Is Zone Blocking Right for Youth Football?



What is the most excellent style of blocking to for youth football players? An bigger number of coaches decide to learn a particular manner of blocking, like GOM, and are stunned when their offensive line has problems. Exact blocking rules like GOM (gap - on - man) seem excellent to teach youths, but what appears decent on paper, or in hypothesis just isn't so in the actual world. A great number of coaches ignore the fact that if your opponent has stud players in different defensive line positions, your GOM blocking schemes may be lacking in usefulness. For illustrative purposes, let us assume the defensive nose guard on the defensive side is beating your offensive line center and rushing into in your backfield. Your scouting report will supply the information where the stud players on defense will be lining up. An exact rules blocking scheme like GOM has no substitute rules to account for a superior defender. Most likely you will need to double team this participant, and depending on which offensive lineman you use to double team, the remainder of your offensive line will be following rules that might permit some defenders to be unblocked.

A related coach from some other program asked us the following question, "We are toying with the idea of zone blocking our offensive line, and I understand a nice amount, enough to be threatening. My job is coaching the offensive line. I like the mentality of double-teaming on the strong side. What is the best way to have the players to realize who peels off to get the linebacker? You must be aware of what is happening away from the action? Are any offensive lineman required to block alone? When using the 5-3 defensive gameplan make sure all of the defensive lineman will be blocked? Is this too complicated for young players and should I use a more basic head up assignment?"

Our response is 100% to utilize zone blocking. Man blocking is substantial and unavoidably needs to be taught the correct way to the kids, but zone blocking allows for more valuable designs and sets up double team blocks mechanically. The exchangeable reward to zone blocking is you can teach your lineman to start with a double team block and then inform one of the lineman to leave the double team block and go block the next defender.

If you are sold on using zone blocking, then you must get the rest of the staff on board. You want the offensive play caller and running backs coach to agree to the scheme. The running backs coach must demand that the backs learn how to carry the ball when the offensive line is zone blocking. The running backs need to be aware there will be many more chances for cut back runs, so if you teach the backs the right running fashion, you can predict some large runs.