Breakdown Sports

Everybody knows the basic zone read scheme. Block inside zone  (or one of many types of zone ) while leaving the backside DE unblocked for the QB to read. If the DE crashes the mesh point, the QB pulls and runs off the backside. If the DE stays home, the QB gives to the RB who runs basic inside zone. But as defenses get more athletic and more nuanced in their defense of zone read, making this "read" becomes more challenging for the QB. You now have games like scrape exchange, where the DE crashes and the LB fills behind. You have more athletic edge players that can force a give but get back into the play from the backside. One option is to change the read defender , another option is to utilize additional backs to modify the blocking scheme . In this post, I'll talk about an option that utilizes a little of both which dates back to Meyer's time at Florida, in the Book and Rifle schemes.

Ohio State has been feasting through in the pass game with one of the core tenets of the Air Raid offense: drag routes. Go into any Air Raid passing playbook from Kevin Wilson (or Mike Leach), or looking back at Chip Kelly's Oregon offenses (the current OSU QB coach is Kelly's former QB coach) and you'll notice that probably 50% of the pass plays contain some sort of drag route. Go to your basic pass game concepts  and you'll see that these playbooks are littered with Over, Cab, Crash, Crease, Mesh , and NCAA concepts . Air Raid coaches love these concepts, and so they rep these concepts constantly, because in man coverage their better athletes can run away from LBs or safeties or get beneficial rubs to allow them to run away from CBs. Against zone you can find a void and settle there and wait for the QB to throw you open. In theory, it works against everything. Yet, it still has it's detractors, because if you don't practice it enough, if you don't put in t...