Coach ,

If you watched football this weekend, the play that you saw over and over at every level was the outside zone. It’s a play that has made its way into many offensive playbooks. Why is that?

There’s many benefits to running the play:

• Hits where the defense isn’t. Allows the back to find the lane that the distortion of the defense creates
• Can be utilized with undersized offensive linemen
• Can be run to tight end or open side
• Can be run from under center, gun, and pistol
• Works from a multitude of formations and personnel groups
• The defense must react to fit gaps that are moving
• Movement of the defense sets up huge Play action and RPO opportunities

In general, there isn’t a scheme that provides so much for an offense while constantly being applied to stress the defense in new ways.

It’s why college, NFL and even high school teams are making a living on it.

Here are a couple examples from the Notre Dame-Louisville game:

Notre Dame utilized outside zone to put the game away

Louisville ran outside zone and set up some big play action off it

Coach Jason Houghtaling gives a great overview of the basics for every position in this video. Every position has key coaching points in its execution that must be accomplished every time the play is called.

After becoming a bit of an expert on the play myself, we led Ohio rushing with this play and averaged over 10 yards per carry over 3 years, this past season I was able to study how this is done by coaches from every level of the game. I picked up something from all of them. 

Here’s the difference and advantage you have. When I studied the play 15 years ago, there weren’t many published resources. I pulled together articles, watched VHS tapes (remember those), visited numerous coaches, and put all of my notes and research into what ended up being a 4” binder. Then we used our research to create our zone running game. It was a time consuming process. Your research is all together and ready to go in the courses these coaches have created.

Here’s some of the top resources out there:

Outside Zone - Eric Marty

WIDE ZONE (OUTSIDE ZONE) by Coach Paul Alexander

Outside Zone RPO`s from the Gun by Jason Mohns

Inside & Outside Zone Run Game by Jason McManus

Outside Zone and the Path of Trust by Jeff Fox

Rules and Techniques for Blocking Inside, Outside, & Wide Zone by Jim McNally

Running Midline on Backside of Stretch by Explosive TE Spread

Teaching the Wide Zone by Jason Houghtaling

Wide, Mid and Tight Zone taught as one play by Matt Duffy

Build Your Offense Around the Outside Zone by Juan Johnson

Get going on studying this play! I promise you it will be something you are glad you put into your offense. And if you already run it, you will pick up some great coaching points from these successful coaches.

To your success,

Coach Grabowski