Rules to Blocking & Not Holding in Football

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson, for Expert Village. What we want to talk about is when our centers snap the ball effectively, fire off and get ready to block, they want to make sure they don't do anything that will cost their team any yardage. Predominately, what we're talking about is holding. We're going to show you a couple of different ways the center will get caught holding. If they have a man straight across from them and the center fires off out of his stance he wants to fit up in the numbers and not get outside the shoulder pads. (video demo). That's the proper way to fit up in the numbers. But if he slides his hands outside and tries to get a hold of the shoulder pads and tries to manipulate him one way or the other that will be called holding. The other way the center will get called for holding is if he's off to the left a little, they will try to shoot this guy through what's called the A gap. There's a gap on either side of the center called the A gap. A lot of times they'll line a nose guard up and shoot him straight through this gap. As he's going by, sometimes the center will reach out and grab the shoulder pads and try to hold him up so he doesn't get to the quarterback. That's one of two major ways the center will get called for a holding penalty and cost your team some yardage."