Tom Thayer is my new favorite ex-ND-player that I barely know anything about.
In this article, he really lays it out there about the o-line play. I really agree with him. I don’t know that he’s right, but that’s been my gut for a while. That it’s not talent – it’s a solid group of guys on the line. That it’s not attitude – I think they have an edge and they want to use it to beat some dudes up. That it’s not coaching – Latina was good in the past, he didn’t all-of-a-sudden forget how to coach. That it’s really Charlie’s zone blocking scheme that just doesn’t work either 1) in college or 2) at ND right now.  For whatever reason, it just isn’t working. My hope is that Charlie adjusts his offensive philosophy to accommodate a new blocking scheme that ditches the zone stuff, and gets the line back to going forward and punching guys in the mouth. That he can somehow meld this with everything else he wants to do on offense. Is that possible? I have no idea. But it’s my hope. Â
Thayer knows a lot more about football than I do, and a heck of a lot more about o-line play, and he says it pretty clearly in the article (emphasis mine):
“To me zone blocking is a bunch of crap,” he said. “Zone blocking is a lateral approach to offensive line play, and that’s not the way offensive line play is meant to be played. You’re supposed to attack coming off the ball. You watch zone-blocking teams, and they start by taking a lateral step first. You’re not coming off the ball and attacking defensive linemen. You’re not using the snap count as a weapon.
“If you don’t give your linemen confident footwork to uphold their balance and power, no matter what the defensive linemen and linebackers do, you’re going to create offensive linemen with no power, strength or confidence.“With all due respect to Charlie Weis, I know he knows offensive football, and I know he knows how to manipulate personnel to put them in confident positions to work an offense up and down the field,” Thayer said. “But he doesn’t know offensive line play like I know offensive line play. I study it every single day on both the pro and college levels.”
“I don’t think that’s his expertise. What he has to do is have faith that his offensive line coach is going to come in with a philosophy that works and then let him do it. I know times have changed and all this other stuff, but there’s still a right way and a wrong way to play offensive line. And it starts with being physical and attacking.”
“I see talent and strength in the Notre Dame offensive line, but no power,” Thayer said. “I see a lack of properly choreographed footwork, where they can play efficient up-front football and dictate the momentum of the offense.
“If you don’t have a run game, you can’t have the deception of the play-action pass. If you don’t have the run game and you don’t have the deception and threat of the play-action pass, the ability to have the regular normal third-down passing game is going to be even more difficult.
“The whole idea is these guys spend a lot of time in the weight room developing strength. And if you don’t let them use their strength in the most confident manner on the football field, there’s no reason to sit there and develop this strength.”
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domer.mq
Ha. Too funny. (See roundup.)
I respect Thayer’s opinion, but if he thinks the first step in zone schemes is “lateral,” then he’s watching bad zone schemes. I’m pretty sure if he watched good Denver teams, the first step is never “lateral.” “Diagonal,” maybe, but that’s all about leverage.
What makes no sense is having guys like Young and Stewart in such a scheme. It would be good to match the scheme to the players.
domer.mq
Also, SoCal and Oklahoma use zone schemes, so I think it’s fair to say it works in college.
mark
I thought coaches are supposed to recruit players to their scheme, not match scheme to players. Is it really possible to take Charlie’s playbook and change it from zone blocking? I know little about x’s and o’s, but that seems a tough change to make, especially if you are trying to flip back and forth your scheme to fit your players skills. From what I’ve read, zone blocking can/does work in college, so if it won’t work with our current players, ND (and CW by extension) may just be SOL, regardless of who is brought in to replace Latina. That makes me sad, as I was hoping that maybe we just bring in some zone blocking guru and everything would be all right.
DeepTeaKup
domer, it may work but after watching UM run zone strect plays for 2-3 years I can say that I hate it. I like an O-Line that lines up and hits as many people as they can, anything else is crap as Thayer said.
domer.mq
DTK, with all due respect, UM(s!) ran a really poor zone. Well, they executed it poorly. Luckily they had a robot of a RB and a particular OL with his own gravitational pull.
Mark, the running plays are really all that would change with a new blocking scheme, and really you could just change it to be so old school that all of the OL and RBs would remember most of it from HS.
domer.mq
Also, Mark, there’s no way Weis has been recruiting OL for a zone scheme. It just makes no sense what he’s done there. The man has years of experience drafting and signing free agents to fit the zone scheme that worked in New England, and yet he recruits the biggest, most plodding bodies he can find at ND. And then he bulks them up. It’s so odd.
The Biscuit
even though you called me stupid, i think we actually agree. either you fix the scheme, or you fix the execution of the scheme. given the past 2 years, it seems to me that the execution just ain’t gonna happen, so you fix the scheme. i didnt think that it’s fundamentally broken (thanks for the examples of where it actually works) in college in general, but i wasn’t sure. but it’s sure as heck fundamentally broken at ND.
Craig
What’s fundamentally broken isn’t doing zone blocking (Thayer and/or Hansen managed to completely miss that a lot of very effective college offenses use zone blocking), it’s the way that it’s designed and/or taught and consequently executed.
trey
Ill let yall argue this one, it’s totally out of my realm of expertise. I was a CB in high school, so come back when we’re talking Tampa 2 and coverage schemes.
Mona Strayve
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Jason
I personally think that zone blocking is the best thing since sliced bread. It all depends on what you know how to coach. My team can run about fifteen plays off of two simple schemes. Our linemen work on the inside and outside zone all day, everyday and they get good at it. It is 80% of our offense. It is true that you lose ground to gain position. You must do this to gain leverage. The first step is geometry. You must have your second step in the ground before you make contact. There are three types of leverage. Gap leverage, pad level leverage, and hand leverage. If a player just fires out and hits the man that is lined up a foot in front of him, he will not get his second step in the ground and his pad level will raise straight up. He also will never get gap leverage. Defensive movement would hurt the play. Zone blocking allows for double teams at the point of attack, is a built in answer to slants, holds up to any front, and forces the defense to be scheme and assignment sound. Coaches have to teach what they know how to coach. Some understand zone blocking, some don’t. Most teams do not have a Tom Thayer. If they did and he could block everybody by himself, they could run a one man iso scheme.