Link: Kyle Flood's Keys to Zone Blocking

Earlier this season, I wrote about the bread an butter play of Rutgers' offense, the outside zone play. I broke down a long, touchdown scoring run Jawan Jamison had on the play, in the victory over South Florida, explaining the blocking techniques used by the offensive lineman, tight ends and fullback and the read Jamison had to make running the ball. I used general zone blocking ideology to describe what went on, and today Chris Brown wrote about the specific ways Kyle Flood teaches the play to his lineman and running backs. Brown had seen Flood lecture on the play at a coaching clinic, and he passed along Flood's 3 keys to the play:

"Rutgers runs it the same way most NFL teams do, which is essentially the same way the old school Nebraska teams used to run it under Tom Osborne (the diagram above is from Milt Tenopir, Nebraska’ legendary offensive line coach). There are three keys to Flood’s outside zone:

1. The runningback’s read;
2. The technique of the “uncovered lineman”; and
3. Where the fullback “inserts” into the defense."

For the "running back read," Flood teaches his backs to only make one read, on the outside man on the line of scrimmage, rather than two (on the end man on the line and the second to last man on the line) like most offenses teach. It simplifies things for the back and gets the play going downhill, on what is an east-west play for a lot of teams.

The uncovered linemen are taught to, first and foremost, secure a double team on the defensive lineman immediately down the line from them towards they play side where they are stepping. Once that block is secured, one of the two blockers will go to the next level and block a linebacker, and which backer they block depends on the fullback insert.

The fullback (or H-back, which Rutgers has primarily used since Mike Burton got hurt) will normally lead off the edge and block the strong safety. In this case, the offensive lineman will have to take care of all three backers. Other times, the fullback will lead on the strong side backer with the tight end taking the force, and the lineman would then be responsible for the middle and weak-side backers. The fullback will also sometimes head towards the backside of the play and cut off the weak-side linebacker, in which case the lineman will block the middle and strong-side backers.

It is very important for everyone to know who they are blocking and for them to all be on the same page, so Gary Nova will normally call out the number of the player the fullback or center is going to block. This is what you hear when TV field mics pick up the QB saying "55 is the MIKE" or whatever.

Brown's article is very informative and a great read (everything he writes is), so check the whole thing out.