WR.  First and foremost try to Pin the Defenders Back to the Sideline.   Second use a Mirror Drill.  If for whatever reason they cannot pin the Defender to the side line the WR is asked to Follow (Mirror) the Defenders steps.  The Goal is to maintain position between the defender and the ball.  Open Field.  Engage and stay engaged until the whistle.  In short, get on them and redirect or take them where they want to go with Authority!  Trap, Kick Out, and some Pulls, at or near the LOS are Explosions! Train Wrecks! Ear Holes!  These are the blocks Guards, Tackles, and Full Backs should drool over!     

The KEY is how you teach your Ball Carriers to use the blocks offered (Follow the Butts!). 

We teach all blockers using the same techniques, as it is an approach we thoroughly believe in.  The Shoeshine/Superman block was a different block but we no longer use that.

—Dave

The differences aren’t in the blocks themselves, but how we get there depends on position.  Certainly a puller would not use the same footwork as a receiver to get from Point A to Point B.  However, the actual block that is used by both is identical.

—Dave

As for Open Field Blocking drills, there are a myriad of them.  We incorporated it into Tee Time and 10-Yard Fight with good success.  But the simplification of it comes in using the same drills you’d use for teaching open field tackling. But instead of the tackle progression (hit/wrap/drive/takedown), the open field block becomes a model of simplicity since we only use the hit/drive component of the tackling progression.  I warm up my offensive line with open field tackling drills and once warmed, we continue it without the wrap/takedown component.  

And if your o-line plays from a 2-point stance, open field blocking drills become the same drills you’d use for any Linebacker (without the wrap/takedown).

—Dave

We found that once we started coaching offensive linemen as if they were Linebackers, their play much more closely approximated it.

—Dave

One thing that youth offensive linemen seem to hate more than anything else is when their drills didn’t compare with much of what anyone else was doing.  Once they were doing footwork drills like RBs and DBs and doing hitting drills like Linebackers, their confidence and enjoyment increased.

—Dave

I teach it the same as open field tackling , that in and of itself might help you. 

Posted by: @jtrent64

I may have asked this before, but how do you teach Open field Blocking?  Is it different for receivers vs RB vs pulling linemen?

The last 2, the same, but wide receivers, different from the others.

First off, if I'm designing the offense I want as little stalk blocking as I can figure.  It's usually a bad pursuer-and-hitter against another bad pursuer-and-hitter, hard to get down as a reliable part of the game.  I'd rather the receivers make the DBs take their eyes off the running play.

However, if I must teach a stalk block (or defeating one), it's about getting the opponent to commit sooner than you.  The stalk blocker has a disadvantage compared to other blockers, in that the opponent has a better idea where the ball's going than the blocker does.  You have to read the opponent to figure out where the play's going, and then keep him as long as possible from going to where he reveals he's going.

The blockers coming from inside that the runner can actually follow, much easier for the offense.  If you have just one lead blocker, it's all about the runner following him; the blocker should pretend he's the one the defense has to stop, and the runner should make the defense come to him.  If you have more lead blockers, then you can teach assignments of inside-out and outside-in protection of the runner's path, but it's still the runner who makes their blocking good.  The lead blockers would do well to learn runners' techniques of putting the shoulder in and stiff arming.

But everyone should learn ad-lib downfield blocking.  Someone I coached with back in the Bronx came up with a simple way to practice this: It's a sideline tackling drill (so it's defense practice too) with multiple defenders but with the addition of a swarm of blockers who get off the starting line a half second ahead of the runner.  Not bad for practicing kickoff returns either.

There's no actual different technique to any of these blocks, and in fact form is unimportant.  Blocking in close quarters I teach form, because in a small space small differences in the control you have over an opponent can make a big difference to the success of the play, and it's a lot like wrestling.  In the open field the blockers have to keep their eyes on the prize, which is hard with kids because they tend to get wrapped up in the individual contest they're having with their immediate opposing player.  I like what Dave Potter wrote about drilling them in what we'd commonly consider linebacker skills, never thought about it that way but it seems good.

Back in the day when I coached football, my favorite season was probably when I was the WR/TE coach for a pretty good team. And *ahem* I believe our WRs were the best blocking WRs in the league!

We did a lot of mirror drills, where we would work on closing to within a striking distance of the defender, mirror their movements trying to stay between them and the football and them driving them in the direction of the defender's choosing once that defender began making an attempt on the football. In my opinion, WR downfield blocking is more of a controlled aggression where you are really trying to build a wall while in that close proximity of the defender and then just driving them in whichever direction the defender decides he will attempt to go.

Use their momentum in your favor.