What is the difference between zone blocking and power blocking

We tell the running back that he wants to ride the wall as tight as possible. If he can stay tight to the wall the pulling lineman will knock any defender out. Because the wall blocks come earlier in the play and have the advantage of leverage, they tend to be more stable blocks than the kick-out block. This makes it a smoother surface for the running back to base his path on. We tell the runner that he is going to ride the wall through the box. Once he clears the box he should have one Safety to beat.

Gap and Zone schemes both have an important role in an offense. As a general rule Gap schemes are more effective if your offensive linemen are not physically as strong as the defensive linemen and can help to deal with stunts and twists.

Zone Schemes are great ways to feature a runner with great vision and punish fast flowing linebackers. Gap Scheme Playbook for Youth Football. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. The graph there, again, clearly shows the trend difference -- there's a crossover between the "bad" region and the "good" region.

In other words, in the man blocking scheme he tended to have more "bad" runs and fewer "good" runs than in the zone blocking scheme. He ran more often for more yards in the zone scheme, however it should be mentioned that Joe Bugel and Joe Gibbs recognized this near the end of the season and supposedly incorporated more zone blocking type plays, however looking at the overall game summaries I don't immediately see a difference.

With such limited data and with so many confounding variables we can't really draw any strong conclusions about man vs. But there are some interesting observations to be had. First, the data seems to indicate that odds of getting stuffed drop with a zone scheme.

This makes sense, since in a zone one-cut scheme the running back chooses the hole instead of sticking with the play's pre-selected gap.

Second, there seems to be no correlation between scheme and the ability to rip off long runs. Davis and Portis had more long runs with zone blocking; Duckett was the same; and Dunn had more in a man scheme. Third, it is possible that Davis might have had a better year if Pendry had used cut-blocking to Davis's advantage -- his distribution of runs is similar between the two years with the exception of his lack of long runs.

The "Denver system" isn't a magical pill that a team can swallow to generate yard rushers with consistency, but obviously it has been successful for running backs in Denver. One reason it has not been widely adopted is time: it takes time to teach, time to master, and time to get the smaller, more agile offensive linemen that the system requires. If you take zone blocking and try to implement it with pound behemoths, you will probably fail, and for better or for worse, pound behemoths are what you'll find on a typical offensive line in the NFL.

Brian Hook is an avid football fan and occasional game programmer, having worked on games such as Quake 2 and Quake 3 in his career. He is currently hard at work on a multiplayer football management game. He can be reached at brianhook-at-hookatooka. If you have an idea for a guest column, something which takes a new look at the NFL, please email Contact Us.

Forget zone or man blocking, just put some cones out there. You'll probably get better blocking. Great article but most of the commentators missed the point. The 37th commentator hit the nail on the head. Denver drafts the RB's that works best with their system. Sometimes they draft late, sometimes they draft early. Experience playing in a zone blocking offense is not the key factor.

During the combine, the back that trust the offense the most is chosen. For example look at the Ron Dayne Thanksgiving game day run. After the snap you have typical zone blocking flow to left side.

Dayne Runs left and a whole opens up. Nice pickup. In the ZB scheme you have to go as far left as can and wait for the Line to seal the back side.

Sometimes this is with a cut block and sometimes it is not. Here is how the cut, or no cut goes down. If a man is in front of you, you block him straight up. He is your zone, so he's your man. Remember the whole line is flowing to one side or the other so someone will not always be in front of you. If no one is in front of you you cut-block the area.

The Center scrapes by the defensive tackle to get to the second level while the RT and RG double team the other defensive tackle, leaving the backside defensive end unblocked. The key difference between Inside Zone and Split Zone, is the TE pulling across the formation to cut block the unblocked defensive end.

This creates a potential cutback lane all the way across the formation if the TE is able to land a good block. In this particular play, the block is shrugged off by the DE and no cutback lane is opened, nevertheless, it slows him down long enough for Miles Sanders to find a hole on the play side of the formation for a 4 yard gain. Stretch is another common zone blocking play and one of the easiest to see. At the snap the offensive line moves out to the right, engaging their targets and attempting to move them laterally to create a hole.

If the defense is too aggressive flowing to the sideline they will create a cutback lane for Miles Sanders to generate a big play. That concludes our primer on man and zone blocking schemes. The links for both are at the top of the page. Keep it tuned to the Painted Lines for our Football series and let us know if there is something, in particular, you would like us to cover.

Next week we will continue talking about the trenches, exploring some terminology, and talking about how the offense utilizes slide protection in pass blocking. Sign in. Log into your account. Forgot your password? Password recovery. Recover your password. Then it's up to the back to pick the hole based on what he sees, which is what Edge is comfortable with because that's a lot of what Indianapolis did when he was there.

On the power scheme: "The advantage You're more determining where the hole is going to be, and if the blocks are done correctly, there will be bigger holes for the back to go into. In the power scheme, more of those runs are going to hit into the holes where they were designed. Where in the zone scheme, we can start in one direction and it can actually bend all the way back. Ok, so that gives a quick overview and offers some hope that Edge could have an 'Indy-type year' with the Cardinals.

Obviously I had to know more so I dove further in the nuts and bolts of the zone blocking scheme. The biggest difference between the two schemes is the idea of a predetermined hole. In a man blocking scheme each lineman has a defender to block but in a zone a lineman has an area to block.

In the zone scheme instead of a back having a hole to run through, he reads the flow of the offensive line and finds the hole.

This often leads to cut-back runs but requires backs to run decisively and have very good vision. The basic principle is for the offensive line to move as a unit, laterally down the line and this in theory will lead to natural seams or creases for the back to get through.