Youth Football Blocking Schemes – 6 Basic Calls
What are your youth football blocking schemes and blocking calls. I mainly use around 6 basic calls for my youth offensive lineman. Remember to coach up your offensive lineman. Please do not let them stand around for two hours while they watch your staff coach the skill players. Blocking will help you win more games. Now let’s jump into the youth football coaching tip post; Youth Football Blocking Schemes – 6 Basic Calls.
For the last several seasons I have been playing around with many different youth football blocking schemes rules, and calls to advanced our youth football offensive line blocking. We are still not perfect and I would always love to get our blocks to the second line of the defense more, but we are succeeding at most of our blocking goals.
For awhile, I taught one blocking scheme or rule to our youth football players which was usually angle blocking. Then I moved to severe angle blocking and used our full backs as a key trap blocker, then I tried GOD or GOL blocking Gap on Down or Gap on Linebacker blocking rules and that worked pretty good for most plays. But, I just could not perfect the blocking for each play like I really wanted. That’s when I started asking myself why do I teach the backs 24 plays and the lineman just one blocking rule.
After my epiphany about blocking schemes, I decided to have different blocking rules for different plays and also add tags for the TE blocks. And, this year I am adding tags to our running backs to make certain blocks on their fakes.
Youth Football Blocking Schemes & Calls
The main blocking schemes and blocking rules that I am using this year are:
- Wedge
- Angle Blocking
- GOO – Gap On Outside (pass)
- BB Split – Butt to Butt Split at Hole
- Zone Reach Angle Block
- GOD / GOL – Gap on Down or Gap on LB
- PIG – unbalanced Power angle block
Depending upon our play, we will choose one of these blocking calls / blocking scheme based on the defense for that week. We can also adjust in game for certain situations. We are also tagging TEs and RBs with a call to block the DT, DE, LB, CB, SS or S depending on the play. Plus our experiment from a few years ago is also still around, which we call “Chow”. Our FB will line up head up on their top defensive lineman in our PIG alignment and blow them out with a double team from one of the offensive tackles. This is a great power youth football blocking scheme.
For younger youth football teams we have added a simplified version of GOD. Trying to get 7 year olds to learn Gap On Down sometimes becomes tough. So, since many times most of the lineman are blocking down why not just have an inside track block call. And JAW blocking was named and we started using JAW blocks quite a bit. I call it JAW since a Crocodile mouth will eat up anyone inside the JAWS of the offensive line. You can hold your arms up and show them how to eat up the defense. This call has helped us with younger players.
As this Spring season progresses I will write more about our blocking schemes. Stay tuned. Find more on Coaching Offensive Line Youth Football.
Here are two of my favorite offensive line coaching books; 1) Coaching Offensive Linemen Third Edition and 2) Complete Offensive Line.
I hope you enjoyed the coaching youth football tips blog post; Youth Football Blocking Schemes & Calls.
Please leave me a comment below or contact me anytime. I love talking youth football, especially youth football blocking schemes and coaching youth football lineman.
Remember to Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!
Coach Parker
Fort Worth, Texas
PS: Stay Safe!!
“why do I teach the backs 24 plays and the lineman just one blocking rule?” My answer to this question is the backs are usually your most athletic and mature players. The backs are almost always tasked with making blocks in space where the linemen need to get a couple of steps off to get a block into a defender. The issue I encountered more often than not was backs failing to block while the line did an outstanding job of blocking. I believe that the “perfect” blocking scheme boils down to what can be executed effectively and consistently, simplicity will usually win over multiple blocking schemes.
As crazy as it may sound, I’ve heard of some youth coaches looking at zone because it should account for everything if you can manage to teach it. Rather than make a bunch of different exceptions to rules, have a scheme that covers everything…it sounds like a win to me.
A friend of mine did exactly what you’re talking about doing, his base power could be blocked multiple ways and he had wrist coaches on the line to have them block accordingly with tags. Sometimes he’d send linemen out to hit a linebacker, other times they’d stay home and block down on the line. His team was very successful, despite my objections that his approach seemed too complicated. It all boils down to what you can teach effectively and then execute. =) Nice write up coach.
When we use to run the split back veer we only thought 5 schemes. isv, osv, counter, counter, and playaction pass.The lead option was blocked the same as the osv, so our line already knew how to block this play. Since going to the single wing, we have 8 schemes. ( 3 to the left of the long guard and 3 to the right, plus wedge and goo for pass plays). The long guard is the “center” of our unbalanced line. At first i thought that this was too much to teach, especially for the 2nd string players. But they were able to learn it perfectly. (Jr peewees 9-11 yrs) Our backs learn 3 different series. It is funny, the option takes our qb, and you need 3, for ever to learn to read the dive read without looking back, and to learn when and how to pitch the football with both hands. But the line men had it pretty easy. They all learned the scoop, veer, double team and playaction pass blocks. They also had to remember to get their proper splits ( 12 to 18 inches). The single wing, on the other hand, you teach more plays and schemes but the kids learn it faster. And the line men always line up with zero splits which is easier for them to remember for some reason or the other. One thing i suggest, what ever offense you run, make sure that when you are putting in a play, separate the backs from the line men. And the most experienced coach should coach the line. Which is why our HC always give me the line. Finally, don’t make up an offense. I see the same losing teams, year in and year out, just running “plays”. Your offense should have 2 main plays that everyone in the league knows they have to stop to beat you. Ex. in the veer it was the isv and the osv. In the single wing, it is our off tackle power and our wedge plays. We run these plays over and over until the cows come home. We beat a team this past season who was supposed to be running the wing t offense. However, they did not run the basic wing t series or plays. WAY TOO MUCH JET MOTION. No inside running game. We told our kids that if we stopped the outside plays, then that team could not move the ball. What a travesty. Good luck coaches on the up coming season.
I wanted to say counter option.