Offensive Line Archives:

Holding seems to be an evolving “penalty” at all levels of football. Did you know that the rules in the NFL, College and High School game have NOT been changed to allow defensive linemen to hold? That goes double for youth football, where 48 of the 50 states us NFHS rules, while Texas and Massachusetts [...]

                       Zone Blocking For Non-Select Youth Football Teams?  A prevalent blocking scheme in the NFL and College is now the zone. You even see some of the more athletic High Schools going to that scheme. There are even a handful of youth teams out there trying to zone block. When you go to zone blocking, remember [...]

Your Offensive Line Pulling Too Slow? In youth football, if you have the most size and talent in the league, you probably don’t need to bother pulling linemen. With proper technique your team should be able to handle all their blocks 1 on 1. On the other hand if you don’t have the most size and [...]

    Offensive Line “Must Dos” in Youth Football One of the most common problems many young offensive lines struggle with is getting aligned properly. Unfortunately many youth football coaches take for granted the kids will align in a timely and orderly fashion. In reality many don’t, the players have to be instructed and trained [...]

Team Defense and Offensive Line DVDs The long awaited materials on team defense and offensive line play are now available. While the book contains our defensive philosophy, schemes, player descriptions, responsibilities and all of our stunts, blitzes, adjustments and drills, for the last 2 years coaches have been bugging me to come our with a [...]

This past weekend we had the pleasure of speaking at the Baltimore Glazier Clinic. Not only were there at least 20 youth football coaches there that were running my system, I got to sit in on some excellent presentations myself. There were even two brave souls from North Carolina that had driven about 6 hours to [...]

Often times pulling linemen especially on off-tackle plays fail to block anyone. Youth football coaches often blame the lack of contact on a lack of aggression on the part of the pulling linemen. That is quite often the wrong diagnosis. Here are some things to look for to coach that skill up and make those [...]

Tennis Ball Drill For Offensive Linemen This is a drill used by many teams to get their offensive linemen to quickly come off the ball. I first learned about it from Concord De LaSalle High School in California. Yes, the school that had the 151 game winning streak. This is a great drill for guys [...]

Open Field Blocking Most of us coaching youth football teach our players how to tackle in the open field, but many fail to teach a player how to block in the open field. How many times have you seen your lead blocker whiff on a block in space? Many youth football plays require good open [...]

The �Free Blocking Zone� Most Youth Football Teams play in leagues that are governed by the prevailing HIGH SCHOOL rules of the state with a few nuances like weight limits and for some; minimum play rules. Some leagues will also have special rules pertaining to unique scoring for extra point plays or exception rules on [...]