Ball Control Passing

After Monday night's debacle, Packer fans throughout this great state and the nation are calling for T-squared to shop for a RB.

"The run game is anemic!"

"We need to make a move for Marshawn Lynch, ASAP"

Despite the Packers "run game troubles", we must take a tempered look at the Packers strategy Monday night before we hit the panic button.

1st Downs	21	18
Passing 1st downs	16	11
Rushing 1st downs	4	2
1st downs from Penalties	1	5
3rd down efficiency	4-10	3-9
4th down efficiency	0-0	0-1
Total Plays	60	48
Total Yards	379	276
Passing	316	199
Comp-Att	34-45	16-27
Yards per pass	7.0	7.4
Rushing	63	77
Rushing Attempts	15	18
Yards per rush	4.2	4.3
Red Zone (Made-Att)	2-3	1-4
Penalties	18-152	5-38
Turnovers	2	1
Fumbles lost	1	0
Interceptions thrown	1	1
Defensive / Special Teams TDs	0	1
Possession	35:49	24:11

Statistically speaking, neither team was "effective" running the ball when you look for the bench-mark 100 yds/ game. But look closer. The Packers averaged 4.2 yds/ carry suggesting that they were fairly efficient when called upon. Also, the Packers were able to acrue 21 first downs in the game and outgain the Bears, 379-276. Despite Brandon Jackson's anemic 1.7 yds/ carry, the Packers somehow managed to move the ball, but how was this possible without such a strong running game?

A pragmatic football fan should look at the game Monday night in closer detail before jumping to conclusions. The Packers were able to achieve the results of an effective run game through an efficient ball control passing game. Brandon Jackson's 1.7 yds/ carry does not account for his 4 receptions for 27 yds (3 of which were 1st downs), nor does the Packer's 4.2 yds/ carry account for the high percentage quick game routes completed throughout the game.

Empty the Backfield

Throughout the game we witnessed the Packers utilizing a diverse spread package of formations, using 4-5 WR often. This created numerous mismatches, pinning LB's against the Packers deep receiving corps. Throw in the match up problems Jermichael Finley creates in the slot on the lone WR of a Trips set and you can see how the Packers were able to move the ball with relative ease. Their limiting factor as we all could see was penalties (18-152)

Highlights

By spreading the defense through horizontal alignment, the Packers force the Bears to show their hand and can determine the coverage and blitz scheme fairly easily. Aaron Rodgers did a masterful job of completing 76% of his passes to carve up a stingy Bear defense and the Packers receivers were able to attack the holes in the Bears Tampa 2 scheme to continue to move the chains. Even if the Packers had a more "effective" run game, the still would have underperformed their results. The Packers averaged 7.0 yds/ attempt. Even on the best of nights, the Packers could hope for 5.0 yds/ carry in their run game.

What happened to the West Coast philosophy?

During the reign of the 49ers and any Bill Walsh disciple who followed, people were conscious of the West Coast philosophy in using the pass game to set up and replace the run. Routinely West Coast maestros ran effective offensive attacks averaging around 4.0 yds/carry while hitting a high percentage of 3 step passing combinations. Walsh et al drilled their skill positions to use a timing, based, efficient, ball control passing game that set up the run later on. The idea behind a quick passing attack was no different than that behind a power run game. Control the clock, put your players in favorable positions to succeed and keep your defense off the field. Penalties and special teams gaffes aside, the Packers did just that Monday night.

Trends point to efficient passing

Examine the last 4 Super Bowl Champions/runners-up. The Saints, Colts, Steelers and Cardinals all thrived off an efficient passing attack and strong opportunistic defenses. Though the dynamics of each team were slightly different, their passing attacks were prominent pieces of their offense, ranking 4th, 2nd, 17th and 2nd respectively.

Despite the lack of consistent run games on all of these teams (but the '09 Saints) the teams found offensive and team success consistently. None of these teams had a 1,000 yard rusher and leading rushers Pierre Thomas, Joseph Addai, Willie Parker (past his prime), and Tim Hightower were not household names but succeeded despite this "lack" of run game.

Land of opportunity

The key for offenses today is to move the ball down the field efficiently and consistently regardless of formation or play type. Teams utilizing a power run scheme as we do in double, a veer option scheme like we see in flexbone teams like Georgia Tech, a spread rushing attack like that of RichRod's Michigan Wolverines or the "air-raid" passing attack like that of once Texas Tech head man mike Leach are all trying to do the same thing: move the ball and score points. The end is always the same despite the various means to get there. The Packers were looking to pass efficiently, using the run game as a compliment to keep the defense honest. Penalties putting the offense in long-yardage situations dictated that Mike McCarthy had to pass the ball to succeed.

What does this mean of Cedarburg football?

The Packer game Monday was a real world example of using an offensive scheme to exploit what the defense gave you regardless of "conventional" wisdom. This can apply to our run first mentality exhibited in both our Double and Spread formations. The Packers passed effectively and nearly at will, when they attempted they struggled at times but also kept the Bears honest. This is essentially the opposite of the approach we have taken thus far. We look to run first since it is our strength and our more efficient means of advancing the ball. We still need to be opportunistic in the pass game and complete passes routinely to continue to do what we do best. That has been our downfall thus far. We are calling pass plays with too many variables unaccounted for, will the protection be executed, is the alignment and spacing correct, will the routes be correct and run crisp, will the QB take the proper footwork and throw the ball to the correct read effectively? With all of our repetitions this year we are still at a point where many of these questions are unanswered. As the Packers demonstrated Monday, a passing game can be used as efficiently as a run game but it takes focus and discipline in practice to see the results in a game. Let's develop the ability to hurt defenses with our potent run game and efficient pass game.

Zone Blocking

Yesterday during Scout Offense, one of our linemen asked

"What do I do? Do I block anyone?"

I replied, "You have a simple Zone block."

"What's a Zone block?" And with that this new blog post was born.

As someone who has played and coached organized football for nearly 15 years now, it's easy for me to forget how early you are in developing your football knowledge base. After running Double Wing and it's basic variations, I wouldn't expect you to know much about Zone blocking schemes but today we'll focus on the Zone; what it is, how it's executed,why teams use this scheme and how the Zone relates to what we do.

What is Zone Blocking

Zone blocking in principle is blocking an area or gap. This leads to two scenarios.

1. The lineman is covered. In this situation he takes the man over him/ in his gap
2. The lineman is uncovered. In this situation he "combo blocks" with the covered lineman next to him as he rises to block the 2nd level (most likely to take an LB

So this means lineman running a zone will often not be blocking a "zone" at all. When covered, Zone blocking really becomes man blocking. In a situation where we'd see no LBs we'd have no Zone blocks as all of our OL now have become covered.

Here is a great video of the Zone Block done well

How to Execute Zone Blocking

Zone blocking begins with a step play side. There are two types of steps:

1. A drop step- a 3" step that opens the hips and creates a solid angle of departure when the OL is covered. This is also the step that is used during inside Zone.
2. A bucket step- a 6" open step that creates a wider angle of departure to help combo and rise to LB. This is also the step used to attack on outside Zone.

The key to your zone block is getting that 3" to 6" step of depth to create a better "angle of departure"

Once you step your blocking fundamentals remain the same

• head/chest up
• bent knees
• hips loaded
• weight on insteps of the feet
• powerful arm drive with movement from shoulders
• duck walk with short choppy steps (cut the grass)
• get proper hand placement (thumbs up and grab chest plate)
• roll hips through on contact
• finish with an Eff you block (shove off at end)

Often the Zone scheme utilizes the double team (or combo as we call it). This can happen several ways have we have and will see. Below is a diagram showing how the G and T would handle the double team in a basic zone run.

Why Teams Use the Zone

Zone blocking was essentially developed as a system to handle the increase in athletic defensive lineman. Teams were finding that straight man to man schemes were being rendered ineffective especially since the success of the team was entirely dependent on the ability of the personnel. As you can guess, this doesn't offer a coach a lot of job security as his success depends on the talent of each incoming class. Coaches were looking for a blocking scheme that allowed the line to have success as a unit.

The Zone blocking system led to success in large part to the scheme, not the quality of players. This allowed teams to thrive without having the 6'5 320lb Tackle who could play Power Forward. Weaker NFL teams and D.1 teams were finding they could find success with smaller, more athletic and intelligent lineman. As more and more teams have employed the Zone scheme its no surprise that lineman lead the league in average Wonderlic scores (25 for T and 24 for C)

For a point of reference take a look at the 1998 Denver Broncos Statistics and Lineman vs. the league average when the zone scheme wasn't fully adopted yet. The '98 Broncos were a product of Zone blocking guru Alex Gibbs.

Broncos: 525 car. 2468 yds. 4.7 yds/car. 26 TDs

Rest of League Average: 420 car. 1665 yds. 4.0 yds./car. 11.4 TDs

Broncos Starting Lineman

*= Made Pro Bowl in 1998

LT Tony E. Jones* 6-5 290, Undrafted, 13 yrs. in the NFL, 1 Pro Bowl

LG Mark Schlereth* 6-3 282, 10th Rd Pick, 12 yrs. in the NFL, 2 Pro bowls

C Tom Nalen* 6-3 286, 7th Rd Pick, 14 yrs. in the NFL, 5 Pro Bowls (all with Broncos during Zone scheme)

RG Dan Neil 6-2 285, 3rd Rd Pick, 8 yrs. in the NFL, 0 Pro Bowls

RT Harry Swayne 6-5 290, 7th Rd Pick, 15 yrs. in the NFL, 0 Pro Bowls

The average lineman now is roughly 310 lbs according to an ESPN report

What does this mean?

Teams throughout the professional, collegiate and high school levels are finding success with the Zone scheme due to it's adaptability to any defensive front and due to its lack of a dependence on blue-chip offensive lineman. it's no secret the Broncos churned out 1,000 yd rushers with undrafted and late round picks at the OL and RB spots.

The Broncos are not an isolated case. Teams throughout have found sustained success using the Zone and it is being used in an even greater variety of ways as coaches have used zone concepts in the Spread and Air Raid style offenses that are becoming more prevalent. This has given way to Zone Option or Zone Read plays like the ones we see from Milwaukee Lutheran. Coaches are finding more and more innovative ways to use the Zone scheme or merge it with some Power and Counter concepts. (UW-Whitewater does a great job with this)

How the Zone Relates to Us

As I mentioned before, the Zone scheme uses similar principles to what we do. You rarely hear me say, "You have this man!" during practice, rather I'll say you have the first 2nd level player. This is a zone concept or idea. You are not blocking men, you are blocking areas. This gives the OL better leverage like in our Combo blocks and it also gives the RBs more freedom to read and cut.

Watch our Varsity for a great example of this. Often we hit big runs when our front side combos wash out scraping LBs and our backside OL reach to 2nd level zones. A good back, in this case Logan, find sees the OL wall the hard LBs out and makes an early cutback (in the 3rd or 4th run of the video I believe). So even though our scheme isn't Zone by design, it shares many Zone principles, withe Combo block being the one that translate the most.

Hopefully this post gives you a basic taste of the Zone and can help you, especially during Scout when we show other teams schemes. If you have more questions or would like me to go into greater detail let me know.

Attacking Cover 2

Last week I began to touch up on how to read coverages and understanding how to read and adjust routes to beat them. This week I'll go into more detail on Cover 2.

Again, to review last week, our 1st tell to determine cover 2 is the 2 high safeties (easy to remember right...) The next thing we should read is our CBs.

• If they're sitting deeper than 6-7 we can assume that we're seeing one of 2 coverages:

1. Cover 4 where each man is responsible for deep quarters or...
2. They're disguising Cover 3 and the Safeties will rotate down. For the style of offense we play I would guess we will NOT see Cover 4 since it fails to give adequate run support.

• If they're sitting at 5 or tighter we know we are seeing Cover 2 or 2 man- the angle the CBs are playing should help determine that (eyes inside=zone)

Great 5 step and sprint out combos to attack the cover two would be:

• Curl/Out with the curl coming back sharply and not inside the void like in cover 3. The out should be run at 5 to draw the corner to the flat
• Smash/ Corner or some variation- again we would like to force the CB to make a choice and attack the void behind him and away from the safety
• A Drive Concept where we attack the middle with a Seam/ Drag(or drive) combo or Dig/Drive combo
• Our 3 step game can be effective with slants and fades attacking this coverages weakness as well.

As you can see in the post above, this front does leave some vulnerability to the run off tackle which is why we love to see this front when we are in our double wing formation. We can attack the bubble over the tackle and the lack the extra S for run support that a Cover 3 brings.