The Blocking Assignment for Each Lineman in Football

Series Summary

The option is one of the most exciting plays in football. Will the quarterback toss the ball to one of his running backs or will he keep it himself and try to run upfield? This play keeps the crowd guessing, as well as the defensive players, offensive players...even the quarterback himself often does not know whether he is going to pitch the ball or keep it until the defense comes rushing toward him. Will the running back trailing the quarterback be carrying to ball or blocking for the quarterback? He doesn't know what's going to happen until it happens. But practice and an understanding of how the play works can take some of the guesswork out of this wild play.

In this free series of football coaching videos, our championship coach will give you an overview of the option play and tell you how to prepare your team to run it. He gives you the lowdown on how your offensive line should play the option, as well as what your receivers, running backs and quarterback should do when this play is called. Learn how to run the option out of an I formation and out of a pro set formation. Learn how to pull off the late pitch to keep the opposition guessing. As for you defenders, well you could also learn a thing or two by watching these coaching videos.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson for Expert Village. What I want to talk about right now is when running the option play what we are going to do with our line in a blocking scheme. We are not going to be very fancy in the blocking scheme here running the option because of the fact that a lot of the option plays take place between the quarter back and the running back to the outside. You are not really sure what is going to happen. You don't know if a quarter back is going to tuck it up inside, you don't know if the quarter back is going to keep it and go to the outside and you don't know if the running back is going to get it and take wide side or cut it back. So you are not really sure what is going to happen there. So what I want to do in the option plays we just want to have our of our line men lock in on somebody and dry them up the field to stay with them. You are going to hold these blocks a little bit longer then you would normally would on a running play because of the fact that this play take a little bit of time to develop and you are not sure what really is going to happen from it. So obviously our tackles are going to be lined up across the tackles so they are going to come up and they are going to hit the tackles. The guards usually will not have anybody lined up on them. So they are going to go head up and hit the line backer and keep the line backer stuck to the inside. We have our center here, he is going to be lined up against the nose guard. He is going to come through and he is going to hit the nose guard. This guard is going to get the line backer and this guy is going to go ahead and get the tackle in front of him. They have to make sure they find somebody with a different color jersey. Lock in on them and block them up the field to give us the best route to run through the outside. "