Gameplan

Welcome back to The Call Sheet!

Today, we’ll dive back into our Foundations of Football series with a look at Inside Zone, its prominence in college football, and how offensive coordinators leverage it to fill out their playbooks. TLDR:

• Cover 1

  • Foundations of Football: Inside Zone

• Pick the Next FoF Topic

• Quick Game

If you’re new, you can catch up on previous posts here.

Cover 1

Foundations of Football: Inside Zone

In the current landscape of college football, you’d be hard-pressed to find an offense that doesn’t include inside zone as a base run. Heck, there are entire offensive schemes predicated on running every variation of inside zone known to man.

“Hey, I don’t know much about football. What the hell is an inside zone?”

An inside zone is a type of run-play. Its name is derived from the blocking scheme (zone) and the point of attack (inside). The offensive linemen (occasionally with tight ends and additional backs) work upfield, typically at an angle, to block a particular area and create a hole or cutback lane for the ball carrier. The ball carrier has a predetermined angle of attack but, after a few steps, is given the freedom to pursue green grass.

Let’s look at an example of a fairly vanilla iteration:

To the untrained eye, Georgia’s offensive line and tight end would appear to block assigned men. However, if you pay close attention to the right guard (#66 in white), you can see he initially helps the center block the nose, but he quickly transitions to blocking the linebacker that enters his area (zone). What would be determined at the line by the center and guard is that they would work together to block the nose and weakside linebacker. Similarly, the right tackle (#71) and tight end (#18) would work together to block the defensive end and linebacker (#5 in blue) directly behind him.

Here’s a drawing for the clip above:

As previously mentioned, the inside zone is one of college football’s most prominent run plays.

“But what factors contribute to its popularity?”

In Layman’s terms, the heavy emphasis on lining up in shotgun/pistol formations, wider hashmarks on a college field creating more space for cutbacks, an ability to be creative with pre-snap and post-snap movement, bringing the quarterback into the run game, and the innovation known as run-pass-options (RPOs). The final three points are what make college offenses so exciting. Think back to Chip Kelly’s “blur” offenses at Oregon, Pat White pulling the ball on zone reads during his time at West Virginia, or UCF’s use of RPOs en route to an undefeated season in 2017.

The easiest way for coaches to add a layer of complexity to their inside zone is by giving the quarterback the option to read a defender and keep the ball. This one little wrinkle is the bane of every defensive coordinator’s existence. Former Michigan DC and current UMass head coach Don Brown hated facing Ohio State because of how often the quarterback was involved in the run game.

Urban Meyer’s Ohio State teams never lost to Michigan, primarily due to their dominance running the football. A vital part of that dominance was their quarterbacks’ involvement. In the clip above, you can see OSU leaves #2 on Michigan unblocked, he crashes down to tackle the running back, but J.T. Barrett (#16 in white) keeps the ball for a positive gain. Coaches can try to alleviate the stress on a player being read, but more often than not, there’s not much to be done.

For offensive coordinators, the real fun begins when they add post-snap movement to an inside zone. The most common iteration requires an off-ball player (typically a tight end) to run horizontally from one side of the offensive line to the other. This movement, paired with an inside zone, is known as inside zone split or split zone.

The most basic version of split zone requires the tight end to block the end man on the line of scrimmage as he runs across. Clemson’s tight end (#80 in orange) does exactly that.

Let’s quickly touch on the freedom afforded to offensive coaches with any split zone. Looking at the image above, imagine the tight end bluffing his block on the defensive end and working up to the strong safety. Give the quarterback the option to read the end, and now you have a pretty lethal play. If you have an athletic, pass-catching tight end, why not have him bluff the end and leak out to the flat to receive the ball? Very quickly, you have several ways to attack a defense just from a base run.

And we haven’t even talked about RPOs yet…

Run-pass-options have taken college football by storm in the past decade. What was once used on the fringes by a few FBS teams is now commonplace in the NFL due to the amount of success presented at the college level. RPOs allow offenses to gain big chunks of yards in a quick-hitting fashion.

Due to the restriction on offensive linemen going upfield on pass plays, inside zones are usually the run part of an RPO. The rationale is the speed at which linemen move to block on a zone scheme run compared to a gap or man scheme run. Zone schemes are typically a bit slower to develop than their counterparts, thus allowing the option to pass without risk of penalty. Don’t get it twisted; linemen have a knack for getting penalized on RPOs at least a couple of times per year.

When adding the option to throw the ball, the read key shifts from a defensive lineman or edge defender to an off-ball linebacker or defensive back. In this case, the weak safety (#29 in white) is the read key for FAU’s quarterback. As the safety moves toward the middle of the field, the quarterback pulls the ball, sets his feet, and fires a bullet to his receiver, running a “Bang 8” post.

RPOs come in all shapes and sizes. The most creative offensive minds aren’t restricted to using inside zones and Bang 8s. However, the easiest way to incorporate RPOs into any offense is through an inside zone.

Quick Game

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