I'm very far from an expert on this, but the way I've come to understand it, o-line blocking to the play side is outside zone.

I had to come up with a simple blocking scheme for Mahonz mega splits. We'd tried counting, pin and pull and who knows what else. Counting was passable. I evaluated a bunch of rules and decided on Gap On Backer. As a DW guy, this meant Inside Gap. It worked and that's how we rolled. RB's would have an "area of attack" and would pick their own natural seams. Mega splits meant that we could never double team. Eventually, we ran into situations where someone would need help with their guy, so I came up with a way for a covered guy to ask for help from an uncovered neighbor. Neighbor would still have his LB assignment, but on the way would give just enough help to let his buddy get the defender under control. Sometimes, this was nothing but a hard shove with 1 hand. Other times, you'd have to block him for a step or two, but your job was still the LB. One day, Mahonz threw in an outside run. I kept the same blocking. Mahonz told me to have the edge of the line block play side because blocking down was a waste of a block. I didn't want to screw up the blocking scheme or melt the kids' brains, so I went home and doodled on it and decided that OUTSIDE gap, man on, linebacker worked just fine. So our outside runs used that rule. Eventually, I just called it Playside gap.

A few years later, I was going through some old materials and found a document that Mahonz wrote up on inside/outside zone that he shared with Kent Calkins. I read it and saw that it was essentially Gap On Backer, or more accurately, Gap On Combo. It used a lot of jargon like covered/uncovered, pin man/post man, etc., but boiled down, if you didn't have a man in your gap (inside for iZ, outside for OZ) or on you, you would combo with the next guy. That was essentially what I was doing with the mega stuff, minus the combos. Our help call made it more like a combo without spending a ton of time teaching proper combo blocks.

What does it give you that trap, wedge or dive wouldn't? Apples and oranges. For us, the mega splits took care of all the hard work. IZ is designed to take advantage of natural alignments to gain immediate inside leverage. OZ . . . same but outside leverage. Backs look to take advantage of that leverage.

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

I heard a lot of talk at a coaches meeting last night about Inside Zone. The way I heard one coach discuss it was having his center reach block to the strong side. I think that's a harder block to make than Man On, Man Away and I'd worry about leakage in the backside A Gap.

With that said, what does running Inside Zone give me that trap, wedge, or dive wouldn't? I ask because if there's an advantage, I want to use it.

There are no advantages.  We ran zone schemes at two of the Air Raid high schools I coached at.  If there's an advantage to it, explain it to me, because I'm still waiting.  At my last high school the header wasn't just an Air Raid guy, he was friends with Tony Franklin.  Coach Franklin even came out to one of our practices to watch what we do.  Anyhoos, we were finally able to convince our header that the run scheme was better served with a gap scheme, smaller splits and a healthy dose of Power.  He ended up with a RB who was the conference's offensive MVP and 2nd Team All-State.  On an Air Raid team.  The RB had been RB3 the year before and didn't receive any scholarship offers.  Our header had never had a conference offensive MVP at RB before.

Of ANY of the before&after accomplishments of my high school coaching career, this was one that I was most proud of because we were able to prove the success of our scheme to the HC.

--Dave

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

I heard a lot of talk at a coaches meeting last night about Inside Zone. The way I heard one coach discuss it was having his center reach block to the strong side. I think that's a harder block to make than Man On, Man Away and I'd worry about leakage in the backside A Gap.

OMG, snapping the ball and reach stepping? Your snapper isn't recessed from the line, so doesn't have the slack other OL might have in getting across a DL to the far side, plus he has to take care of the ball first.  "Harder block to make" is an understatement.

With that said, what does running Inside Zone give me that trap, wedge, or dive wouldn't? I ask because if there's an advantage, I want to use it.

 I'd have to know the other details of your offense to answer that.  At worst, adding inside zone could uselessly dilute your practice time for no strategic gain in your offense.  At best, it might better showcase a good runner and produce some breakaway runs by getting "a hat on a hat" who might've been unblocked at 2nd level otherwise.  I'm guessing for most teams in this situation, no gain and diluting your practice time would be much more likely for any zone run addition.

Agree with Bob and Dave. For the most part, if you want to run IZ and/or OZ, you commit to it.

Over several seasons, we were VERY successful running mega splits and our goofy version of IZ/OZ. Having several talented RBs was a big factor. This season will be revealing on whether I can coach foot to foot power and match or surpass our mega success. Last year, the answer was "no", but that's due to a series of mistakes on my part. Time will tell.

@bob-goodman It varies from year-to-year. Last year, I ran DTDW and ran four plays: Power, Toss Cut, Dive, and Sweep. Toss Cut and Dive worked very well for me, so I was happy with it. But, I wanted to make sure there wasn't that I was missing.

@bob-goodman It varies from year-to-year. Last year, I ran DTDW and ran four plays: Power, Toss Cut, Dive, and Sweep. Toss Cut and Dive worked very well for me, so I was happy with it. But, I wanted to make sure there wasn't that I was missing.

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

@bob-goodman It varies from year-to-year. Last year, I ran DTDW and ran four plays: Power, Toss Cut, Dive, and Sweep. Toss Cut and Dive worked very well for me, so I was happy with it. But, I wanted to make sure there wasn't that I was missing.

I had to look in our archives to see what Toss Cut was.  Did it use some form of track blocking downfield?  If so, were you satisfied by how your blockers connected at 2nd level?  Then I can't see how adding inside zone to the tool kit would help.

Can I assume Dive was like Marham-style DW FB trap, but base blocked?  Did your success with it invite your opponents often to blitz inside?  If so, then I can't see how adding or substituting inside zone would make your offense more potent.

The only thing I could see would be if opponents were not shooting inside LBs, and they filled effectively to limit Dive to short gains, inside zone to substitute for base blocking might produce an improvement.  But so might substituting (or better, adding) a guard trap for Dive.  Or against odd defenses, folding the play side T under the G to brush/check the nose and get on an ILB.

Thanks for the replies everybody!

While I sometimes run outside zone (or I did in 2020 with the Vikings because it worked for them), I try to avoid "on" blocking most of the time. To me, it seems like wedge and trap would work better.

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

Thanks for the replies everybody!

While I sometimes run outside zone (or I did in 2020 with the Vikings because it worked for them), I try to avoid "on" blocking most of the time. To me, it seems like wedge and trap would work better.

My only expertise comes from the school of hard knocks. I am a Denver Broncos fan and have been since I was old enough to watch football. So after Shanahans Offense lead the league in rushing for 10 years I was curious but no info existed in the Internet. This was 2004 ish. 

That's when Hueys Website came on line so I found a College coach willing to help a lowly youth coach dumb it down. He taught me that with Zone you dont need other blocking schemes and with Zones you dont stress on the Fronts you face. This translates to creating better blockers faster. But they must be athletic and in a perfect world the same 5 Linemen play the same 5 positions all season. A tough sell for a youth coach but I went all in. 

Worked well but I knew we were leaving yards on the field. That's when I learned that the RB is truly an extension of the blocking rules so he must practice with the OL....not separately like we all do. That's when things really took off. That's also when I realized that some RB's will never get it. 

OZ became the easier teach because of the stretch. IZ is pretty much right now. Zone need a few clicks to develop so I then realized that you could hang you hat on OZ regardless but IZ was was more dependent on the level of talent you were facing and the Front. Many youth coaches "hide" the MP's at DG or NG. I think that is the only reason IZ works at the youth level because you kinda run out of talent on your roster to be able to run a decent IZ or what I like to call Immediate Zone. Stretch Zone or OZ is always more reliable because of the timing on how the Zone rotates. 

I will add I think all versions of Zone are near impossible at the youth level using a 5 man blocking surface. It needs to be 6 or even 7 whether you accomplish that using TE's or RB's or a mixture of both. Joe who has his own Section here last time I checked uses a WB with his 5 man blocking surface because he is a spread guy. He " inserts" that WB as the 6th man into his schemes. It pretty genius. 

So my take is guys talking about IZ at the youth level is just that....talk. There are better ways like trap and wedge to hit the interior gaps but now you are teaching more blocking rules. Hope this helps. 

Posted by: @bob-goodman

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

@bob-goodman It varies from year-to-year. Last year, I ran DTDW and ran four plays: Power, Toss Cut, Dive, and Sweep. Toss Cut and Dive worked very well for me, so I was happy with it. But, I wanted to make sure there wasn't that I was missing.

I had to look in our archives to see what Toss Cut was.  Did it use some form of track blocking downfield?  If so, were you satisfied by how your blockers connected at 2nd level?  Then I can't see how adding inside zone to the tool kit would help.

Not at first (in fact, I think I posted in here about it 😉 ), but ultimately it improved. It was probably our most effective play (because everyone moved out to stop Sweep and Power).

Can I assume Dive was like Marham-style DW FB trap, but base blocked?  Did your success with it invite your opponents often to blitz inside?  If so, then I can't see how adding or substituting inside zone would make your offense more potent.

Pretty much. It was "step with your inside foot, block the biggest threat".

The only thing I could see would be if opponents were not shooting inside LBs, and they filled effectively to limit Dive to short gains, inside zone to substitute for base blocking might produce an improvement.  But so might substituting (or better, adding) a guard trap for Dive.  Or against odd defenses, folding the play side T under the G to brush/check the nose and get on an ILB.

Good to see that I was thinking about it right way!

Posted by: @terrypjohnson

I heard a lot of talk at a coaches meeting last night about Inside Zone. The way I heard one coach discuss it was having his center reach block to the strong side. I think that's a harder block to make than Man On, Man Away and I'd worry about leakage in the backside A Gap.

With that said, what does running Inside Zone give me that trap, wedge, or dive wouldn't? I ask because if there's an advantage, I want to use it.

The advantage is the "read" by the rb. Either you jam it into B gap, or cut back door (big play potential) , or bounce it (coach preference). 

You run inside zone to open B gap usually.  Trap is often best run to the 3 tech (closed 3 tech). So they are too different to compare in my opinion. 

Posted by: @bucksweep58

 (closed 3 tech).

What's the difference between a closed and an open 3 tech?

Posted by: @bob-goodman

Posted by: @bucksweep58

 (closed 3 tech).

What's the difference between a closed and an open 3 tech?

This is a typo; I meant to write " closed b gap". 

I love all run schemes...every one of them...never met a run scheme I didn't like. That said, they have to make sense in what you're doing with entire offense. We are an RPO team and IZ is our day 1 base install. We view run pass option as triple option over greater space, so IZ is basically dive to us and that's why we run it. The last 3 years we have run it 27% of the time...it's more than a 1/4 of our offensive snaps. We are attacking the frontside B gap to backside A gap. 

Our next most called run play is OZ. That allows us to attack a different gap while using the exact same blocking rules AND still attach an RPO to it. Those 2 schemes make up more than half our offense. We use Wham and G/H counter as our counter plays to IZ and OZ becasue they look a lot alike the way we run them. 

That's why we do what we do...why do you do what you do? Why would you use IZ as an inside run in your offense? Does it allow you to kill 2 run schemes with the same rules? Does it set up something else better than wedge, dive, belly, iso etc...? Those are the questions you should be asking. If you decide IZ is the best inside run play, then there are LOTS of different way to run it. I would be glad to help in that department.

Personally, I wouldn't run it with younger dudes unless it gave you access to some other stuff that you couldn't get otherwise.