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Pass Blocking Skills & Drills © Copyright Football Inner Circle 1 of 27

Hi, I'm Coach Mike Schad from Temple University and I'm the offensive line coach here. Today we're going to talk a little bit about pass blocking technique, pass blocking form, proper use of the hands, the wired position, taking combos, switching, a whole variety of exciting things about offensive football.

Today, helping us on our video, is Dave Yovanovits who's our offensive tackle, playing left tackle here for us at Temple, and Donny Klein, our center. Both guys are just starting out in their first year. They had excellent freshman seasons and we're going to try and bring them along and have them help us out in the video today.

We're going to break this video down into certain segments, and the first part of this segment's going to discuss the simple stuff like the stance, the proper foot position, where the knees and hip placement should be, how to punch with the hands. We're going to evolve this into actually dynamic movement of being getting in your set, showing the numbers, getting in a proper wide position, and ultimately getting to punching the individual in a pass set.

Then we're going to work with combination blocks, how to take on switches, and then we're going to evolve this right into the very end of this video of getting out and running some drills. How to improve your foot speed drills that you can take home and do any time you like as a football player or as a coach and instruct your players on how to break correctly, how to set correctly. Little drills that they can do in the summer, little drills they can do before practice, and drills that a coach can do during the season.

First thing we're going to do is break down the individual body parts of an offensive pass blocker. And this is what I refer to, and many coaches refer to, as what's called the wired position. The wired position is a position that an offensive lineman has and stay in through the entire pass blocking phase after the snap of the ball. And we're going to start this off in a basic two-point stance.

In this two-point stance, we're going to try and keep about a toe-to-heel relationship and what we're actually trying to do is develop flexion with our ankles, our knees, and our hips. And what we're going to try and do is drive our hips forward, keep our center of gravity as low as we can, try to keep our feet as flat as possible on the ground, and keep our hands in the ready contact position.

Go ahead, Donny, Try that. Okay, you can see Donny here has got a pretty good ankle-knee flexion. Try and get his shoulders a little back. His hands are in the ready position. Now it's a pretty awkward position and it's a very difficult thing in pass blocking football to say, "Hey, where do I develop my strength?

How do I take on a defensive pass rusher who's actually got a full head of steam going forward and I'm trying to go backwards and I'm trying to stop him and protect the


passer?" Well, that's the things we're going to discuss a little bit later in the video. But in this initial part, what we're actually going to initially talk about is just the position.

Now the toes sort of want to be straight. I like to call that straight because I like to work off of this part of the foot right here. Not the toes, but from the ball of the foot to the heel. These area needs to be flat. I find if you're too heavy on the toe of your foot, you're tempted to fall forward; if you're too heavy on the heel, you're tempted to work off the heel. And the heel isn't a good working position because it's unstable and it tends to open up your hips.

And you don't want your hips to open up because this hip area is where you're getting all your strength in football. Any combatant sport, you're getting your strength from your hip area. The hip area provides a punch. A boxer would come follow through with a hip rotation to make a strong punch, or in karate. And in pass blocking, the punch comes from here.

Back to the wired position. The wired position, shoulders, you can see Donny's got his numbers showing here. His knees are flexed. He's ready now to take on somebody. He's got his hands in a ready position. And these hands are a very important thing. A lot of times you want to initially coach to shorten the area and keep your hand strike area out here.

As the offensive lineman gets better, we can shorten that strike area into here. This way, it times his punch and it doesn't allow a defensive lineman to come in here and grab his hand. But initially, start your young guys off with their hands out here and that shortens the target area.

Alright, here we have Dave again in the wired position. You can see Dave's elbows are in tight. The elbows should be in tight because the power that's generated is in from the hands. And we'll talk a little bit about the

punch in a bit. Dave's head… and try and get the chin actually tucked a little in. A chin out tends to allow your body to lean forward. The body'll go where the head goes. So if the head's leaning forward, the head'll go with it.


Now if you actually have this kind of position, ready to engage, you're in a pretty good stance. I'd like to get this heel a little bit down, maybe down to the ground. That'd be a little bit better. And get the shoulders a little bit out. And this is, once again, we call the wired position. And now this is a very funny position to be in initially.

But you get used to it as an offensive lineman. And the more you can keep your linemen in this position, the better off you'll be. The actual movement, when Donny moves, is from this area down here. The upper body shouldn't move.

The only thing that's going to move is a punching of the hands and being in front. But this area here doesn't move.

The actual movement of the air. When I'm in the wired position, you can see the base doesn't change.

I want to be able to just move in this position. This is what we call a kick and a power step. Alright? See how my feet don't come together? I can do this quick. I can do it slow. I can set back straight. My foot position doesn't change.

Now that we see how to move on the football field, let's talk about the actual punch. And a lot of this I've gained through years of experience and I've gained through years of taking karate.

And what karate has actually taught me to do is how to relax the hands.

You see a lot of football players who are real tight. And the tighter you are in a wired position, in this position, the slower the hands move.

And your hands become part of the body. Your hands have got to be loose. And it's just like those old Muhammad Ali boxing matches, where Muhammad Ali just used to be loose, but when he punched, it was tight for that one second and it had the power in it. Then it was released and brought it back.


The same thing about pass blocking in football. You've got to keep your hands loose in this position. And they move independently of the rest of your body here.

Now, the hand. The hand's a funny thing. And what we're going to do is we're going to teach you some years of experience of playing pro football on how to pass block. And a lot of people have different philosophies on how to pass block, but what I've gained and the success I've had is based upon a few tricks really.

But first of all, let's break down the hand. The hand has basically the fingers, the palm of the hand, and the rest of the arm.

This area here, the hardest part of your hand, the heel of your hand, is a strike area. What I actually want to do is punch in this position with the heel of the hand. And you can see as I punch, I've got my thumb up.

Always want to punch with your thumb up. And what you

want to do is you want to punch the same time with your thumbs up. And this area delivers the blow. And what this area's trying to do is deliver a blow, stop the defensive lineman, and make him restart. That's the key thing about the initial punch.

And it's like a trigger of a hammer on a gun. Boom. It's in there. It's quick. It's in there. People who lay their hands in there slow are more apt to get their wrists grabbed, their hands swatted. They can work, but you've got to choose your moment of time and punch.

Alright, what we're going to do here is we're just going to exhibit the punch. And as you can see here, the punch with the heel of the hand. And just watch Dave strike. So I want you to palm strike and I want you to grab. Here we go. Now look at this position here. He struck with the heel of his hand. Let's look at the rest of the arm here real quick. This area's locked out and extended. He's still in the wired position. Now let's take a look at the hand real close.

His heel struck with the hand and then he's grabbed. And that's one thing people do not understand about pass blocking. You're allowed to grab in offensive pass blocking if you do it within the frame here. I'd even get his hands a little closer I here. And once you get outside of the frame, if Dave grabs up here or in the back of his shoulder here, this is offensive holding.

But if he goes to the position he's been coached to, inside, it's not holding.

And that's one thing people don't understand in pass blocking football. A lot of people get in there, punch, reset, punch, reset, punch, reset. Why would you want to give up your initial inside position and give it up, the punch and reset, when he's already gained


that? And that's the whole key thing. So let's go from the very beginning here again and we'll break this down in slow motion. And then we'll do a few quick ones.

Just step into him, Donny. And when he's in his punch zone, he'll punch and just lock onto you. Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Okay. He's come to… see how, Dave, too, on his punch, has timed it. He's not catching and bench pressing.

Try it again here, guys, and show the catching and then bench press him off and just exhibit that again. Down. Set. Hut. See, that is a catch and bench press. Now Donny as the defender here can actually grab the shoulder area here. If I'm coming in here… show that again and show, Donny grab his shoulder because you've closed the area. Here we go. Down. Set. Hut.

Now bench press him off. See, if he catches… come back with the camera here, guys. If he catches and I'm pass block in here – come on in to me – and I'm in this area, he grabs me. Then I have to bench press him.

But he's already got me or he has the ability to get close to me. What a defender's primarily trying to do as rushing the pass rusher, he's trying to get to the hip position here. If he beats me on my hip, I'm in trouble. And as an offensive lineman, what your job is to do is make sure you come into him and lock out and keep him off your hip.

From this area, he can't work off my hip, he's got problems. If I had the proper football equipment on he'd have a problem grabbing me. But if I'm in this position, he can grab me, then he's got me. Alright, I want to be able to time my punch so that he comes into me, that I've got full extension and lock out before he can grab me.

This is this thing that you often do, that kids have a problem with, is teaching the punch. And what I like to do is tell them to go home and punch wall 25 times. This doesn't mean go punch some holes in your wall and your mom getting all after you. What this is talking about is going at home and just sitting in front of the wall and discovering what your distance is to the wall.

Now if I'm punching here, I'm too close. If I'm punching here and have to lean, I'm too far. So I'm learning my punch zone. And even though I haven't done this in a while – go ahead, Donny – I still know my punch zone. I can sit in front of the wall at night and just figure out my punch zone. And when you figure that out and you develop that confidence in your punch, keeping your shoulders that are there, your chin tucked, your arms locked out, you're on your way to becoming a better pass blocker.


PART 2

Now we've talked about punching. We've talked about the hands, the arms, keeping your shoulders out of here. Where do you punch? We talked a little bit about this area, but a lot of things happen in football. If I go to punch him, but he's a spinner, I've got to be able to rotate my hands and spin. I can't let him spin and just hang onto him when he tries to spin. That's holding.

Any time you see an abnormal movement of the defender – if he's falling down backwards like this or if he's in front of me and I'm pulling him down like that – that's holding. Or officials may even call any type of this, seeing this kind of cloth being pulled, separated from his body.

And what you have to do is you have to understand what the target area is. And the target area, in the running game and the passing game, is this area right here. If I were to take a line, a big orange line, and paint it right around this area – and keep walking around with me, Dave – all the way to his back, right here, all the way here in the target area, that's what I'm looking at.

At the end of the ball game, when we go shake hands and say, "Hey, we had a tough game but, you know, we worked hard and we played well," I wouldn't even know what Dave looks like because my whole focus on the game is this target area. I'd know # 63. I wouldn't know anything else.

Because I'd been watching that target so closely. As soon as you start watching the defender's head or even up in the high shoulder area, he gives you that head fake, you're in trouble. So make sure your focused in this target area in all aspects of the running and the passing game.

Alright, so far in the video we've talked about hand placement. We've talked about the target. We've talked about locking out. We've talked about how to move on the football field.

But the first thing you've got to start with in football is how in the world do you get out of your football stance. And that's what we're going to talk about now. In offensive pass blocking, there are two stances obviously; the three-point stance and the two-point stance. We're going to start out with the three-point stance.

In the three-point stance, it's very important that you've got the ability to run block out of it and pass block. You can't give away your football stance; it's got to be a balanced set.


You'll see defenders and you know everything in the world, that they're rushing up field because they're in a three-point stance with their butts high, they're rushing the pass rusher. What we've got to do as offensive people, especially in 1st and 10 and 2nd and 10 or 2nd and 5, whatever, you can't give away your stance, as a puller, as a trapper, as a pass blocker, as a run blocker.

So it's important that we don’t give away our football stance. And what I mean by that – and I'm an ex-left guard, left tackle – you want to start off in a proper foot position. And we'll break this down, again, starting with the feet and working our ways up to the shoulders, and finally the head and hands.

Now. The heel-toe relationship. I like to coach that this toe matches up with that end of the ball of your foot. And this is your balanced stance. And your shoulders, your feet should be not much beyond your shoulders or shoulder-width.

The wider you get your stance, it's more difficult to kick out of, to step out of the pass set, the kick step, the power step. You end up taking a false step. What I'd like to see you

doing is take a natural stance that I can move out of very easily.

Okay. Out of this stance, I want to get good and balanced. You've got to have good ankle, knee, and hip flexion. That's a lot of things coaches look for. Those three aspects. From this position I want to be able to put my hand down. Now everybody knows in the world if I'm sitting back on my heels, I'm pass blocking, or if I'm white-knuckled, I'm run blocking. So from this stance here, I want to be balanced. Heel-toe relationship. I like to put this hand down here. And this is a balanced offensive stance.

Come on over here, Yogi, and show them a balanced stance. Yogi's a left tackle. You can see, I like to get him a little flat back, a little bit more deeper in your stance. There you go. Head up. Head's got to be up. You've got to be able to have your head to see what's happening in the defensive front.

Anything stemming. A linebacker coming in the B-gap or the A-gap. He's got to be aware of that and be able to see it in his stance. He's up on his fingertips. You can see how he's using the fingertips, gaining a little bit more distance. He's got the toe-heel relationship. He's got the hand right down here on his knee ready to snap up and get into action. This is the basic three-point stance that you can pass block out of.

We've discussed the three-point stance. Let's go take a look now at the two-point stance. The two-point stance is something that's obvious. We're at 3 rd and 10, we're passing the football. They know we're passing, we know we're passing, everybody in the stadium knows we're passing the football.


So in the two-point stance, I want to get in a position with this basically the same heel-toe relationship. Some guys like to kick back and face here. A lot of it's based on technique and what the tackle or guard feels good about. In this position here, I want to be able to put my hands… but I don't want to rest the weight on my hands.

Because if I rest the weight on my hands, I've got to change momentum and push off my hands. That slows me down a hair-second. What I want to be able to do is get in that two-point stance, I want to be in a position on set. I'm not putting weight on my hands. I'm nice and light. Because my hands are light. Because these are my weapons and my weapons have got to be on the hip. I've got to draw them quick. If I've got heavy hands, I'm slowing in my stance.

The key thing about a two-point or a three-point stance is that I've got to get out of my stance, show the numbers as quick as possible. The quicker I'm out of my stance, the quicker I buy my time to read what the defender's actually doing; if he's putting a head move on, using his hands, rushing up field, cutting inside.

The quicker I can do that, the quicker I get a read on him, the quicker I can react and get in front of him and pass protect. If I'm slow out of my stance, I'm meeting him and I'm not showing my numbers yet, I'm not ready, I don't have my feet set, he's hitting me and he's knocked me back or beat me on some kind of a move.

Once you're in a three-point or two-point stance, I like to get a read on the defender. A lot of times if you're in a two-point stance and you know you're passing the football, they know, look at your target. And we talked about the target area earlier being in this kind of area. Look at your target. If not, you've got to keep your head in a position where you're not giving away that you're pass blocking or who you're blocking to. Where you get a chance to get as much as you can. I call this a pre-snap cue. And in a pre-snap cue, you take a look at your defender and try to understand what he's going to do; if he's going to rush up field.

If he's tight in his stance, he's going to make an inside move; if he's in a tighter position getting ready to make an inside move; or if he's really wide looking like he's just going to try a speed move up field. These are pre-snap cues and those are things you understand as you get a chance to play the game and know the guy that you're blocking against.

Here we have Dave in a two-point stance. This situation's representing a 3 rd and 10 situation, where he knows he's passing the football. He's looking at the defender, he knows he's rushing the passer, and the people in the stands know we're throwing the football. He's in a ready position.

Dave's light in the hands here, he's ready to come off the hand. You can see he's light in the hands. He's got his target locked already. He's in a position where at the snap of the ball he's trying to beat him back. And we'll get into coming out of our stance here in a bit. But this is what you want to look like.


Now, a three-point stance. Get in a three-point stance situation. This is to represent 1 st

and 10. Now in a 1st and 10, we don't want to give away we're pass blocking, so we're looking straight ahead.

You've got in a position where you can run block, you can pass block, he can come out of his stance, he can do anything. If he was to lift his hand, he wouldn't fall forward. See, he's in a balanced stance. And this is the kind of position you've got to assume in a 1st and 10.

What we have here is we have Dave now in a two-point stance. He plays left tackle. And what he's doing right now is, Dave, you can see his head is looking at his target area, he's light on the hands, and he's in a position ready to kick out relative to the outside. We call this a five position.

Alright, here we have Dave, now he's in a three-point stance. And what he's doing, you can see his head… say, Dave, it's 1st and 10, we're passing the football. Let's put your head straight. Alright, Dave's keeping his head straight now. You can see his head from that angle being straight.

He's not giving away who he's pass blocking to. He's got a stance right now where he can run block, he can pass block, he can pull, he can do anything out of. So this is a 1 st

and 10 passing situation. He's not giving away the stance.

We've talked about initially an inside set. Now we're talking about a three-technique, and it's a little bit of a kick step. So from the three-technique, he's playing in an outside position. I want to be able to set out to him to a relative position. I want to be able to slightly kick to base, keep my relative position, and be ready for contact football.

Down. Set. Hut. There you go. Down. Set. Hut.

The two-technique, or where the defender is aligned directly over the guard, is a bit of a gray area. The defender has the ability to come inside or has the ability to come outside. So an offensive guard has to be really concerned primarily about his inside position and about keeping his relative position.

Based on the quarterback drop, and we're talking primarily about a firm drop, which is five steps, I like to take the guard and have him set slightly inside, transfer the weight to the inside leg, and cut off or be in a position to cut off that inside position while still being square enough and still being in a position where if he comes, steps inside and goes


outside or makes a mad rush to the outside to the B-gap, I can still square up and stay square and make contact with him without what's called opening up the gate.

This is what I call opening up the gate. Where I have to open and bail. That's something we really don't want. What we're trying to do is always stay square with the defender.

From this position here, if Dave was to be in a two-technique and make inside position, I want to take away the inside, slight step inside, tilt my head a little bit inside, keeping the weight on the inside leg, and think consciously of striking hard with the inside hand to cut that off.

Because if I'm soft with the inside hand, I'm like this, it's opening a position to the inside. I want to be able to strike hard

with the inside hard, cut that off, and shut it down right here before he can get too far beyond the line of scrimmage.

Okay, here we go. Inside. Down. Set. Hut. You can see there, I just punched with the inside hand because I'm emphasizing using the inside hand. Let's try it one more time. Down. Set. Hut.

The important thing to do while pass blocking is trying to keep your shoulders square to the line of scrimmage. And this is for a variety of reasons.

One, if I ever get turned, I'm opening a lane to the quarterback. Two, if I ever want to switch with the center or if we have a left tackle out here, I'm in trouble because I'm turned and he can't initiate the switch.

So those are two real reasons why you always want to try and keep your shoulders square when pass blocking.

And it also gives the quarterback a clean lane so he can see him through. We've got two guys like this on the line of scrimmage, it's very difficult for the quarterback to make his reads.


PART 3

Now in this position it's a little bit precarious because he's got such a wide range. He could line up in what we call a tight five or – Dave, move out there – or what we call a wide five. And that's a chance where he has a chance to make a lot of different moves.

Let's start him off with a tight five. From this area, all the same theory of the guard applies to the left tackle. The left tackle wants to keep his shoulders as square as possible before contact. He wants to make sure that he's keeping his relative position. He wants to have the ability to shut down the inside move or kick out to the outside move.

Now we talked a little bit earlier with the guard position on actually the inside move. This is what I like to call a power step, where I'm setting hard to the inside. And this is what we like to call a kick step, where I'm kicking out and trying to get to the intersect point.

The intersect point is the area from where the defender's rushing – and just walk into me, Dave – to where he actually has to get to the quarterback. So the intersect point's a little wide here. If Dave's taking the outside rush, the intersect point is the point where I'm going to cross with him, it's sort of the ambush point, of where I'm going to block to get to where he's trying to get to the quarterback point, and sort of cut him off at the pass.

Alright, if I make that intersect point out here and he's making an inside move, I miss the point. If I make short set that intersect point and he makes a hard

outside move, I've missed the intersect point.

I want to get to a point as much as possible, a straight line from the defender to where the cone is so I develop that intersect point and I'm in front of him during the block. Go ahead.

Now, the left tackle relative position. In football, what happens basically is the guard has to keep his head relative to the center's numbers.

He can't go behind his numbers. What we like to do on our football team is make sure the helmet of the tackle is just about in the middle of the numbers of the guard, but we'll try and cheat that depending as much on the play.


If it's a running play, passing play, we'll try to put ourselves in a little bit better position to perform a block or perform a play. But for now we're going to basically just talk about how the tackle is set up.

Now in a three-point stance, the tackle has to have the ability to read what's going on with the defender; if he's rushing up field, if he's rushing outside. From this position, he's got to keep his relative position, know his interest point, and kick out. Now Dave's in a tight five and we're in a firm set.

That'll allow me to set back and basically, what I like to do is always, if he's an outside and there's a minimal inside threat, is to step back with the outside foot and get into a square position. Now I'm trying to keep my relative position.

So if I've got that, if he's in a five-technique – go ahead, Dave, just stay in that slight five – he's basically already in a relative position. So I don't need to cut, kick out to him. I don't need to step inside and lose my relative position. I need basically from this position to set back. A little bit out and a little bit back. Keep my relative position, getting to my intersect point.

Now if Dave were to get a little wider, I need to kick out a little bit more. And what I mean by kick out, is come into here to get to my intersect point. Now if Dave is in a head up to an inside position, I've lost my relative position which I have to gain back. I have to power step, where I have to take a slight step inside, cut off that inside. Alright, those are the understandings of having an inside and outside and a far outside.

Now we'll try and demonstrate this a little bit more full speed. We'll start off first with a tight five. And we'll do it out of a two-point stance because a two-point stance gives you a chance to see it a little bit better and it allows us, more of talking about pass blocking which is a little bit more prevalent in the pass blocking situation in a 3 rd and 10 type thing.

Here we go. He's going to rush up field on the outside. Bye. Down. Set. Hut. Here we go. One more time.

We'll do each one twice. Try and give me a decent rush and give him a little bit further than you want, where I can get a lock out. Down. Set. Hut.

Alright, now he's going to be in a far five. Down. Set. Hut. Down. Set. Hut. Set. Hut. One more time. Down. Set.

Alright, at that point we demonstrated a tight five, a far five, and an inside set.

At this point of the video, we're going to spend a little time talking about the center and how the center should, first of all, how the center should be in his three-point stance. And a three-point stance for a center is very unique compared to the guard and tackle position.


As you can see, Donny, our center here, is going to put the ball down and he's going to try initially to get the ball out as far as we can. Now as you can see here, Donny's trying to stretch this ball out as far as he can or get back off the line of scrimmage to create a big neutral zone or create distance away from

the nose guard.

If Donny were to bring this ball in tight or set up right up underneath the ball, you can see the neutral zone's from tip of the ball, tip of the ball, you can see how a defender could cramp the ball. We want to try and get as much separation, to buy us time, away from the defender as possible. So you can see Donny trying to stretch out here and get as much distance as he can.

The second thing we want to talk about is his foot placement. Donny is in what we call a balanced stance. His toe here matches with his other toe across. So he's good and balanced. He's got his head up. Very important for the center to keep their head up so they can see what's happening here in the defensive front. Many times a safety'll come up into the force unit or into the line of scrimmage area here – we call it land of the giants – and will get in trouble.

And he's got to be able to call something out and make a call point out a linebacker or the quarterback may need to make a call. Or he needs to be able to see who our point man is in the running or passing game. He has got to possess the most vision on the offensive line because he's basically the quarterback for the offensive line.

You can see how Donny's back is nice and flat. This back position provides strength for Donny. If Donny doesn't actually have… if he has a curved back, he's going to get in trouble in the fact that he's displacing the energy of his block through that area, that particular area with the arch of the back. This way, if he has a nice flat back, that's a strong football position.

You can see where Donny's placing his hand here in the ready position. This is a very important thing for a center because after he snaps the football, this hand's going to make contact.

Because this football's going to be engaging the quarterback, trying to get the ball to the quarterback, this hand is his first weapon and he's got to actually snap first, get control, and then follow up with this hand. Okay, and we'll actually do a set later on and demonstrate that.


So you can see Donny's in a ready football position. He can run block and he can pass block out of this position, no problem. He can set to a head set, to a shade, no problem. And if we asked Donny to, we could even have him pull.

And we're going to demonstrate what we do here at Temple University. As a center, Donny wants to keep his thumb on top of the lace. Because what he actually wants to

do is he wants to rotate the ball through – go ahead and just take a slow snap here – rotate the ball through so that the quarterback gets the ball like this, with the laces up.

So he's taking the ball from this position here, rotating it so the quarterback will end up getting the ball slapped up to his fingers in a ready position so he can take the ball and get into his drop.

Here you go. Donny's going to demonstrate this. Down. Set. Hut. Donny does an excellent job on getting the ball back right in the laces. That's how that ball came right back to me. That's exactly how I want to have it as a quarterback.

Alright, we've talked about Donny in his stance and snapping the football. The important thing is now we've got to talk about how Donny's going to pass block out of this.

Now back to the center position and pass blocking. The center, ideally, needs to gain as much separation as he can in a regular firm protection from the defender as possible.

And how is he going to do that? Let's just leave the ball there for a second, Donny.

What Donny needs to do is set out the ball, buy himself time, get his shoulders and separation away from the defender as quick

as possible. And this whole time, Donny's going to focus on his target area, which is this area right here, while pass blocking. Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Now you can see Donny's got his hands ready. He initially snapped the ball. This hand came up first.


Because this hand was busy snapping. If he needs to make contact or that defender makes a straight-on move, Donny can grab onto that. This hand'll come and join the other one. The weakest and hardest point of a center is when a defensive pass rusher attacks the snap hand. That's what a lot of defenders initially try and do.

So Donny, once again, will go through it. It's getting this hand up first and this one's to follow. Let's go through that. Okay, as you can see here, Donny's our center, Dave's our nose guard.

And what we're trying to illustrate here is that his set is going to get off the football, his non-snap hand is going to engage the defender, and then his other, snap, hand is going to join in their quick and show a relative football position. And be in a good wired position and keeping his relativity with the defender.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Okay. Down. Set. Hut. You can see how Donny initially got this hand in here. Donny's getting in a good wired position, getting his shoulders out of it. Step a little closer. He's got his good wired position.

He's got palm struck with his hand and is keeping his elbows locked out and has got good separation. Now he's in a position to mirror the defender and we'll illustrate that a little later in the video. Down. Set. Hut. Excellent. That's a good job. Donny's in a good snap hand, got his non-snap hand in there, and has got good elbow position. I like that.

PART 4

Okay, this part of the practice or this part of the drill time is going to be spent on what I call the pass set progression. What we're simply going to do, much like the mirror drill,

is that we're going to set up in this period and we're going to go increase the phases of difficulty as the drill progresses.

What we're going to start here initially is a simple two-point stance and a punch. And we're going to reinforce, once again, all those principles we've talked about in the entire video. You can't get enough practice at pass blocking or the technique to become a proficient pass blocker.


The margin of success and failure is a knife's edge, on improper balance, improper hand placement, slow with your punch. Those kind of things will get you beat every time. And these drills are just set so we reinforce the proper technique in everything we do.

This drill we're just going to use an example out of a two-point set pass setting with a normal shield. And from this we're going to progress to more complicated things. Here we go.

Down. Set. Hut. Good. That's a simple one hit.

Now this time, Donny, I want you to hit, reset, and be in the ready position again. Because we're going to progress to two hits, okay? We're just one hit, but hit and reset. Down. Set. Hit. Good.

Alright, now I want you to hit two hits. And as you can see, this drill's going to progress a little bit more level in difficulty. As your football players get ready for different drills, as it progresses, you can increase the difficulty, increase the level of challenge.

Here we go. Two hits now. Down. Set. Hit. Down. Set. Hit. Now, Donny, make sure you don't lean on that one. That's a good finish. Here we go. Don't lean after the second hit. Here we go.

Now we're going into three hits. Hit, reset, hit, reset, hit, lock out. Here we go. Down. Set. Hit. Good. Good. Bring it on back.

Now you can see we're punch, resetting, punch, resetting, punch, locking out. Now this final little twist that goes into this is it's very important that the offensive lineman doesn't lean on his punch. And a lot of guys get real aggressive and real antsy, they want to punch.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell them three hits plus a fake. So at this point in time, Donny's going to not know when the fake is coming and Dave, in those three hits, is going to mix in one hit for a total of four possible, four… three hits and one fake.

Here we go. Make the fake on the second one so he doesn't look like an idiot. Down. Set. Hut. You can see how Donny, at that time in between that, didn't lean into that fake when it came. Some guys will try and lunge, but you see how Donny had body control and didn't lean into the fake. Very important.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Down. Set. Hut. Step back. Down. Set. Hut. Boom. Boom. Boom. Good. Good finish. Just hold your finish. That's a good finish. Holding out, locked out. Good job.

Now you can perform these drills while you're having your whole offensive line. You can do five at a time, you can do the left side up, the right side up, just the centers. Okay, and at this point in time I want to take a snap of the center and let's indicate how the center is going to do the pass set progression.


Same thing. Three steps plus a fake. Down. Set. Hut.

As you can see, these drills apply to the guard, center, tackle. Anybody on the offensive line can do these kind of drills.

I just want to spend a little bit of time here on how to take on certain types of pass rushes as a pass blocker.

The first and most basic move that most defenders have is the bull move. That's when the defender's trying to straight, come straight at you, engage at you. And what I'm trying to do is give a few coaching points on how to take on a bull move.

If I'm playing left guard and I've got a defensive lineman in a slight outside three-technique, he's trying to bull move, he's trying to engage me, it's very important as an offensive lineman that I, A, get a punch and a strong punch on

him to break his charge or his momentum. B, I have a very low center of gravity when I engage him. If I'm sitting high, he has the ability to get under me. Set yourself a little bit lower when you're taking on that bull rush; it'll put you in a better position to stop a bull rush dead in his tracks.

Down. Set. Hut. You can see how low I am here in my pass set. That I delivered a blow trying to get my hands under him in the target area. Now I've really got concentrate on lowering my center of gravity, getting my hands in there and attacking with them.

We've coached a lot of things that, okay, don't give your body a lean and such. Sometimes, when you know he's going to bull rush, it's very difficult to take a bull rush showing the numbers.

You may have to incorporate a little bodily. But as you know through this video, that puts you a little suspect to get and reach through to the fake. You've really got to watch yourself doing that. But sometimes you've got to bring a little forward momentum with a bull rush.


At this point we're going to talk about taking on some different moves. And the move we're going to discuss right now is a swim move. What the defender's ideally trying to do is strike with his outside hand to my outside shoulder, grab my shoulder, pull through, and swim under.

But as he does this, he exposes his inner rib cage.

And I want to, A, do two things as a defender. A, not give him this shoulder, by leading with my inside hand and, B, punching when he exposes. And the time I punch it and when he exposes the arm over. But I can't allow him to get, close the distance between he, myself, and himself.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Alright. Down. Set. Hut. You can see how I took away that outside shoulder and led with the inside hand so it was almost like a punch-punch kind of technique.

Punch, take away the shoulder, throwing the punch and lock out on him. He exposed himself. That's a swim move.

A lot of defensive linemen scout who they're going to play and look at the different techniques they're going to do because this guy leans too much, this guy's too much on his heels, this guy doesn't put enough weight on the inside leg.

A lot of times, defensive linemen will try and hand slap. What is an important thing with a hand slap is that you have loose hands. We talked about earlier not being tight in the upper body. Well, I've got to have loose hands to do that.

And what I mean by that, when he goes to hand slap, we either pull them away or he slaps them and I bring them right back to the ready position. And when he comes into my punch zone, I lock out.

First, what Dave's going to do is demonstrate the hand slap move, and I'm going to fall for the move because I'm too tight in the upper body and my upper body'll go, move forward with my hands.


Down. Set. Hut. That's what you don’t want to happen. How to avoid that is to keep your shoulders out of there and let your hands move independent. Down. Set. Hut. And once he goes through that hand move, he exposed himself. Slaps down, exposes his chest, you lock out. You've got to hold your punch, read the defender's move, and then lock out.

Switch around and do it the other side. Down. Set. Hut. Finish up in a good wired position, lock out, heel strike with your palm of your hands, finish up controlling the defender.

Another move a lot of defenders do is a rip move. And the rip move comes in to where he's engaging and trying to rip through.

And what a defender's simply doing is trying to get hip to hip. And from this position, it forces the offensive man to reach out and grab onto the quarterback. A lot of times he'll rip through and get a holding call.

The best way to beat this rip move is to simply keep your separation. If Dave is trying to rip through with his inside hand and outside hip and get in this

position, the best thing I can do is keep my distance from him by locking out on him before the rip move.

So to go through it slow. Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. When Dave drops down for the rip move, he exposes his shoulder. Come around to the camera here, Dave. When he exposes his shoulder, this area just became the target. So you've got to understand how the target'll change with different moves. The shoulder now has become the target. That's your lockout point. And that'll adjust as the play progresses.

A little bit quicker. Down. Set. Hut. Try it the other way. Down. Set. Hut.

You can see how I engaged the target here, kept my separation, kept my shoulders square. Now if Dave were to get me into this position, I'd be in trouble.

Therefore, we've got to make sure we kick out to relative position, we attack the shoulder target, and we keep our distance from the defender using our lockout and our arm strength.


PART 5

The fifth move out of these sort of basic initial moves is the spin move. And what the defender is going to try and do is engage you and then spin off inside or spin outside on his way to the quarterback. The key thing to do with a spin move is to, A, keep your shoulders out of it, maintain your separation and, finally, let your hands patty cake him or be mobile as he spins. You can't grab and then let him spin and prohibit him from spinning. You've got to let the defender spin. When he stops his spin move, boom, get back in the inside position.

Offense and defensive line football is played all in the hand position in here. This game is all played up here. In professional football, they don't even wear kidney pads because all the game is played up top. In college football, you have to wear these kind of a hip belt to protect you from hip pointers and such. But at the pro game, the game is played so much up top that that's really not necessary anymore.

What we're looking at here is Dave is going to do the spin move on me. I'm going to keep my hands moving and I'm going to reassert my inside relative position at the end of the drill.

Here we go. Let's spin inside. Down. Set. Hut. Set. Hut. So you can see while I do that, my hands are staying mobile. I let him spin. Keep my hands on him. Try and keep as much control on the defender as possible. Lock out, finish out in a good wired position.

We've discussed the sets. We discussed how the center, the guard, the tackle set

the wired position. Now we're going to talk about drills.

And we're going to start our fundamental drills from the simplest things, reinforcing the wired position, and we're going to go through the points, go through these drills, reinforce the coaching points that we want to while doing the drill, and describe some drills that'll make your team a better pass blocking team.

What we're going to talk about here is a drill that reinforces many of the concepts that we've discussed in the video. From the wired position, the use of the hands, to focusing on the target, to keeping our head out of the play.

This mirror drill describes, allows an offensive and defensive player to understand how to use the hands, how to relax the hands. And that's very important with young guys. We start off this drill in a wired position. In the wired position, I want to keep my hands down here by my chest and I want to maintain the wired position.


And all is I'm simply going to do is try and stay in front of Donny. And Donny's just going to move slowly down the line of scrimmage and I'll stay in front of him and he'll going to move back and forth, he's going to stop and spin so I focus on the target. And you're just going to see my head zero in to Donny.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Slow down. Break.

From this, you can see how my feet stayed apart the whole time. I focused on here even with Donny's spin. And that my position was in a wired position, the hands at the ready the whole time.

We're going to speed this up a little bit with Dave. The idea of this drill while doing the wired position drill is just to use this line that we've got here on the football field, and the idea is that Donny's not going to cross the line and he's not going to cross the line. That's our focus reference point that we're going to work along.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Slow it down now. Break.

Now it's important when you do this drill, is the change of direction. When I change direction, I want to be able to push off the outside of the foot. Mainly the control

area we talked about is from here to here. I want to be able to push out. You don't want to have your foot, heel turned out like this.

This makes you push off your heel and your heel isn't a control spot of your foot. You want to be able to push, change direction like this. And you can see, as the defender isn't moving, you shouldn't move either. Don't sit here and have happy feet in this spot. Push out the outside change. The base doesn't change the whole time.

One more time. Here we go. Down in. Down. Set. Hut. Go quicker. Break.

Okay, this is the non-contact phase of this drill. Now as this drill progresses, we can actually put it into a contact period. And in the contact part of this drill, is what's going to happen is Dave is going to maintain his line position here, and when Donny crosses that line he's going to lock out.

This works on my punch, that I'm catching him in this area versus catching him in this area and locking out and bench pressing. I want to catch him. That works on his timing and makes, again, him focus on his target area while moving.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. No. When he comes in your zone, punch him. Break.


Okay, here what we have again, we have the line drill, we're mirroring down the line of scrimmage. Dave's going to try and maintain his line position and when Donny crosses over the line he's going to lock out. He's going to try and stay in this area here. This, once again, reinforces the center target, the lockout with the arms, and putting that all together while he's moving through it.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Don't give up the line. Don't give up the line. Work him that way, Donny. Break.

Alright, we're going to start this mirror drill out of a three-point stance this time, simply by putting our hand down here. When I say down-set-hut, Dave's going to kick the base and we'll start the drill from there.

Down. Set. Hut. Break.

Okay, what we're going to demonstrate here is the mirror drill, moving lateral. Donny's going to… the idea here is to move lateral. Let Donny put a move on me at the end of the drill, but reinforce the lockout, the punch, the timing, the foot movement, the head placement, the relaxing of the hands. Trying to put together the whole drill.

Here we go. Down. Set. Hut. Beat him. v

During the football season we develop a little competitiveness in this drill. And the fourth stage of this drill is to set up two cones and actually have it a full contact.

And what we'll have is we'll have the offensive player mirror down the line. He'll shuffle, shuffle, and at the end of the drill, towards the end of the drill after about five or six seconds, I'll say "beat him," and he's actually got to put a move on, beat him, and then I'll go to the quarterback.

And that's a cut-off point. We'll try and demonstrate this. I like doing this more in

helmets and shoulder pads, but at this point in time we don’t have them. So we'll just sort of simulate this at this time.

Down. Set. Hut. A little more movement, Donny. Keep moving left. Lateral movement, lateral. That's it. That's it. Don't lean, Dave. Don't lean, Dave. Ohh, time your punch, time your punch, time your punch, beat him. Break.

This segment of the video is going to review some basic drills or foot drills to increase the abilities, the foot speed, of offensive linemen. We're going to go through a variety of drills. These drills can be done anywhere. On Astroturf, on a grass field, on your high school field, on a playground. Anywhere where you… on a gym floor.


Anywhere where you possibly can find any type of field to go do them on. You can do them with cones that we have here, you can do them with rolled-up towels, shoes, anything you can find to set up some kind of a drill or a course that you can do, perform these drills on.

I can remember a lot of times, myself, getting ready for football training camps for the NFL, going on on my old high school field, setting up towels and socks, and performing these drills. And the only friend I'd have was myself, the cones, a bottle of water, and a stopwatch, to go through these drills and try and create some kind of competitiveness using a stopwatch and time myself each time I did them.

The first drill we're going to talk about is a shuttle drill. And this drill simply is allowing and teaching an offensive lineman how to move, how to pull quickly, change of direction, and so forth.

To start the shuttle drill, we simply want to have three cones. A middle cone and two cones placed on other side that are five yards apart. You want to practice this drill pulling left and right so it reinforces the ability to go both ways.

We talked about earlier in the video about being in a balanced three-point stance. This is to reinforce that we've got the ability to pull left, pull right, come straight off the football, and pass block. Well, in this case we're going to ask our offensive lineman to pull left or right.

Simply start in a three-point stance with your head up in a balanced stance. You want to be able to pull, using a proper pull technique of slightly gaining ground, throwing the elbow around, running, touching the line with your hand, reaching out and stretching, coming back, touching the line on the opposite side, and then running through.

Down. Set. Hut.

PART 6

The second drill that we're looking at here is particularly for offensive linemen. I like to call it the kick step power step drill. And what this tries to do is to reinforce kicking, power stepping, and the change of direction by planting and pushing off the outside foot. Alright, we're going to simply go through this drill and we're going to be going backwards in a pass set mode.


I like to start all of our drills in a two-point or a three-point stance, trying to reaffirm the whole idea of an offensive line drill. In this position here, we'll start in a three-point stance and what we're simply going to do is kick, slide to the first cone, plant off the outside foot – you never want to plant off the inside foot, power step, power step, power step, power step.

Come to the next cone. Plant off the outside foot, kick, slide, slide, slide, slide, plant off the outside foot, plant, power step, power step, kick, and slide. And what this reaffirms is just the kick step and the power step and the change of direction.

Alright, we're going to try and speed up this drill and demonstrate how we want to do it at a little bit of a quicker pace. And here we go. Down. Set. Hut.

After time, as you progress, you won't need to look back at the cones. You'll be able to go through these drills much quicker. And as you progress, time, you'll get improvement with these, you can actually increase the number of cones to increase the level of difficulty.

The next drill we're going to look at is what I call the slalom drill. And the slalom drill is simply keeping your center of gravity low, changing direction after only a few steps, and planting off the outside foot. Once again we'll start this drill in the three-point stance and we'll try and also reaffirm those things that are important for offensive linemen.

You want to start off this drill, once again, in a three-point stance, stepping and planting off the outside foot, cutting, outside foot. You can see how I never generate a lot of speed, but it's a lot of change of direc--, hip movement, swing

around the last cone, and come on back.

Plant. Plant. Run through. Plant. Run through. Plant and run through the final cone. You can see how you don't change a lot of direction. A lot of balance is required in this drill in the hips, in opening the hips, closing the hips, a change of directioning which is very important for offensive linemen.

At this point in time, I'm now going to attempt to demonstrate this drill at a much quicker pace. Down. Set. Hut.


The next drill that I have here in my repertoire is a little bit of an endurance drill that most positions can use. It's got four legs to the drill. We start off in an offensive three-point stance to begin with where you simply run to the end cone. We plant with our outside foot and we shuffle back. But every five yards when we shuffle, we switch directions.

And as we switch directions, we come back, we plant off this foot. Then we turn around and we carioca. Five yards, switch. Five yards, switch. Five yards, switch. Five yards, switch. Five yards, switch. As we come to the last cone, we

plant and we backpedal. And we want to try and backpedal with our palms below our knees. This is to develop some endurance, hip movement, planting off the outside foot, and a basic change in direction that any football player needs on the field.

Down. Set. Hut.

As you could see in that drill, we had a great deal of change of directions, dynamic hip mobility, planting off the outside foot, and staying low, reinforcing the fact that we don't bring our feet together in the shuffle, trying to stay low in our change of direction, with our carioca, and finishing off with a grinding backpedal.

As you progress in this drill, you get better with the technique, you get better endurance, you can just add cones to create, to increase the level of difficulty.

This is a basic football hop drill that is done with two people, the player and a coach. And the coach'll simply just give you a hand wave – left, right, left, right. And this makes a player actually tune his vision into his body movement and allows him to hop the cone while watching the coach, feeling the cone, not seeing at it, and watching the coach. Doing all these things at the same time.

He's going to basically start in a basics position, ready to go. The coach'll move his hand, tells you to hop. Boom. Boom. And he'll tell you at this point just where to hop.

You always want to come back to neutral position. He may tell you to hop, hop – give you two movements to the side – and tell you to come back into here. So we can increase these cones as you go along and actually increase a level of difficulty with that.

The next drill is another progression hop drill and it's a four-corner hop drill. The coach'll be in front of you and he'll simply pull his hand towards you, you jump towards him, back, side to side. And, once again, it's to mirror the coach's movement and


develop some acuity between his hand movement and you jumping through the cone to develop yourself as a football talent.

So the movements will be comprised as such. Start jumping forward, developing high knees. Jumping over. Jumping back. Forward. And it's a simple biometric drill that can be done by anyone.

Thanks for watching our video today on pass blocking. I hope you've gained something from the tape where you'll be able to apply it to your football team to make your offensive line a better pass blocking team.

In the future, look for more Coach's Choice videos and let's have a great football season.


Pass Blocking Skills & Drills © Copyright Football Inner ... Blocking Skills... · Hi, I'm Coach...

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