestion too. That should equate to around 6-8 pints per day. And if you are exercising on top of that, you’ll need more to compensate for sweat loss. Don’t underestimate just how important water is to you as an OL, Lucozade and other sports drinks are great supplements to good water intake, but don’t be fooled into thinking you are totally replenished after a workout/training session/game after you’ve down 500ml of ‘isotonic orange’ or whatever, keep the water intake up.

Also, a good tip for 2 a days or training camps is to put a very small pinch of salt and a half teaspoon of sugar in the water bottles, as this will help you hydrate much better. Will you have tasted better, yeah, does it help you make better use of the fluids you are taking in, yes. Plus it’s infinitely cheaper than Gatorade, with 1000% less sugar in it, so not only will your body appreciate it, your bank account and dentist will too.

Article 9 – Things I’ve learned that work and are useful

It’s been a big year for me as a football coach. Firstly, my team won a division title, and were a field goal in overtime away from the championship game. Secondly, I got to coach in America for the first time, spending training camp with the University of LaVerne in California and working with a tremendous staff and team, who won their division and went to the Division 3 playoffs  for the first time in over 20 years. I’ve been asked to write a book, which is a work in progress, but should hopefully be out soon, and this blog, which started the whole thing, has nearly tripled in size in a  year, with almost 9000 views this year,

These experiences have fed both my enthusiasm and my imagination for football, offense and the OL. My trips to California and the extensive research required for the book specifically have developed me more than I could have ever dreamed of. So I wanted to pass on some of what I’ve learned.

BSP Blocking Manual – The Book

The purpose of the book is to aim to reduce head impacts in blocking; we do this through better fundamentals and a better awareness of how our body naturally works. What the actual title of the book will be yet is a total mystery, as is the release date. It has grown into a much project than I first thought, but I want it to be right before it gets released.

One of the first research projects I had was to understand concussions better, how they occur, why they are bad and what the long term affects are. An injury to a player can have serious consequences on their playing career, work career and possibly even lifestyle choices afterwards; a serious head injury can affect someone’s entire life and their family’s.

Firstly, the term concussion is just one small part of the problem. It is the term the media has latched onto and has broadcasted across the entire nation week after week, there is even a film coming out next week called ‘Concussion’. Just as an aside, I can’t wait for this film; I think it is going to send shockwaves through football, the media and the NFL. I hope it is accurate to events as they happened, and not dramatised too much.

Concussions as most people know them come from big hits, such as the ones below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtCgquOsXeo

However, this is just a small part of the problem. Brain Injuries, can be caused through those one time big impacts, which the game is trying to put a stop too, however, more worryingly, it can also be caused by repetitive sub-concussive hits. So whilst the big hits look great, and do cause injuries, it’s the hits that no-one pays attention too that are likely doing the damage.

CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) is a progressive, degenerative disease found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma. This brain trauma can include symptomatic concussions, as well as continual sub-concussive hits to the head that do not cause symptoms.

SIS (Second Impact Syndrome) is an incident which causes a second concussion before the symptoms of the first concussion have subsided, which can cause rapid and severe brain swelling, often with catastrophic results.

Get used to these terms, they may be some of the most important you learn about whilst coaching. They also suggest that concussions aren’t actually the issue, but are an outcome.

The book goes into this subject in much more detail, using statistics from the NFL, but I have put this first in the post because it is the most important thing I have learned in the last year.

Stance

For years when I was playing, a 3 point stance seemed completely alien to me. I didn’t like it, it felt uncomfortable, and I felt less explosive in one. That being said, I doubt I have ever been called an ‘athlete’ at any stage of my playing career, so I’m probably as much to blame for this, but nevertheless, I’ve always looked for ways it can be improved to make it more natural.

It’s a core fundamental for offensive linemen, and I’ll bet at every practice session throughout the country people will still be doing ‘stance & start’ drills to practice them, without even considering what is being taught is wrong.

I’m sure like most of you, I follow and read LeCharles Bentley’s Instagram as it’s a mine of great technical information about OL fundamentals at the highest level. A few months ago, he put up a post discussing the mechanics of the lower body in the stance, and why that was important. It intrigued me and I started looking into it more. Here are a few links to clips he has posted of athletes he works with; there are two consistent elements that I’ve been seeing more and more in college and NFL players:

https://www.instagram.com/p/9ZoZsLgAt8/?taken-by=olineperformance

https://www.instagram.com/p/9YwNZSgAqi/?taken-by=olineperformance

Firstly, knees inside toes. Sounds simple, yet is very rarely focused on, however it is vital for power generation. A lot of people (myself included) talked about feet, knees and shoulders in alignment to ensure movement, which it does; but movement without balance and stability is a sure fire to get put on your ass.

https://www.instagram.com/p/1y0xrsAAvE/?taken-by=olineperformance

Secondly is the feet, both feet should be pointing forward in your stance, right?

Wrong

If we put the off foot at 45⁰, and keep our knee inside our foot, it does two things, firstly it opens the hip, which allows us to move in any direction much more efficiently, and secondly, it keeps our weight on our insteps and all our cleats in the ground, exactly what we want.

Give it a go yourself, and tell me it doesn’t feel more comfortable.

So what you end up with is a very strange looking stance, that all the old-timers will look at and shake their head, but allows your lineman to dominate from the start.

https://www.instagram.com/p/11WH-2AAvu/?taken-by=olineperformance

Old-School

This is something that has bugged me for a while, when it did become OK to say “I’m old-school”. I can’t remember something good ever following that statement. In football terms it’s normally followed by either 40 mins of Oklahoma drills, or ridiculous amounts of fitness work, stuff that benefits no-one.

One of our rookies wrote a particularly good piece about it that opened my eyes somewhat. You can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/KhrysSpeedSandC/photos/pb.645751742104637.-2207520000.1447974055./1140856409260832/?type=3&theater

Being old-school is not OK. Whether intentional or not, it screams ‘I don’t want to learn’ or ‘I’ve learned enough’. You have never learned enough, get out there and get better. You want your players to get better, how can you ask them to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself?

I prize effort more than execution. If we can perfect effort at practices we will soon perfect execution as well. Something I say every practice “How we practice is just as important as What we practice”. Same goes for coaches, perfect effort, and expect the same from your players.

LaVerne

The knowledge I picked up in LaVerne cannot be boiled down into one post. It is wide and expansive and I’ll be forever grateful to Coach Worsell and the staff at LaVerne for the opportunity to go and assist them.  Here are some of the key things I did note:

Practice

Whether it’s daily or weekly, have a plan for practice, and a goal you want to achieve during that practice, and keep it small.

We want to perfect the playbook in this practice is not an achievable target. I want to really focus on outside zone in this practice is achievable. This goal affects exactly what you will practice that day/week, and how you set practice up, the flow of practice. We script every practice rep, certainly on offense, defense will some of the time. This does two things, we ensure that we are only working those plays we want to, to achieve our goal, and it makes inputting data into HUDL afterwards a simple import a spreadsheet.

When I talk about plan, I mean a minute by minute guide as to what everyone should be doing at all times. And make sure everyone of your coaches has a hard copy. I’m all for technology at practice and in games, but nothing is more demoralising to players than watching a coach fumble through a phone trying to find the downloads folder where he saved the plan.

Whether you break it down into 3 minute segments, 5 minutes or more, keep it the same. And stick to it. If you allocate 5 mins for one on pass rush, then stick to that. Don’t get caught up in the ‘If I allocate more time to something, does that make it more important’ debate, the fact it is in your practice plan makes it important. Whether it 5 minutes or 30, it is all important. It all contributes to your goal.

Culture Outweighs Scheme

I think in general in the UK this isn’t thought about, but it does happen. I know for definite that the years I spent at EKP, we developed a culture, not just about how you practice and play, but about what is expected of players in regards to paying subs. One of the biggest challenges we faced when creating OVE was developing a similar culture, as the two previous clubs had one of dissent, disobedience and a general lackadaisical approach to things. We haven’t cracked it yet, but we are a damn sight closer than we were before, and have taken some great strides towards it.

You don’t develop a culture to win games; you win games by developing a culture. It is not just about work on the field, but how you act as people off it. As coaches, one of our jobs is to develop our players, not just as athletes, but as people. Expect every player to give the same amount of effort as the most committed player. Expect every player to act as humble as your quietest player. When you know it and your players know it, you develop a joint accountability for each other’s work ethic, and push each other on. There is no one person in charge of it, everyone is.

Remember, how you practice is just as important as what you practice. That’s a culture instilled within the team, not a scheme.

check out #culturebeforescheme and #cultureoutweighsscheme on Facebook and Twitter for some cool ideas from a load of coaches.

Have a System

This isn’t new information to anyone; the most successful coaches all talk about how players and schemes fit into their system and have done for some time now.

Scheme: Our plays that we want to run

System: How it all fits together and makes it easy for the players to learn

Players: Must be able to execute the Scheme.

The System therefore, is how we teach our scheme to our players. It’s a method of communication that makes the players feel like it is intuitive.

I struggled for years to try and develop a system, without realising I never really understood what one was. This year, I was fortunate to spend time learning a system, and my eyes were opened. I saw an entire portion of the playbook installed and explained in 15 minutes, then executed well just hours later. That’s a system. If you spend any time at all in the off-season working on the playbook, spend it looking at how to develop a system, as that will benefit you more than a new play concept that you saw on X and O Labs.

Playbook

Break your offense down into installs, not by play type, and assign a day/camp/month to that install. For instance, our first install contains all our singleback formations, inside zone (and tags from it), 4 quick passes, and 1 deeper passing concept. By the end of that install period, we should have perfected those plays. We then move onto the next install period.

Doing it this way focuses what you need to install (see practice plan above) and your practices. It also focuses what the players need to learn, and when they need to learn it by. We have told all our players now, what installs we will be running in what practices, so that they can study before they get to practice, reducing install time considerably.

I would add here that there are differences between the UK and the US just now. In America, there is a big ideology kicking about that players don’t need playbooks, certainly Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech has been outspoken on this fact, and I’m sure I remember Art Briles at Baylor talking about it also. This works in an environment when staff and players see each other every day. Players are encapsulated in the system, with unlimited access to coaches, film and each other to ask questions.

At the moment, the UK is no-where near that, with even the best teams practicing every other day at best. At the moment I think it is unreasonable to go without a playbook, players need this to review in their own time. However, there are ways we can increase the learning opportunities.

We use HUDL, as I’m sure most teams in the UK do by now, if you don’t, get it! I’ve uploaded’ teaching tapes’ to HUDL showing the plays we want to run, being run, either by our team, or by others. We show good clips, of where the plays have worked well. We don’t go through every possible outcome, we simply describe and demonstrate it working, we don’t prescribe how to do it.

If we see something good/bad at practice, we will add it to the teaching tapes, and share them with the appropriate groups/people.

In addition, I’ll also be holding video chat sessions with positional groups after every install session, maybe 20-30 mins each, to recap the install and answer any questions they may have and simply reinforcing the install teaching, continuing to engulf the players in the system.

Coaching Hubris

I’m as guilty of this as a lot of people, getting bogged down by trying to learn too much. Understand a few things:

1. Football is not a simple sport

• The idea of the game may be, but how you execute it isn’t

2. What you know and what your players need to know are very different things

• Include the thirst for knowledge in this

Football is a simple sport is a huge pet peeve of mine. If football is so simple, why do coaches get paid so much money to do it? The verbiage involved in it is ridiculous for anyone to learn, let alone rookies who have 4/5 weeks to learn the sport from scratch.

One of the simplest passing plays in football is the Stick concept. Most teams the world over will utilise it n some form or fashion. Last season, a typical ‘Stick’ play call for my team would have Blue Left Chester. You could also call it Left Slot 323 Y Stick. Unless you have a good understanding of what to do, and what each term means, you’re unlikely to be able to do anything.

So firstly you need to break down what the stick concept is, and remember you have a load of different formations, where who does what changes. So now we’ve covered formations and routes, we still need to explain to the OL what they are doing. So we explain the protection scheme. Now we need to go outside and teach these guys how to physically run that route, throw the ball, and pass protect, then we bring it all together again.

Remember here, that’s the simple call!

So football is not a simple sport, but by employing a system, we can make it more learnable for the players.

Coaches can spout endlessly about plays and intricacies and ‘techniques’ we have discovered, but if the players don’t understand it, what use is it all?

Take the inside zone play as an n example. I’ve wrote 4 blog posts on it, we’ll over 15,000 words, on one play! Do my players need to know everything I wrote down, absolutely not. Here is what I teach my players now:

1. Inside Zone is a physical attacking play
2. We must double team the two inside DL (40 front), or the two playside DL (30 front).
3. Help always comes from the frontside on Inside Zone.

That’s it. It tells them what type of play it is: Run Play, physical, downhill

It tells them the critical information about block identification, and it tells them how to sort the double teams out.

All we need to do now is teach them how to run block, how to double team, and what the double team calls are. Outside of that we don’t show them a lot.  I believe in those articles I’ve written, I think it’s critical information for any coach wanting learn or install the inside zone, but my players don’t understand it that way, as the information is too much to take on board and play fast.

Finally…

Enthusiasm, Having Fun

This is the first thing I noticed when I coaching at LaVerne, the energy and enthusiasm the coaching staff brought to the field was intoxicating, and the players knew when the coaches were excited, they should be too, cause something good was coming. My first session back in the UK afterwards wasn’t with my team, but it was dreary as hell, and I didn’t feel great being a part of it. So I’ve went out my way to try and be as enthusiastic, energetic and outgoing as I can possibly be. I look at it like it’s on me to bring the energy to practice, and I’m trying to get all the other coaches the same.

Inflection and honesty in the voice is key, as it what you say. If we didn’t have a good practice I’ll let the guys know, but I try and remain as upbeat as possible, remember “It’s never as good as it looks, nor as bad as it seems”. Everyone knows that huddle at the end of the session, where the coach talks in a monotonous voice and it generally starts with “good practice guys”. Everyone has already tuned out. This is the last thing your players will remember until possibly the next practice week, make it worth listening to.

I now ask at the end of the session if everyone had fun, if you didn’t you don’t respond. So far I’ve had a raucous response every week.

The Outside Zone – Article 8

The Outside Zone – Article 8

Over the last few articles, I’ve covered some of the basics of the Outside Zone for Offensive Line, players and coaches. It’s pretty technical and, much like the Inside Zone, founded on a lot hard work and studying, and even more trial and error.

In this article we’ll look a bit more at the Outside Zone from a Coordinators perspective, the basics of running it, and some of the variations you can use to make a simple Outside Zone play, a staple part of your offense.

Before we get into the X and O’s, let’s have a look at the how the Running back fits into the scheme, and what this does to the defense.

For the purposes of these diagrams, I will use a spread, under centre look, and we will progress to different possibilities later on.

Aiming Point and Entry Point

If we remember from The Inside Zone – Article 4:

• The Aiming Point is the visual key the Running Back is aiming for.
• The Entry Point is the Gap you are e4xpecting to be open based on the defensive front.

Aiming Point

Depending on who you listen to, the aiming point can be anywhere between the centreline of the tackle to a yard outside the TE. Ultimately, it’ll come down to your personnel and offensive style.

I like to have the Running Back (RB) have an aiming point of the centreline of the TE. (If there isn’t a TE in, imagine one!). If we are running from a shotgun formation, we will track this position rather than aim at it, but we will cover that later.

This allows the RB the best post-snap read of the play developing in front of him, before he makes his cut. We want to aim for the TE, get the defense flowing, and cut it back, more than likely behind the PSG or C. However, we all know this depends on a few things, mainly the defensive front, so let’s have a look at the entry points.

Entry Point

As with Inside Zone, we only have 3 entry points on any given Outside Zone play. This is to either Bang, Bend or Bounce.

In the Inside Zone, we are aiming for a hole, a specific gap in the line, and making our reads based on that.

In the Outside Zone we are simply running to an area, and making our reads as we go. In essence, we are running and blocking to influence the defense, and we read how they react. We don’t have a hole or gap we are aiming for, so that changes our reads.

Reads

Primarily speaking the Outside Zone has 2 RB reads the 1^st down lineman and the 2nd down lineman. Each read keys a separate entry point that is easy to coach and easy for players to remember.

If #1 DL (EMLOS) is reached = BOUNCE

If #1 stretches, and #2 reached = BEND

If both #1 and #2 stretch = BANG.

BOUNCE IT – If we can get the outside, take it.

BEND IT – Hit it inside the #1 defender; look for OL block on LB for big yards.

BANG IT – Hit it inside the #2 defender, upfield cut, to gash the defense. Look for this to cut all the back to the other side of the field if the defense over-pursue

As with the Inside Zone articles, I have shown the RB’s aiming and entry points correctly, but haven’t shown the OL movement.

I have found that using BANG, BEND and BOUNCE terminology gives my running backs key phrases that can be quickly and easily coached, allowing us to practice faster. It provides a simple and effective framework that will allow you and your RB’s to best utilise their skills.

Outside Zone from Shotgun

The shotgun uses exactly the concept as Pistol or UC, however, needs some slight modifications to adjust for the RB’s offset position.

Footwork

Our RB’s are taught a ‘3 steps to, 3 steps through’ technique from the shotgun, as shown below.

The 1^st step is a cross over step, ensuring the outside foot is planted on 6^th step when we should be making the upfield cut.

Aiming Point/Tracking Point

From the Shotgun, our Aiming Point is different; specifically, we look for a straight horizontal line, in front of the QB. You should still be at 4-4.5 yards depth when making your cut.

However, our reads must remain the same in order for the concept of the Outside Zone to work. We teach our RB’s to ‘track’ their reads feel their feet. We don’t want our RB’s counting steps, we need them focused on the reads, as shown below.

This allows us to implement the same rules for the RB as we do for UC or Pistol:

If #1 DL (EMLOS) is reached = BOUNCE

If #1 stretches, and #2 reached = BEND

If both #1 and #2 stretch = BANG.

BOUNCE IT – If the outside is available take it

BEND IT – When the #1 read plays outside, and #2 read gets reached, bend it inside #1.

BANG IT – When #1 and #2 play hard to the outside; the OL will wash them out, creating this running lane

Outside Zone from Shotgun has one major advantage, and that’s if the outside is there, your BOUNCE read is open, you hit that at full speed, there is almost no cut required, and that’s a powerful weapon if used correctly.

The obvious negative is the opposite of that, having to make the BANG read and cut, unless you have a Division 1 talent at RB, is pretty difficult to do and not lose momentum. That being said, it is still a very useable technique, and has served us well over the last few years.

The window dressing and various options when running OZ

At a coach/coordinator level, we must really start to think about the window dressing we use around these plays. Looking at formations, motions, reads, triple options are all things that you should look at when game planning for opponents.

From 4 WR packages, to empty, to 2 man backfield sets, to 3 man backfield sets, what can you utilise to give you an edge; and more importantly, how can you tie it all together so your players will understand quickly.

Let’s have a look at just a few of the options available to you:

Single Back Zone/Zone Read

I’m a big traditional Outside Zone guy. I love running it over and over again, and watching the defense adjust to each one. Simple adjustments, like moving under centre on a 3^rd & 1 play alert the defense to the possibility of a QB sneak, you can still have the Outside Zone called, and just run it from under centre, but you’ve changed how the defense reacts by a very subtle shift.

UC

As you can see above, I like to reverse pivot the QB. This is actually a change to what we used last season. It takes a bit of repetition for the QB, but is easily implemented if enough time in practice is dedicated.

Last season we had the QB opening up playside (shown above), however this caused the QB to get to the handoff point to quick, and the RB having to bubble the aiming point, and take his eyes off his read. This year we went with the reverse pivot, and it’s tied everything up nicely. We also reverse pivot from pistol as shown below. This involves a slightly quicker motion for the QB to get the handoff point in time, but again, with enough practice time dedicated to it, it doesn’t become an issue.

Either way, the QB must execute the rollout, and feedback to you as a coach on what the DE is doing. As soon as the ball is handed off, he must snap his head round to locate the DE. If he sees the DE crashing in consistently, we will throw in a ‘QB keeper’ to gain some yardage, and force the DE to play his contain.

Read

The Outside Zone read has been very popular for a number of years at the NCAA and high school level with QB’s getting more and more athletic and mobile. It is an easy to install play, that can really take advantage of defense that doesn’t keep contain or over pursues.

This play is simple to install because OL and RB are just running Outside Zone, and the QB has exactly the same rules here, as he does for Inside Zone Read:

If the DE goes upfield – GIVE the ball

If the DE crashes – KEEP the ball

But, obviously by aligning in the gun, we are showing the defense what way we are running the ball. Not the case, the Speed Option is another easy and simple play to add to your arsenal that can utilise Outside Zone blocking.

Speed Option

The Speed option is a simple an easy to install option play that will force the defense to play the run to both sides of the formation, both Strong and Weak.

The rules surrounding it are extremely simple.

OL = Outside Zone blocking. PS Tackle to ‘easy’ release to MDM on 2^nd level.

‘Easy’ Release = We want an inside release, but if the EMLOS is playing Inside or slants that way, don’t fight him, take the easiest path to the 2^nd level.

RB = Arc release on option path. Stay 6 yards wide and 1 yard behind QB.

QB = Aiming point is outside hip of EMLOS; force him to declare if he is covering you or the RB. Make the EMLOS wrong. If he stays wide – KEEP it; if he attacks you – PITCH it.

I like the Outside hip of the EMLOS, as for a couple of reasons:

1. It gets width on the play, and really isolates the EMLOS
2. It forces him to declare quickly if he is taking the QB or RB

If we aim for the inside hip, the DE has the capability of playing both QB and RB if he’s very good, and it close enough to the other DL that they may be able to make a play.

This play can also work well from the Pistol

2- Back Zone/Zone Read

In exactly the same way as the 2-Back Zone read adds a wrinkle to your Inside run game, the Outside Zone can be utilised in many different ways, to offer multiple looks and plays, whilst utilising similar concepts. Essentially what we are trying to do is expand what the opposition needs to defend, yet limit what we need to teach.

A 2 back Zone read game can be very explosive. Taking the standard zone read shown above, and ad in a FB/H-Back. We can make the play look very different.

You can call:

LEAD – FB leads the play, making the same BANG/BEND read as the RB

SLICE – FB blocks the Backside DE

LOAD – Tells the H-Back to leave the DE and block first force defender.

If the above is “Pro Rt. 28 Zone”, we can tag the fullback to give us very different looks, yet highly successful plays.

“Pro Rt. 28 Zone ‘Lead’” – we now have 7 v 6 blocking at the POA

“Pro Rt. 28 Zone ‘Slice’” – now we can still read what the DE does, but we have a body blocking him. The same read rules apply as before, but now if the DE goes upfield, the QB keeps it and runs off the FB block.

“Flanker Lt 28 Zone ‘Load’” – Now if the read dictates the QB keep the ball, we have an additional blocker in front, taking the first force defender.

The obvious benefits to this are that we can install multiple plays, very quickly, after teaching the concepts to the players.

Above we can see some of the multiple position we could use a FB/H-Back. But there are countless more, and if you like to use motions in your offense, the opportunities are almost endless. You could Outside Zone 30 times a game and make it look different, every single time.

Speed Option

The two back version of speed option allows us to load the Point of attack. We are still executing the same play as above, but with the added bonus of a FB blocking the force defender, leaving the free releasing TE to look for the MDM, whether that is the OLB, or Force defender.

Here we are running it with the FB in an ‘On’ position, in between the Guard and Tackle and a yard off the line.  His release will be inside the ‘Read’ man. In this scenario, he’ll be looking for the MDM, and the TE will be looking for the Force defender.

We can also run it from a typical Pro set as shown above, or from a Pistol King set as shown below.

All we are doing is making very small modifications to our fundamental Outside Zone play, to allow us to be creative on offense, without overloading our players. Obviously, the two back Speed Option leads onto the Speed Shovel.

These are just some of the Options available to you, by building on the fundamental teachings of the Outside Zone.

Tagging the backside of your Outside Zone Scheme

Utilising two backs, can also allow us to run different option plays, by tagging the backside of the Outside Zone.

What we can see above, is the playside of the Outside Zone, with the FB on the ‘Slice’ block, and the QB running in essence, a power play. The above play would be called “Red Lt OZ Tug, F Slice, Q Power”

The ‘TUG’ tag references the backside of the Zone concept, and instructs the Tackle Under Guard. The QB would simply read the PS LB to see if he flows with the OZ, or stays with the Power option, the Rule for the QB is:

PS LB stays = GIVE

PS LB flows = KEEP

Run/Pass Options

We covered a lot of ground on the Run/Pass option in Article 4, focusing on the Inside Zone. However the Outside Zone has a lot to bring to the table here as well.

The Inside Zone has to rely on bubble screens and short passes as your options, because lineman would be downfield if we threw anything deeper. Outside Zone doesn’t have that problem, as linemen are taking a much shallower attack angle, so will take them longer to cross the LOS and break through the buffer zone. This allows us more opportunities in the RPO game.

Slant/Flats

This is a pretty simple one to install and take advantage of the OLB. If he plays the run, we pull it and throw the slant, if he plays the pass, we run it.

Very simple reads, and a twist on the usual playside RPO that we see every day (Stick/Draw etc) by having the read on the backside.

SCAT Concept

This is a great play to throw in if you are already running this passing concept. Also known as a Snag concept, it’s similar to a Smash, but with an inside hitch from the #1 receiver and a corner over the top by #2. The corner throw here is open a lot more than you would think, as it puts a bind on the Safety, Corner and LB. What do the play, the run, or the pass!?

Getting the throw out quickly, as a RHTHYM throw (R4 terminology) is key, but can be an explosive play for your offense.

SMASH Concept

Finally, the Smash Concept, put the backside corner in a bind, and see what he’s playing. He can play the Dig route and the run, but he can’t also cover the Corner route over the top.

Critical to all of the above plays is the playside #1 receiver running a fade, and making the DB play him. We would also tag the backside tackle to stick on the BS DE, and provide some extra protection for the QB.

Summary

What I’ve tried to show above is not an exhaustive list by any stretch, but instead a series of plays and ideas that will open up your playbook, and allow you to incorporate the Outside Zone.

What if instead of running a Smash concept on the backside of Outside Zone, we ran a Fade/Seam? You can see the possibilities that are open to you!

The Outside Zone – Article 7

Over the past few articles we have focused on the playside blocking of the Outside Zone, and whilst that is a vital part of the blocking scheme, almost as important is the backside of the Zone, and what technique you employ that side.

The reason it is so important is that the ball is not meant to cut back behind the Playside A Gap, like it can do on Inside Zone, therefore it means we can tailor our backside blocking on this concept.

A recent X and O Labs study showed that currently, 42.7% of coaches are teaching a ‘Rip to Run’ technique on the backside, 33.7% were teaching a ‘full reach’ technique on the backside whilst only 15.7% of coaches are cut blocking on the backside.

There are many different ways to clock the backside of Outside Zone, and I’ll cover the most popular ones briefly. It should be noted that much of the technique teaching has already been covered in the previous articles. Specifically, Zone steps, are vital to the backside blocking, whether we are cut blocking, reaching or whatever, using the zone steps is vital to backside zone blocking.

I’d like to start however, by having a very brief look at why cut blocking is being shunned by the football community, especially at high school level in America.

Cut Blocking

The statistic that stands out the most to me is the extremely low number of teams cut blocking on the backside.

The obvious reason for this is that quite a few states in America have banned cut-blocks at the high school level. This is due to a widely held belief that cut-blocking is dangerous, and leads to injuries.

I’m not certain that is actually the case though. At the moment, there aren’t any studies out there looking specifically at cut blocks and injuries; which begs the question how do people know that cut blocking causes injuries?

I undertook a very small piece of research into the subject, and found a study by Dr James Bradley entitled “Incidence and Variance of Knee Injuries in Elite College Football Players”. I thought this would have some interesting statistics for us. I’ve linked to the article above so you can have your own opinions, as I’m merely taking some figures from the research.

My thinking took me along this line:

If cut blocking is so dangerous, surely defensive linemen, as the position that is cut blocked the most (by OL run-blocking and RB’s pass-blocking) would have a higher knee injury rate than any other position, and quite a way higher as well.

What the above research shows is that 68% of the DL in the study had a history of knee injuries, with TE being the next highest position (64.3%) and OL third ( 57.4%). That would seem to support the theory that DL are more likely to receive knee injuries than any other position; however, when we look in more detail, that statement doesn’t stand true.

When we look at serious knee injuries (i.e. injuries requiring surgery) we see that Offensive Linemen top the charts with 21.4% of them requiring surgery. Defensive linemen come third behind OL and LB’s, but statistically not much higher than most other positions.

This led Dr. Bradley to come to the conclusion that “There was no significant association between type or frequency of specific injuries with regard to player position.”

Now, I’m aware that one study does not extensive research make, but I think it’s an interesting start. For me, given the absence of research into it, there isn’t enough evidence for me to stop using cut blocks. Concussions are a much more frequent injury, and rightly draw a lot of focus, yet cut blocking seems to get its fair share of publicity, purely based on anecdotal evidence. It seems almost dirty to say it nowadays, but I like Cut Blocking, and I like it for one very good reason:

It’s Effective!

Cut Block Technique

 

There are a few different ways of teaching the cut block, but I like to stick some key principles:

• Players must take 3 (Zone) steps before they can cut
  • This allows them to see the defender before they cut
• Players must land on their stomach
  • Helps prevent shoulder injuries, and prevents ‘rolling up’ of defender
• Players must only cut block the front of defenders
  • I have zero patience for players deliberately hitting the side or backs of the knees
• We aim for where the defender will be, not where he currently is.

I’m aware that a lot of coaches break this down into 1^st level and 2^nd level techniques, however, as we don’t have the time to install that kind of specificity, we utilise the Zone steps we have already learned, which fits very nicely into this scheme.

Steps

In first article I spoke about zone steps and how the distance we drop varies depending on the width of the defender. The same strategy can be employed here, but it’s dependent on depth, rather than width. (i.e. if we’re blocking a 1^st level defender, we don’t need to drop step very deep, however, if were blocking a 2^nd level defender, we want to drop deep to take an ‘arc-ed’ path.)

What we try to do is limit the amount of techniques the players need to learn. By utilising Zone steps for both playside and backside blocking, we are able to achieve that, and have the players understand how to attack both 1^st and 2^nd level defenders, with employing different techniques, just minor tweaks.

In the clips below we can see the technique executed in practice. Please note, not all the linemen do the same steps here, some look as if they are crossing over and trying to keep their hips and shoulders square, whereas other are taking their zone steps. I very much favour the latter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zewVqhzrvo

Rip to Run Technique

The Rip to Run technique is the most favoured by coaches, because it gets the job done, and doesn’t put players on the ground. The Rip to Run technique again utilises the Zone steps we discussed in previous OZ articles, but focuses on ‘ripping’ and leveraging a defender, rather than ‘cutting’ him down.

The focus is on having the players ‘rip’ with the backside arm, and lift the opponent. (Please note this is not a rip to get skinny as if rushing the passer!). The rip arm is used to make and maintain contact with the defender, whilst moving with him.

We are blocking the defender with our arm, body, and butt. Rip under the defender and control him with your body and butt. We must remain in his path to the ball carrier, as we can’t control him with our hands, we must feel his movement and where he is going with our body and butt.

We can see a walkthrough and clips of this technique here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKgbuktxSiA

As standard practice I teach this technique to my OL first. Once we have installed the playside blocking, we will install the rip to run technique and leave them to settle with that for a few weeks. Once they are comfortable with that, we will introduce the cut block. This gives the backside players an opportunity to switch between techniques, and ‘play’ with the defender (this is useful with a more experienced group of OL, who have played together for a while, if you have a lot of rookie’s or a group in flux, I wouldn’t allow them that freedom).

Reach Technique

This is a good technique to teach against a slower defense/defender, or against defenses that don’t flow as one would expect, an issue I’ve found a lot during my playing days.

If I was teaching this technique, I would utilise the Zone Blocking technique. It is perfect for this, as it allows you to move laterally quickly if needs be, but has the hand placements to still be able to reach block the defender. The only difference in teaching the reach block in comparison to the zone block is teaching the OL to run his feet, and get hips playside. Emphasis has to be on ‘pinning’ the defender quickly, and stopping him closing the gap to the ball carrier.

Man Blocking Concepts

Another possibility and something I’ve been looking at over the past few months is the idea of ‘man blocking’ the backside of the Outside Zone. This isn’t something I would look to install unless we were practicing every day and had the time to do it properly.

I like the idea as adding to an offensive line’s toolbox, that they can use in very specific situations.

FLOP

The terminology on these can be pretty non-specific; it depends on what you are currently teaching, as I don’t use any man-blocking concepts at all, things like flip/flop/fold are all available to me.

I’d use this against a speed rushing DE, especially if you have a QB who can’t run the read option, or have the speed to threaten the edge on a rollout.

OL must take 1 drop step and cover the inside gap, to protect from the DE slanting in (same as he would on a standard zone block). He will then flip his hips, and almost pass protect the backside DE to slow down the chase from the backside.

HOLD

 

I would use this against a Sam or Will LB who is pursuing quickly, as a changeup to the typical read-option. Kick out the DE, and allow the QB to read the BS-OLB (S in diagram above).

Another good time to use this technique is when you have a bubble or fast screen on the backside of the run, and have a DE that is getting his hands in the way. Man-Blocking him (I would Inside Zone steps in this example) will keep his hands out the way long enough to complete the bubble.

FOLD

 

To be used specifically against a stud 3-technique player who is causing havoc on the backside. A quick down block to force him outside, with the tackle wrapping round to the backside LB. The upside to this is that it holds the backside tackle, can be utilised as a DART play in certain formations and invites the DE into a read option scenario.

It also allows us to send the tackle to a position where he can block the Weak side LB expecting the RB to make an upfield cut. If the RB continues outside, the WLB is unlikely to make a play without us gaining a lot of yardage.

That’s all the technique of offensive line play for the outside zone that I feel can be applied easily across all levels. Next week we’ll look at some of the ways we can utilise the Outside Zone from an Offensive Co-ordinators perspective.

 

The Outside Zone – Article 6

 

Base Blocking, Single Blocking and Zone Tracks

In the previous article, we covered the principles of the zone block and how it relates to the Outside Zone. Obviously, having all your linemen just take the same zone steps isn’t going to produce the effect we’re looking for.  So let’s look at the other blocks employed as part of this scheme.

Block Type Review

Having reviewed covered and uncovered principles in my previous articles, I won’t go into detail on this principle again, but the fundamentals of it are:

• You are covered if you have a down lineman in your zone;
• You are uncovered if you don’t.

As you can see the zones run from playside number to playside number of each player, meaning if you have a heads up or backside shade on you, you are uncovered.

Understanding the basic principles of Covered/Uncovered is one thing, knowing how to implement them is another. There are only 3 different types of blocks used in Outside Zone, these are:

A Base Block is used as the Lead or ‘Hold Up’ player in a double team; you make the impact and hold up the defender until your backside teammate can take over the block. Secure the first level, looking to get to the second level.As I’ve explained already, I use the same terminology for my block types, so the players understand the role of each block:

• A Zone Block is the Trail or ‘knock down’ player in a double team. Your teammate is holding the defender up for you; it’s your job to knock him down.
• A Single Block means just that, your one on one with your man, so you need to win that block no matter what.

Base Block Footwork

A base block is utilised when you are covered and your backside teammate is uncovered. In this circumstance, you are the ‘Lead’ or ‘Hold-Up’ man.

You role is work a double team with your backside teammate, on the defender covering you. You must:

• Stop up-field penetration by the defensive lineman;
• Slow/Stop Horizontal movement

This will allow the Zone block behind you to take control of the double team quicker, and allow you to pursue to second level, whilst remaining scheme sound.

Because you are covered, you don’t need as many steps to control the playside half of the defender, so we will simply, Drop and Pop.

Drop Step

The drop step on a Base Block isn’t necessarily about getting width and depth, as it is about getting in a position to ‘Pop’ the defender.

 

For example, if the defender is tight against you, we don’t need to get much depth on that step; however we do need width to get in a good position for the pop step. If he is a wide shade against you, you will need to get depth and width, to gain ground (horizontally) on the defender, and be in a position to pop step.

Pop Step

Again, the pop step is where we are making contact with the defensive lineman.

With the pop step on the base block it’s important to keep the backside foot up as it:

• Helps keep your shoulders square to the line in a position where you can easily attack the second level without having to adjust your feet.
• Keeps your toes away from your zoning teammate, making them less likely to get stood on and hold you from making a clean release to the second level.

Again, the role of the Base Block is to hold up the defender. I mean this in the sense of his movement; we cannot allow any vertical or horizontal movement of the defender. We will repeat the Pop Step until our backside teammate has control of the defender.

Single Block Footwork

It is rare that you would get a single block on the playside of Outside Zone. I cover it here in interest of fullness, but if you are getting single blocks on the playside, you will want to evaluate how you are running outside zone. (Red/White identification system is a good idea).

However, for a Single block, we are utilising our zone steps, but with different hand placement.

Hand Placement

As I have alluded to already, the hand placement is different for each block, as each block is trying to achieve different things. What is important across all blocks is how we strike the defender. A common problem across football is OL trying to push defenders out the way, or trying to strike when a defender is not in range.

One of the key points is how we strike the defender; we don’t want to be pushing, we want to be lifting. Coach Jim McNally teaches the ‘double under’ technique for straight up drive blocking (see the video here), we want to use the same principle, but modified ever so slightly for the Outside Zone.

Base Block

When teaching hand aiming points, I use the line “Aim Small, Miss Small”. It gives the players a defined target to aim for, making it easily fixable when they miss.

Looking at the dummy here, you can see a circular aiming point, and a shaded contact area. The aiming point control vertical movement, the contact area controls lateral movement.

Similar to Inside Zone, the circle acts like an archery target; when you hit the middle of that target, you’re punch is the most effective it can be; the further out from that target you get, the less effective you are.

The aiming point for a base block on an Outside Zone right is the bottom of the playside number as the aiming point. The arrow shows the direction your punch should be going. The punch should be timed with the ‘Pop’ step in our footwork, allowing for our hips to explode into the lineman.

As a Base Block, you are the lead man in the double team, so you are punching with your backside hand. What we want to do, and the reason the target area is so low on the body, is get our hands under the defenders pads, and lift up (think Coach McNally’s Double Under technique, but with one hand)

The more we can raise the defenders centre on gravity with this block, the easier we make it for our trail man behind us to take control of the block. This controls the vertical displacement of the defender, ensuring he gets no penetration into the backfield.

The red square is the contact area. This is the area we can contact with our shoulders and body, to ensure zero lateral movement. This will tie in with the zone block contact area, and the zone tracks.

 Zone Block

Similar to above, the circles show the hand placement targets, the shaded section is the contact area. The numbers are a timeline; left hand first, right hand second. Arrow again pointing in the direction you should be punching.

Aiming points for the Zone Block are:

• Backside hand – Outer bottom corner of backside number
• Playside hand – outer top corner of playside number

We contact low with our left hand first to ensure the defensive lineman doesn’t flow inside, thus securing lateral movement (sometimes called a ‘trail’ or ‘catch’ hand technique). We contact high with our right hand to ensure vertical displacement. Our left hand should be making contact first, with our right hand making contact to turn our hips and feet.

As I said with the Inside Zone articles, I try not to teach my players to use their head if we can avoid it, which includes using it as a gauge of positioning “i.e. head needs to be on the playside statements”. This is purely my preference. Instead I use the hand, shoulder, knee and toe as the position guideline. We want to fight to get them in a straight line, perpendicular to the defensive player. Please note this does not mean driving straight upfield, we will take the angle the offensive lineman can achieve, the key is in making a quick decision about whether the OL can get in alignment or not.

If he can get in alignment, fight across, use ‘drive the bus’ to help.

If he can’t get in alignment, kick out; use ‘drive the bus’ to help

Offensive Linemen must make this decision in the first 3 steps. This gives the RB plenty of time to see the blocks in front of him.

Drive the Bus

The other upside to this hand positioning is that it gives us an opportunity to ‘control’ the defender with our hands. With your hands inside, if your players are struggling to get across the defenders body into a square position, teaching them to ‘drive the bus’ is a massive help. Defensive linemen use ‘push-pull’ techniques all the time; this is the offensive line equivalent.

If we are struggling to get our hips round, and get hand, shoulder, knee and toe alignment, we want to use our hands, to aid that movement. Imagine a steering wheel on the defenders chest, we want to turn that to ‘steer’ ourselves into the correct position:

We pull down with the backside hand, and push up with the playside hand; this forces our body into the right position. Note, it is up and down, we are steering the shoulder the pads, to tilt the shoulders; we are not pulling and pushing to turn the shoulders.

However, if after our 3 steps, we realise we cannot reach alignment with the defender, then we kick him out. With this hand positioning, it easily allows to push up through the defender with our backside hand, and pull in with our playside hand, to turn the defender and kick him out, as can be seen below.

The hand positioning of these blocks is critical as it allows you to:

• Ensure horizontal and vertical displacement
• Drive the Bus
• Kick out.

Single Block

As I said above, single blocks are very rare on the playside of Outside Zone, however, the technique is almost exactly the same as the described above, with one exception, the club arm.

We want the playside arm to come in and club the defenders shoulder, before resetting on the top of the playside number. When playing against good DL, this will give them a ‘reach feel’, making them bite to the outside, and allowing you a quick kick out block.

 Combination Blocks

Obviously, a big part of the Outside Zone is our ability to double team defenders at the point of attack, essentially combining the Base and Zone Block. When we combine the two diagrams above, we get this picture. What this shows is the moment where the Zone Block (Green) and Base Block (Red) meet. It shows a total control of the defenders playside, with good hand placement to control the movement of the defender.

Zone Tracks

Tracks are an optional teaching point for me. It’s something to be used if your linemen are struggling to understand how the footwork and hand placement ties in with the overall concept, however they have proven to be extremely useful. I also think it’s worthwhile showing the RB’s these slides, as pre-snap, will give them  a better idea of what the OL in front is doing.

For the Outside Zone we have our base track, and our zone track, and these are different. This is where the gaps are created. Look at the standard defensive look here:

We can identify our Lead and Trail men easily; this in turn identifies the tracks, with the Lead players having the Base Track, and the Trail Players having the Zone Track.

What is a standard throughout both blocks is your aiming point for your track, that is:

“The playside shoulder of the next down defender”

Base Track

Base track are created at a slightly steeper angle than Zone tracks, simple because ‘Lead’ players are closer to the playside shoulder of the down defender, as they are covered.

As you can see in the example here, the offensive player will take his drop step before anything else; this sets the edge for the track. His Pop Step should take him to a point where his centreline is at the defenders playside shoulder.

For me there are two ways to teach this to your players:

• Pop Step to the playside number of the defender; or
• Get your head to the outside shoulder of the defender.

Both statements are correct, I would use the first statement, again part of my preference for not using the head at all, but both statements are correct and will tell the players what you are looking for as an aiming point and track location.

We can see both Base Blocks identified against the example front below:

As you can see, the centreline of each ‘Lead’ player is aimed at the playside shoulder of the next down defender.

 Zone Track

The Zone Track is obviously shallower than the Base block, because ‘trail’ players are further away from the next down defender. As you can see in the example the RG will Drop Step to set the edge of the track, and lock step to ‘lock’ onto that track. Again, you can see the centreline is aimed at the playside shoulder of the defensive lineman.

The Pop step should be occurring in the mesh zone, as you’ll see below.

Mesh Zone

As stated above, the whole point of Outside Zone is to get double teams at the point of attack. In the same way we merged the Zone and Base diagrams above, look what happens when we merge the Base and Zone Track diagrams:

It creates a mesh point, where the two tracks meet. This is the double team point, and where contact will happen. This creates the gaps in the Outside Zone, between the Trail man and his backside Lead teammate.

This covers off the playside element of Outside Zone. The next article will look at backside techniques we can apply in the Outside Zone, and have a look at cut blocking, whether it’s a good technique to teach, is it lazy, and does it cause more injuries.

The Outside Zone – Article 5

The Outside Zone has been run for a long time now, since the early days of post-war football, and was very successful in those innovating Bengals team of the late 80’s through the inimitable Coach Jim McNally, and was popularised by Alex Gibbs, with the Broncos in the mid to late 90’s.

I’m sure by now, if you’re worth your salt as a football coach, especially an OL coach, you’ll have seen the 8 hour long session that Alex Gibbs did with a college staff explaining the ins-and-outs of the Wide (Outside) Zone, and touching on the Tight (Inside) Zone. If you haven’t, get it watched, as it’s the best coaching on the OZ anyone can get.

That session was where I found the Outside Zone as a coach, and I’ve loved it since. It fits my players most importantly, which is why it is the base run for our offense.

The Outside Zone and Stretch

I just want to start by clarifying the difference between the two. The Outside Zone is designed to look like an Outside Run, utilising zone blocking, however if blocked properly, will result in an upfield cut.
The stretch is designed to get the RB to the outside, in that sense it’s very much like a toss/sweep type concept, just with zone blocking up front.
It’s a common mistake thinking the two are the same play, they are very different.

What is it?

As I stated above, the Outside Zone is an outside running play designed to allow an upfield cut. As with all zone plays, the mantra stays true:
“The more you run it, the more effective it becomes!”
In the case of Outside Zone, what we want to happen is the defense will start to over pursue to the outside, allowing the big play on the upfield cut. Please note it’s an upfield cut, not a cutback!
In the following articles, I’ll be looking at:

Article 6 – Base Blocking, Single Blocking and Zone Tracks
Article 7 – Cut Blocking and Backside Blocking
Article 8 – Overall scheme concept

The Basics – What is it?

The outside zone play is a complex and nuanced play, much like the inside zone, it is not a simple play to run well. The reason it is so often employed is that it allows the defense to work against themselves, thus creating big plays.

We are looking to get double teams at the point of attack, give the running back an aiming point and let him cut off the blocks in front. I stick to the same terminology for both Inside and Outside Zone, for the Running Backs, on any play, the RB can either:
BANG IT: Run the ball through the pre-snap aiming point, generally the C Gap;
BEND IT: This is the ‘Cut Back’ behind the Centre, is more of an upfield cut than a cut back;
BOUNCE IT: If everything crashes inside, bounce to the outside.
This gives us two possible scenarios when it comes to the Outside Zone play, if blocked properly:

1. The defense quickly diagnoses it as an outside run, over pursues to the outside, leaving an upfield cut lane (BEND IT) for the RB; or
2. You’ve hit the defense on the ‘cutback’ a few times, so they ‘slow play’ their pursuit, giving the RB an opportunity to get to the outside, and turn the corner. (BANG IT or BOUNCE IT)

Either scenario turns out well for the Offense, assuming the two basic rules of Outside Zone are followed, these are:

• Lineman must make quick decisions on their blocks, communication is the key.
• Running Backs only get one cut, if they delay in the backfield at all, the play is sunk.

Finally, one more note of interest, is that the blocks used on the Outside Zone vary depending on if you are playside or if you are backside. For this article we will focus on the playside blocks only.

Outside Zone Block Types

Much like with the RB’s, I like to use the same terminology, where possible for the OL, so the following table is identical to the one used for Inside Zone.

Outside Zone Steps

For the Outside Zone there are a myriad of different ways to teach the footwork, and a lot of terminology and verbiage to digest, especially for players at the higher level. I like to keep things as simple as possible, so try to keep words and steps memorable, that why I use the Drop, Lock and Pop terminology for the Zone Steps. These are to be used when you are uncovered, working with your playside teammate for the double team.

STANCE

Again, stance is as key for the Outside Zone as it is for the Inside Zone. As I’ve alluded to, I like to have my linemen in a 2 point stance, however, these steps can easily be done from a 3 point stance as well, and it’s important to teach linemen both.

I like the back foot slightly angled, as it aids flexibility and is a bit more natural for the slightly more inflexible linemen.

DROP STEP

Commonly known as a ‘bucket step’ this is a step that gains width and depth, and gets your “hips, nose and toes” square to your target. Our target, as an uncovered lineman, is always the ‘next down defender’, that’s a statement you’ll hear echoed a lot throughout our OL sessions.

The drop step takes you onto your track, which we’ll discuss later on. The focus on this step has to be gaining both width and depth, we aren’t pulling or losing ground. How far we drop and the angle we take is solely dependent on the position of our target, however, we do want to make sure our knee and shoulder are above the ball of our foot for a couple of reasons:

1. It pretty much guarantees we dont over stride and lose our base;
2. It ensures forward momentum. If your foot is in front of your knee/shoulder, your braking. If your foot is behind your knee/shoudler, your accelerating. We want the latter, which is why we want the ball of our foot, knee and shoulder in alignment, generating forward momentum, whilst remaining balanced and under control.

LOCK STEP

Sometimes known as a crossover or lateral step, I use the ‘Lock’ terminology as it locks the lineman on his ‘track’. As with the drop step, we want to gain ground on the defender.

Important that we continue our forward momentum on this step, we don’t want to be out of control, but we want to have enough impotence that if the DL stunts into is, we can make a solid contact, adjust our body, and make a good block.

POP STEP

This is the step we are either making contact on, or the step where we are attacking the bubble in the defense, hence the ‘pop’ terminology.

We want to limit ourselves to three steps and a decision, as it then puts the read in the Running Backs hands, exactly where we want it to be. Get the ball to your playmakers and let them make a play. If we take longer in our decision making process, we are delaying the RB read, which will allow the defense the opportunity to make a play in the backfield.
Worth noting that there are no sizes of steps mentioned, the steps will vary based on the alignment of your target defender, and how athletic your lineman is. It’s where splits and alignment come into it more.
Next week we’ll have a look at Base Blocks and Single Blocks, and tying all three together, as well as zone tracks and hand placement.

The Inside Zone – Article 4

The Inside Zone

In the last few articles, I’ve covered some of the basics of the Inside Zone for Offensive Line, players and coaches. It’s pretty technical and founded on a lot of hard work and studying, as well as a fair bit of trial and error.

In this article we’ll look at some of the basics of running the inside zone, from a co-ordinator’s standpoint, and some of the variations you can use to make a simple Inside Zone play, a big part of your offense.
Let’s first look at some small technicalities, regarding Running Back entry point, and what this does to the defense.

For the purposes of these diagrams, I will draw them all out of a spread, under centre look, and we will look at different formations later on.

Aiming Points and Entry Points

Whilst there is only a very subtle difference in terminology here, please clear, they are two very distinct things.
The Aiming Point, is the visual key you give the Running Back to aim for.
The Entry Point is the Gap you are expecting to be open based on the defensive front.

Aiming Point

The Aiming Point for Inside Zone can be anywhere from the Centre’s playside butt cheek, to the outside shoulder of the playside guard, it very much depends on your players, offensive style and what you are trying to accomplish.
For me, I like the Running Back (RB) to have an aiming point at the middle of the Playside Guards’ (PSG) butt.

 

This allows the RB the best post-snap read of the play developing in front of him, before he makes his cut. The idea is to aim for the centreline of the PSG, to give an entry point of the PS A Gap. However, we all know this depends on a few things, mainly the defensive front, so this leads us on nicely to the Entry Points.

Entry Point

The entry point is the hole/gap the running back attacks as he explodes through the line. The Aiming Point gives the RB a track to work on, the Entry Point is the entry point through the line of scrimmage, and these are different things.

The entry points will vary based on the defensive front, but if you give the RB unlimited options in where to go with the ball, chances are he’ll over think it, and you’re not going to get many gains from that play.
So we have reduced the running backs options to 3, and we use an easy to remember verbiage to instil these options into the RB’s mind.

BANG IT – Hit it in the Playside A Gap – This is the ideal scenario for us.

BEND IT – Bend it to the Backside A Gap – we band it if the playside A Gap has been crashed or filled

BOUNCE IT – Bounce it to the Playside B Gap or wider – We bounce when the middle is clogged up.

Please note, I have drawn the Running backs aiming point and entry points correctly, but I haven’t shown the OL movement.

We, and countless other teams have found that the BANG, BEND, BOUNCE concept for running backs speeds up their reads, and results in greater gains for your Inside Zone plays.

The window dressing and various options when running IZ

At a coach/coordinator level, we must really start to think about the window dressing we use around these plays. I mean formations, motions, reads, triple options, these are the thoughts that need to go through your head when game planning for your opponents.

Do you have a TE, can he also play FB, do you have 2 FB’s, can you go empty and run your QB?

All of these are possibilities, using the exact same blocking scheme and play nomenclature. So let’s have a look at some of the options available to you.

Spread Offense Zone Packages

As the spread offense becomes more and more prevalent throughout football, especially college football, the advances and innovations to the inside zone have become one of the biggest parts of the game. Let’s look at some of these innovations.

[NB: When I say spread offense, I use the term loosely, as you’ll see from some of the examples I’ll use, I have covered off a myriad of different offenses under the spread offense banner. This is a deliberate ‘mistake’ for ease of writing and reading, I’m fully aware of the many different brackets and types of offenses run today.]

Singleback Zone Read

Let me start by emphasising the fact that this is not called ‘read option’, the read is the option, calling it read option infers a triple option threat, i.e the read, then the option, and that is covered under triple option below.
Rich Rodriguez is credited with creating and utilising the zone read during his times at Glenville State, Tulane, Clemson and most famously with Pat White at West Virginia.

The zone read uses the standard inside zone blocking rules as identified in previous articles, but also utilises the quarterback as a running threat.

You can see in this example, from a standard shotgun set, the QB uses the backside defensive ends alignment against him, and simply ‘reads’ what he is doing, it provides a very simple rule for the QB:

If the DE goes upfield – GIVE the ball

If the DE crashes – KEEP the ball

Obviously this has been massively successful throughout all levels of football, and has been modified to do the same thing out of the pistol formation too, as can be seen below:

This option was first used by Chris Ault at Nevada, notably with Colin Kaepernick at quarterback, and was extremely successful, here is an example of the ‘Snatch’ technique they talk about. Whilst it looks like a read, the reality is the don’t read every play, they tag when they want to read and when they don’t, but use the same technique throughout.

This allows us to keep 6 on 6 blocking the Inside Zone play, whilst reading the backside DE.

What we have seen over time is defense becoming more aware of these schemes and evolving, either teaching the DE to ‘slow play’ the read and delay the QB’s decision making, or through gap exchange with the DL and LB’s.

This leads on to the next development of the Zone Read

2-Back Zone Read

The 2-Back Zone read game allows offenses to better match up to good defenses, and it provides a vast array of options that can be added to your game, to really mix up your play calling.

For example, if you take the standard shotgun zone read above, and add in a Fullback/H-Back, you can make the same play look so very different to the defense. Multiplicity with Simplicity!

You can call:

LEAD – Tells the Fullback to lead through the PS A Gap

SLICE – Tells the Fullback to block the Backside DE

LOAD – Tells the H-Back to leave the DE and block first force defender.

If the above is “Pro Rt. 22 Zone”, we can tag the fullback to give us very different looks, yet highly successful plays.

“Pro Rt. 22 Zone ‘Lead’” – we now have 7 v 6 blocking at the POA

“Pro Rt. 22 Zone ‘Slice’” – now we can still read what the DE does, but we have a body blocking him. The same read rules apply as before, but now if the DE goes upfield, the QB keeps it and runs off the FB block.

“Flanker Lt 22 Zone ‘Load’” – Now if the read dictates the QB keep the ball, we have an additional blocker in front, taking the first force defender.

The real benefits to this type of zone read is the seemingly multiple plays you can run, and run well, with a minimal installation time. This is absolutely vital, especially for coaches in Europe and High Scholl coaches who have very little time with players.

Again, we can see the same options available from a pistol set:

I’ve shown the Fullback or H-Back in multiple positions on these diagrams, but obviously only 1 position would be used.

You can immediately see some of the benefits 2-back sets have in the read game, especially when it comes to multiplicity. I’ve explained the 3 different types of plays, but think of the formation you can run them from:

King (Fullback to same side as TE)
Queen (Fullback opposite the TE)
Flanker (Fullback aligned in a wing position)
Trips (2 receivers and TE on the same side)
Wing (Fullback aligned outside the TE)
Pro (Split backs)

These are the top formations that these plays are run from, and we can see that through installing the Inside Zone concept, we are learning one concept, whilst making the defense prepare for 18 different looks. It’s a very powerful concept to use.

Pro-Style Zone
One of my good friends, and former coaches, is Coach Stephen McCusker, who is one of the most respected coaches in Europe.

He is one of the few British coaches to coach at the professional level, as Special Teams Coordinator o f the Scottish Claymores, at international level, as the Offensive Coordinator of the Great Britain Lions for many years, at the youth level, with Team Scotland, and at the Senior level, in his current role as Special Teams Coordinator of Premier North Champions the East Kilbride Pirates.

Coach McCusker has kindly put some notes together about the Pro-Style Inside Zone he likes to run, some of the variations and has had much success with over the years.

Coach likes to have his aiming point as the first defender past the centre, and he prefers to run it at the B-Gap defender.

Here are Coach McCusker’s rules for the OL, FB, Running Back (Tailback here) and Tight End.

The base play here will end up looking like:

You can see, as we are lined up in a Weak-I formation, the FB has the backside cut-off of the DE. This allows for the OL and Tight End to be able to block 6 v 6 in the middle, a strong position to be in.

Coach also has a ‘plus’ tag for the FB, which can be used if the first force player is disrupting the play, and cannot be blocked by the WR receiver (Note: adding the plus tag also allows tells the WR to block second force)

This allows for us to gain an advantage and load the playside ending 7 v 6 in the box in some situations, as shown below. Obviously this is a nice change up to initial ‘Minus’ or ‘Slice’ blocking by the FB.

Coach McCusker emphasised the importance of the QB boot “The QB owns the backside DE on the boot (also EVERY time he hands off on the zone). The QB gets his head around and finds the BS DE. He should be able to tell the coach where he is and when he should start to think of calling the boot”

The Zone Package

One of the big things coach preaches is not just having an inside zone play you are committed to, it’s having a package of plays to compliment and work off the base zone play. Having variations on it.

Whether it’s from a single back or 2 back set, spread or trips or double tight. These are all simple, easy to install options that keep the defense guessing and keep your offense fresh.

Adding in Boot, Slice and Reverse are all plays that coach likes to use as part of his ‘Zone Package’ and add a powerful play action passing game to your offense.

“Strong Rt. Open Boot Lt. Slice”

One of the main coaching points here is to look at the QB’s progression, from Flat to Over, rather than working from deep backwards. Something Coach McCusker emphasised with this play is his philosophy of always take the completion first.

“Weak Rt. Open Boot Lt.”

“Trips Rt. Zone Rt. H Reverse”

“On the reverse..” McCusker states “The QB fakes zone, then the Slot in Trips comes back behind the QB to fake or take the reverse. The QB then settles straight back to set up to throw (behind the B Gap).

The OL run the Zone, but the BST loops round and ambushes the BSDE, or if he bites, leads up on the OLB on the side.”

Triple Option

The triple option has been around for years, and will continue to be so for many years, for one major reason. It works!

Again, this is building from what we have seen in the single, and two-back variations of the inside zone, and looking at just a few of the possibilities open to you by utilising the Inside Zone.

Here we can see we still have the regular Inside Zone read with the FB in a shotgun alignment, and the Running back becomes the pitch man in the event of a keep read. In these cases the read man is the backside DE, and the pitch man will be the first force player, likely to be a safety.

This is an excellent play call with a running quarterback and/or against a good gap exchange team also.

If you have different personnel groupings you can also substitute in your #2 back to act as FB and take the handoff. It’s just another way to get your best athletes on the field.

Here is an example of a variation on the Inside Zone Read. Again, this is a very good play to run with 2 RB’s on the field.

It’s also possible to put motions into these plays, and you can see the immediate benefits to that also.
Finally, and a bit more outside the box thinking in this one, is using the WR as the pitch man, as you can see here. It’s a play I would run more to the boundary than the field due to the width of the receivers, but is extremely easy to swap sides.

For example, I have shown Spread Rt Triple Option Left. We could just as easily run Spread Rt, Triple Option Right.

In that case the DE over the TE would become the Read man, and the corner over the Z would be the first force, or pitch player.

As you can see, one of the focuses of modern day football is to run the same play, but get the defense to react in different ways to that play. Above I have shown how we can do that with single back, 2 backs, pro style and finally, the triple option.

Below we’ll now look at one of the newer facets of the game, combination or packaged plays.

2 in 1, 3 in 1, 4 in 1 plays

Combination plays are a relatively new invention, which seem to be credited a lot to Dana Holgorsen from his time at Oklahoma State and now West Virginia.

The essence of these plays is a numbers game, based on the number of defensive players in the box, if there are less than 6 players in the box we run the ball, 6 or more, we look at passing.

As we can see above, it’s a concept as old as the spread offense itself, and worked for a long time, until defenses started shifting their methodology, why should they give them a clear read pre-snap?

So defenses started becoming more mobile, OLB apexed and blitzed, with the safety rotating down, confusing the QB’s read, and resulting in tackles for a loss.

As a way to solve this, we can now incorporate a Bubble Screen or Fast Screen (Outside Receiver Screen) onto the backside of zone run concepts, especially out of Shotgun or Pistol sets.

Here you can see, we have turned the Apex defender into a read. If he turns his hips, to drop to his passing zone, we give the handoff, if he stays to play the run, we throw the Bubble. A very simple and easy to install play onto your existing zone play.

Here we can see some clips of this play at the NCAA level. You’ll notice how easy it is to add in motions to fully utilise your existing formations, and still have the same concept being run.

But what if you have an athlete at Quarterback and you don’t want to lose him as a threat?

3 in 1

We can take the simple play demonstrated above and add in a zone read with the QB. Like so:

or in the NFL (with what I would say isn’t the most athletically gifted Quarterback ever seen):

Here we can see the play drawn up, and can easily dissect the options available:

1. DE plays upfield, forcing the GIVE to the running back
2. a) DE crashes in forcing the KEEP, then the force player is covering the Bubble, so remains a KEEP.
2. b) DE crashes in forcing the KEEP, then the force attacks QB run, so throw the Bubble.

This is good play to throw in and mix it up with the other plays described above.

4 in 1

Credit here must go to Hugh Freeze, not just for having one of the coolest names in football, but for really understanding this concept and how it can work.

The 4 in 1 takes all the advantages of the 3 in 1 play above, and adds in a backside curl route as the 4th option.

This really pushes the whole “Numbers” game to a whole new level. Essentially the reads now become:

<6 defenders in the box = Run the Read option

6 or more defenders in the box = Pick the best option between Bubble or Quick Hitch.

And it really is that simple, as you can see here:

What this clip demonstrates is that you can leave this one play on the pitch, and run it multiple times quickly, forcing the defense to stay in the same personnel and likely, front.

You can see above, Ole Miss run this play 5 times in a row, and score on the final play. That’s 5 plays in 1:27 real time! That’s tempo.

This article is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways to run Inside Zone, more a suggestion at some of the ways I’ve seen work, and a brief explanation of them.

Summary

What I have tried to show above, is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways to run Inside Zone, but instead a series of ideas of how to open up your playbook to incorporate the zone, and make things simpler for your offense.

Adding in constraint plays like the bubble is a handy thing to have, but if you add it onto a zone play, and build from there, you can very easily make simple and easy to remember plays for your offense, but give the defense a multitude of things to worry about.

You can also take the ideas shown above and build on them. What if instead of running the Bubble to the backside, we get the outside receiver to run a fade? You can see how quickly things can open up.

I realise this was a long article, and appreciate you taking the time to go through. I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the ideas I’ve discussed, and once again a massive thanks to Coach McCusker for helping out with this article.

The Inside Zone – Individual Video Clips

As you may well have guessed, I’m a member of X and O Labs and the wonderful things Mike Kuchar and the guys are doing. As such, it would seem I’ve unwittingly copied their style, but with a much more monotonous voice.

My apologies for this, these are the first 2 videos I have made, and I’ll work to make them better as we progress, although there is only so much I can do about my voice.

Here I’ve uploaded 2 videos to show some of the common mistakes I’ve found this year, and some of the better blocks I’ve seen this year.

I’ve tried to make best use of the clips we had available, but I couldn’t ever get good angles on the same player from the first to the last game to show the progression, so I’ve used 2 different players.

We are implementing the Inside & Outside Zone over a 2 – 3 season timeframe. We simply don’t have the time with the players to be able to coach everything we want in, and be able to execute it to a satisfactory level. So this year was the just the very very basic, next season will progress a lot more, as we now have a base knowledge level we can work with.

INSIDE ZONE WRONG

In this clip you can see our LT (despite me saying LG in the clip!) making some pretty basic mistakes on our Inside Zone play.

This was from the first game in our season, and our first time running it. It’s a good example of how good players can make life hard for themselves.

INSIDE ZONE RIGHT

In this clip you can see our RG make some excellent blocks, showing off some pretty good technique along the way. It’s not perfect by any means, but you can see the basics of what we are coaching throughout

This was from the last game in our season, and shows the progression from Week 1.

Again these are the first videos I’ve made, so I can only apologise for the quality. Hopefully these will get better as we progress.

The Inside Zone – Article 3

The Inside Zone

So after a hiatus of a month or so, we’re back with the final technical OL article in the Inside Run. The next article will look at some standard inside zone plays and variations on those plays, before we turn our attention to the Outside Zone and Pass Protection.

In the previous two articles we have established the zone block and associated terminology, then we looked at how we execute the zone block, how it ties into double teams (how base and zone blocks work together) and the circumstances where it doesn’t work.

In this article we are taking those concepts forward a step, and looking at what the defense can do to disrupt them, and how we can counteract it.

Dealing with Slants and Stunts

As we all know, the defense very rarely line up or reacts like we have drawn it up in our playbook. If your offensive line are confused when a defense doesn’t line up as expected, then it’s a sure fire giveaway they were learning the diagrams in the playbook, and not the scheme.

How the offensive line reacts to stunts, twists and blitzes by the defensive line, is also an indicator of how well they know the scheme, and also, how well they can execute it.

This is where having a zone based run game comes into its own, as the scheme dictates player are blocking a zone, and if anyone enters that zone, it’s their block.

Obviously that is a very simplistic way of looking at it, but essentially it holds true. This then, is the ultimate test of both the Offensive Lines’ ability to react to a changing environment, but also, of your coaching at the position, and your coaching of the scheme.

Instead of looking at each stunt in great detail, I’ll cover off the key coaching points for a DL slanting. When we have discussed this, we’ll then look at how that applies to the Inside Zone details we’ve already covered.

Defensive Line Slants

For me the most common, and possibly disruptive thing a DL can do against an OL, is slant. It is a pure guessing game for the DL as to whether they are slanting into the play or away from it, but when they get it right the results can be devastating (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIu22jokKKk).

These are fairly simple to understand, as all that happens is a defensive line slants in one direction (generally given as weak or strong) and the LB’s fill the gaps left by the DL. A standard gap sound scheme.

This provides a lot of opportunities, as you can see above. I’ve drawn this out of a 3-4 front, but it can be just as effective out of a 3-3, 4-3 or 4-4.

The advantage this gives the defense is that it places the defensive line, in between offensive linemen, on the same plane, within the first 2 steps of any play. When we couple that with an offensive line that is worried about what way the DL is slanting, and where the blitz is coming from, you can see the benefit.

It allows defensive co-ordinators to attack the offense, without having to commit to blitzing, whilst remaining defensively sound up front, i.e proper gap responsibility. It is also extremely effective without stud defensive linemen, as they are attacking the gap, rather than the man, so they don’t need to play the plate and beat your offensive lineman in order to win.

How can we defeat that?

Zone blocking schemes are designed to cancel out any slants from a defensive line. By simply taking your zone steps, it puts you in the correct position to react to what the defense does, and react quickly.

So if the players understand that the scheme works in all circumstances, then it comes down to execution of the play, and that is more a physical trait than a mental one, however, I’ve found a small change in thinking, can provide a big change in the physical output.

Another train of thought I teach my OL, is always plan for the worst case scenario.

If we are running Inside Zone to the right, for me this is the worst case scenario.

It’s going to end up with the either no-one blocking him, both players blocking him (so no-one goes to second level) or the guard, not expecting contact so quickly, getting hit in the mouth and defeated by the block.

As someone who has been in all 3 circumstances, I can tell you #1 and #3 are extremely embarrassing, however if it’s coached right, it shouldn’t be an issue.

The coaching emphasis has to be on trusting the zone steps and hand placement that we drill every single practice. The reason we keep these so simple (STAMP, SHOOT, SQUARE) is so they are easy to remember, easy to execute and easy to self correct throughout practice and a game.

The more we drill these steps and combinations, the more natural they become, until eventually, the guys aren’t thinking about them, they just do them. Once they are at that stage, they can then react quick enough to block all slants and stunts.

Let’s look at an example.

Here we can see a typical situation for an inside zone to the right, and I’ve highlighted in blue what we as offensive linemen think the DL will do. We imagine they will play their gap responsibilities, and it’s all nice and simple.

So pre-snap, we are communicating that the RG has a SINGLE block, the C is ZONE-ing looking for the LB, and the LG is likely double teaming with the LT, so he will have a BASE block.

All that makes perfect sense and we are nice and comfortable, ready to go. But how do guys react when this doesn’t happen, what if post snap, the defense does this:

This is where practice and preparation comes in. This is just as simple to deal with as the expected scenario above, it just requires execution and good reactions.

It all starts with the RG in this scenario, he must call this slant out, immediately to attract the C to the block.
The RG immediately goes from a SINGLE block, to a BASE block to set up the combo. His job is slow the DT’s advance into the backfield, and allow the C to come and pick up the block.

Once the C has taken over the block, the RG is free to jump to the 2nd level and block the LB.

It all sounds simple on paper, but with enough repetition, it can be simple to execute also.

THE INSIDE ZONE

Zoning is not just one style of block, it’s a combination of many different types of blocks, but the key to a zone block is to never go against the grain as an offensive lineman. The minute your first step goes away from the playside, it becomes a Man blocking scheme, not Zone.

I have 3 different types of blocks ZONE, BASE and SINGLE.

ZONE is used by a trail or uncovered man.
BASE is used by a lead or covered man.
SINGLE is used by covered man, when his backside teammate is also covered.

These three blocks can unlock the Inside Zone scheme for your team, assuming you rep them enough during practice.

COACHING THEORY and TERMINOLOGY

Good repetitions are key, as is consistent terminology across all coaches who will be speaking to the OL.
One of the biggest issues I had as a player was the OC and the OL Coach using different terminology, it slowed down my progress trying to figure out what I was doing right and wrong, and they had different ideas about what was right and wrong.

Over the past few months, I have been looking a lot at Darin Slack’s C4 (and R4) stuff for Quarterbacks. For those that don’t know Darin, he is a wonderful teacher and just a great coach and person, who has put in a lot of time and effort to come up with a self correction method for teaching his QB;s what they are doing right and wrong.

The key to this system working is a common terminology between player and coach. If both can identify the same areas of a throw and fundamental movements, they can correct mistakes, and the QB becomes a better overall player.

The same is true with OL, and I implore you as coaches to develop your terminology, and emphasise it at every opportunity. The more your players become engrossed in that language, and associated movements, the easier it becomes to identify issues and solve them quickly.

Now I’m not claiming to have anything like what Coach Slack has developed, it’s nothing like it. What I’m pointing out is how critical terminology is, and how it can help you in your practice.

We want to get as many reps in as possible at practice, as usually across the UK and Europe we get anywhere between 3 – 8 hours a week with our players. So is it easier to pull a player to one side and walk him through everything that was right and wrong in that drill rep he just had:

“Right Jimmy, i really liked the way you finished the drill, but you need to focus on your steps more. You didn’t gain enough ground with your first step, and your 2nd step was too shallow, so you didn’t get a good enough impact on the bag, and really struggled to move it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, coach”

“Right, so next rep let’s focus on those steps, and get a good rep in, OK!”

Or is it easier to simply say:

“ Jimmy, good finish, but slow STAMP step, that affected your SHOOT step and impact. Work on it next rep”

It’s simpler to say, easier for the player to understand, and crucially, doesn’t involve you stopping a drill to explain it to the player. It’s coaching on the fly, and it’ll double the amount of reps you can get in practice.

Terminology, it’s critical. Even at the amateur level in the UK and Europe, Football isn’t just a game anymore, it’s a language and a series of never ending series of marginal gains.

The Inside Zone – Article 2

The Inside Zone

How do we teach the Inside Zone

As with most things in life, the longer you do something, the better you become at it

A recent X&O Labs study showed that 58.4% of high school and college coaches in the US now use Zone running as the main blocking schemes. With 75% of those coaches stating that it has to be one of the top runs in your offense in order to be successful.

“The more you run it, the better it becomes” is something which is found in almost all my scouting reports to our offense about these plays.

By running it more, and using less run plays, you are then immediately faced with two problems:

1. If we aren’t perfect at understanding this concept, our entire run game won’t be good
2. It won’t take long for defensive coordinators to realise you only have 2 runs, and be able to stuff both quickly.

In order for both of these to become less of an issue, you need to:

1. Have linemen that understand the system perfectly, not just learn from pictures
2. Run the Inside Zone a lot, it doesn’t matter what the defense does. The more you run it, the more effective it becomes
3. We must not allow negative yards on any Zone play.

When I say “The more you run it, the more effective it becomes” what I mean is that the defense is not going to do the same thing all the time. Sometimes they will bring pressure, sometimes they will slant. The more you run this, the more likely you are to burst a big run.

There are several different ways of teaching the zone, and how and who to block. The two most common are using the Covered/Uncovered principle, or the numbering system. Here we will look at both.

COVERED/UNCOVERED

Covered/Uncovered is my favourite way of teaching Inside Zone. It requires almost little to no knowledge about defenses to be run properly (from a player point of view), and it tells you what block to use, not just who you are blocking.

The starting point for it is to look at what Covered and Uncovered mean.

What does covered mean?

Generally speaking, at some point everyone will have heard, or used the phrase ‘your covered if there is someone in front of you’ or something similar. This is still pretty much true to this day, but we can simplify it a bit more whilst capturing more information.

As an offensive line, you need to be a cohesive unit, which means you must know and understand what the players round about you are doing too, so understanding if your playside and backside teammates are covered is just as important as knowing if you are.

With that explained, knowing if you are covered is a simple man-on to man-over principle that utilises the even gaps spread across the line.

Each man on the line is responsible for his zone or gap, as shown above. That’s the premise of any zone play, as described in Article 1.

So you are covered if you have a defensive lineman within the zones defined above. Worth noting that your zone goes from your nose to your playside teammates nose (centreline to centreline) and is only 2 yards deep.
Now we understand the principle of covered, lets look at how we incorporate that thinking into the inside zone, and the types of blocks required.

Block Types

Every time we run an Inside Zone play, our linemen should think only 2 questions:

• Am I covered?
• Is my backside teammate covered?

These questions will determine what type of block/steps you have, there are only 3 options at the start of any play, and by the time you’ve ran this for a few weeks, your OL will begin to become a lot faster at recognising what’s going on.

The options for blocks are:

What this table shows is all the answers to the two questions above exploded out to show every conceivable option. This establishes that there are 3 types of block possible in the inside zone (Base, Zone, Single) and 2 types of footwork to learn (Base and Zone). We’ve covered the zone footwork required in Article 1, so now let’s look at the base footwork, and some of the finer points of the three blocks.

Base Block Footwork

A base block is utilised when you are covered, and your backside teammate is uncovered. In this circumstance, we call you the Lead man (we’ll describe this later).

You are there to block the down lineman, until the zone player, what we call the trail player, can knock you to the playside LB. We are simply creating a double team.

Here we have a timeline of the Base Block footwork (light grey is stance through to dark grey is last steps)
What we can see is that even the covered linemen are still taking the Stamp Step and Shoot Step.

Once they have made the contact on the Shoot Step, the OL must focus on keeping a high, backside foot (or post step if you will). This not only stops the DL from crossing the OL face, it also stops the OL trying to block with two hands and turning their shoulders. Keeping square is critical to getting off to the linebacker quickly and safely.

Single Block

A Single block is exactly that, it designates you to have the defensive 1 on 1, or singled out.

The steps taken are a cut down version of the Zone steps. You still take the stamp, shoot, square steps, but make them smaller and quicker. It is more like a man blocking scenario.

The key coaching point for a single block is to have a strong backside arm, we must control the defensive lineman in front of us. Him slanting into the play is not an option, so a strong punch and follow up are required. Punch with the playside arm, then immediately follow up with a backside punch to the numbers.

Lead Man/Trail Man

This is a concept we have implemented late this season to help our linemen know what block to use. If you are Lead man, you are Base block, Trail man, you are zone block. It also helps to emphasise the double team concept of Inside Zone that is vital to it working well.

It is the Trail man’s job to get onto the back hip pocket of the lead man, not the lead man’s job to slow down.

What you can see above is a good demonstration of the Lead/Trail concept against a standard 4-3 look. You can see the covered linemen (green above) become the lead men, and the uncovered men become the trail men.

Lead Man = Base Block = Base Steps

Trail Man = Zone Block = Zone Steps

Aiming Points

Where an OL aims and blocks the DL is just as important as how he blocks him. Aiming points for the hands must be small, as if you aim small, you’ll miss small.

We teach the same aiming point for the Lead Man and Trail Man in the Inside Zone:

“The top corner of the playside number.”

If we look at the dummy here, you can see the two aiming points for a zone right play. Obviously we would use the left top corner for zone left.

What this provides is a small target for offensive lineman; it acts like an archery target. The middle of that circle is a 10, it is the optimum point to hit and move the defender with your punch. The further out you go the less effective your punch becomes.

If you are the lead man, you punch with your backside hand only. As I explained above, this coupled with your footwork will be enough to keep your shoulders square to the LOS, and in a good position to attack the LB quickly and safely.

The initial contact points for a Single block are different. As mentioned above, allowing the defensive lineman to slant inside is the worst possible outcome for a single block, so we must have a strong backside punch to eliminate that threat.

Here we can see the initial aiming points for a Single Block on an Inside Zone to the right.
We must note that:

• The playside hand punches the top corner first.
• The backside hand punches the lower corner immediately after
• These are initial aiming points. Once that inside movement has been taken away, the OL must reset his hands and lock-on to the defensive lineman.

That covers a lot of the finer points about the Covered/Uncovered method and how I have taught it, and had some success with it. Now let’s look at the numbering system.

NUMBERING SYSTEM

One of the most common ways to run the Inside Zone is to combine it with the Covered/Uncovered principle stated above.

So if we rework an earlier diagram to include the numbers, and the lead trail concept, we get:

What this shows is a process, whereby the centre calls out the zero player (i.e “Mike is 53”) then each player can ‘count’ outwards to his particular block.

This is easily applicable to any defensive front you are likely to see. It works like so:

Centre = the ‘Zero’ Player

Guards = the ‘One’ Player

Tackles = the ‘Two’ Player

TE/FB = the ’Three’ Player

These provide hard and fast rules about who you are meant to be blocking, and it works extremely well at the college and professional level, where they have multiple defensive looks, and have almost unlimited time to scout opponents.

At the UK or high school level, I have some reservations about running it.

Firstly, it requires your centre to be pretty ‘football smart’ in order to call the right ‘zero’ man. If he gets that wrong, the whole thing can fall apart.

Secondly, it focuses players on a man rather than an area, and it can turn into a man blocking scheme if not coached well.

I like the numbering scheme when used with covered/uncovered. It acts like an indicator system, it indicates what player you are likely to be blocking, then you use your covered/uncovered principles to figure out how to block him and what steps to take. That’s a pretty flawless system.

Of course, both these systems look great on paper, but what happens when a defense moves, or slants, or blitzes, or drops?

In the next article we’ll look at some clips of the Inside Zone working and not working at the UK/High School level and how we react as offensive linemen to defensive stunts and movement within the Inside Zone scheme.

The Inside Zone – Article 1

The Inside Zone

This has to be one of the most talked about, researched, and still least understood concepts in football. On virtually every football website, there is some form of Inside Zone study, or presentation, so I figured I’d join in, as it’s still a pretty hot topic, and hopefully shed some light on the topic.

I’ll go over some of the best practices I’ve found through teaching the Inside Zone, and show some game clips. What you’ll see is a vast improvement throughout the course of the season from the first time we ran IZ to now.

Before we get to that though, let’s go through some of the details behind the Inside Zone, where it came from, the two most common ways of teaching it, and the different ways it can be run.

Where did it come from?

“…..it’s just one of those things that football has always had” is a phrase that annoys me. We haven’t always had these schemes and plays they were invented by someone, and I want to know who it was, why they needed to invent it, and how they used it.

By having that base knowledge, we can successfully understand the basics of the scheme, and from there, gain a better understanding of the tweaks and flavours that others coaches have put on it over time.

The Inside Zone originated in the 90’s and 00’s in college and the pro’s off the back of Alex Gibbs Wide Zone scheme, right? Everyone knows that!

The figure above is an excerpt from Vince Lombardi’s playbook that was used for the 1966 season in Green Bay. The last term is critical – ‘Zone Block’, this is what we are looking at. Now Lombardi didn’t have a zone play as we know it now, it was used more as a blocking style against certain fronts, but still it was there. The great man himself utilised the basis of a zone scheme nearly 50 years ago, and to this day, we are still discussing the ins and outs of it.

The problem, as it was, was that the defense always seemed to have a man over, they always had one extra man in the box that we couldn’t account for in blocking, mainly because of the quarterback, and the extremely low percentage chance of him actually keeping the ball on his run fakes. The defense had all the power. We were playing 10 v 11 football on running plays.

Tell me if this blocking scheme looks familiar:

It’s an old school 26 ISO play with a man blocking scheme. We are double teaming the big guys, to move them, and come off to the linebacker, leaving the outside linebacker isolated 1 on 1 with our running back ‘in the hole’.
The other issue with this type of play, and indeed scheme, is there are a lot of IF/THEN statements just to be able to run it:

“If I have a 3 tech then I do this”
“If there are 2 tight ends and 1 fullback then I need to look here, but without the fullback I do this”

These are some of the thoughts that went through my head when I was first learning man blocking schemes, it was a nightmare. The Inside Zone play allows the same blocking scheme to be used, no matter the personnel or the formation.

The Basics – What is it?

The Inside Zone play, allows the same type of downhill blocking as the man scheme above, but simply shifts the man being left unblocked. So instead of having ISO plays, you had Zone plays that look like below:

Instead of linemen blocking away from the area we wanted to run the ball, we are now blocking to that side, giving the Running Back an aiming point, and allowing him to run off that. On any given play, the RB can either:

BANG IT: Run the ball through the side called, generally the B Gap on IZ plays

BEND IT: This is the ‘Cut Back’ behind the Centre and Backside Guard

BOUNCE IT: Everything crashes inside, bounce to the outside.

What this gives us is a simple to learn scheme, with vast opportunities for multiple looks/formations/shifts and motions, whilst still allowing a downhill running game to attack the middle of the defense. Sounds perfect doesn’t it, only if it’s run right, and often.

If we look at the more detailed aspects of the play, the zone steps are vital to the zone. Below is how I teach our OL the zone steps:

STANCE

As with everything in football, it all starts with a good comfortable stance. For me, there is no exact size, or right or wrong. I like the back foot slightly turned, as it provides a bit more flexibility, and is more natural

For us, we run everything our of a 2 point stance. I haven’t seen any reason not to so far, in fact, our run game has picked up dramatically since we shifted to a 2 point stance after Game 3 of our season. This is a coaching preference, I just feel the benefits outweigh any perceived negatives.

1.STAMP STEP
This is a 6” x 2” (approx.) ‘Jab’ step to gain lateral movement, and get us aligned moving laterally in relation the defender, we are gaining position here.

2.SHOOT STEP
This is where we make contact, shoot our hands and hips through the defender, and get some vertical displacement.

3.SQUARE STEP
This step squares us up to our target. Now all we have to do is drive our feet, control the defender with our arms, and let the RB do his thing.

It’s important to note at this point that the zone steps can vary in size ever so slightly depending on the gap you have to close to the defender. This is where coaches will need to give some consideration as to splits and depth (offset) of the linemen, and the athleticism of their OL.

The Inside Zone, much like the Outside Zone is a core running play. This means, the more you run it the more beneficial it will become to your offense. Anything outside of these two plays, can be seen as hubris, Alex Gibbs certainly thinks so.

“But we’re still leaving one guy unblocked, relying on a low percentage QB keeper to hold him, how is that any different to the ISO play described above coach?”. We’ll have a look in the next article, which will focus on the different principles involved in the OL, mainly covered/uncovered and numbering systems.

BSP Books – Coming Soon!

I’m delighted to announce that today I signed a contract to write for CoachesEdge Technologies, and create some iBooks for them.

This marks a large step up for me personally as a coach, and I may possibly be the first British coach to write an American Football book (although I’d need to look into that claim) based on fundamental technique play.

My first iBook will build on the success of this blog, and focus on Offensive Line play, and will include diagrams, drill clips and game videos.

My second book will focus more on some of the innovations we have created in Europe to allow us to turn out a high end product on the field, with only a fraction of the time available that college and high school teams have.

After that, who knows.

Have a look at the current range of CoachesEdge Technologies book here (https://coachesedgetechnologies.com/). They truly are a step forward in coaching resources, and aid in learning.

I’d like to thank you all for your support to me and the blog, I hope to continue putting articles and posts up here as and when I get a chance to write them, but my focus for the next month or so will very much be on the book.

Thanks again for the support, I’ll be posting again before you know it.

Neale