Power vs Under

In this football clinic segment, coach breaks down an offensive blocking scheme for a power run offense against a 4-3 under defensive front.

So simple rules. Everybody should know power, easy rules. I don't like saying gap down backer, cause typically, that's not how our Co OC and office line coach teaches it. He's one of the best offensive line coaches I've ever worked with, but he doesn't say the term gap down backer, they have their double team calls and they have their calls when they're going right to the backside backer.

So he is, play side, he's down on the backside backer. Obviously, if he's got a lineman in his gap, he's got, a four eye or whatever, he's going to be down on that. But he's down blocking, he's going back to this backer this is versus under, the guard he's down, he's got a guy in his gap, he's got a nose, a one technique in his gap. So he's blocking, blocking down on him. The center is blocking back. If it's a three technique, if it's a shade, if it's a two eye or a two, center's blocking back, and then backside tackle is gaping, stepping into his gap and hinging back. So he's step gap hinge backside.

Now and then your fullback he's kicking out. He's into the line of scrimmage, being very physical and kicking out. We tell him if this guy won't, and then we're skip pulling obviously, and pulling, I got ahead of myself. We're skip pulling up to the linebacker, obviously, and everybody's being real physical or we're staying square, wrapping up. The fullback, he's into last scrimmage and he is taught if this guy really wrong arms hard and tries to get in this gap to fight him vertically, okay? We don't want him logging immediately. Just go ahead and say, okay, fine, go inside. I'm going to log you and we're going to get outside. We don't do that, cause then you're doing what the defense wants you to do.

We try to mix it up with our zone schemes and things that we do with that end so he's getting various looks so he can just focus in on squeezing and wrong arming, but if he's really trying to get inside, we like for our fullback to really attack him. Playing low, getting his head on the inside and then fight him vertically. Okay, because if he can fight him vertically and create space here and typically when someone comes in hard, this backer may scrape and if you can fight him vertically and his backer scrapes out and we're rapid in here, we've got a big hole here. So we don't just go ahead and say, hey logging and let's get outside. We have a call for that and I'm going to show you that in this present or in the outside room presentations.

Now as your back, I've done it all kinds of ways. I've put him on the same side. Hitting here on the same side, we've brought him across, different ways. This past year we did both where we put him on the same side and we put him on this side and we flipped it around just by the play name. Nothing changed upfront. It's just where the back is. I don't think that's a big deal. I don't think this a big deal, whether you're a same side power guy or you're an opposite power guy. I can give you the benefits of both, I think that same side, he typically hits it more vertically. He's more downhill same side. And he gets in that gap a little faster, it's a little bit harder to bounce it.

When he's coming from the same side and that's kind of the pro of having him opposite side, is it's a little bit better track if he ends up bouncing and you can read it and do some things with some reads if he's opposite side. One negative to doing the same side also is you got to protect that. You don't want to get into the thing where when your backs are on the same side, like this look here, that you're always running power out of that set. So that's on you as a coach to make sure you're protecting your plays and running various run schemes and pass games with the back stack.