GOM Blocking Scheme For Youth Football

I begin by detailing one of the more talked about blocking assignments some coaches are using in youth football. Each play you plan to use can only have success if the blocking schemes are solid and executed correctly. As a coach it is your job to make sure all of your linemen understand which defender they are required to block on each and every play.

The rules change depending on the situations, of which a few are explained below:

The Specific Offensive formation we are using The individual Offense scheme we are using If this is a run or pass play How the Defensive team is aligned Scouting report What kind of ability does our team have this year How much talent our opponents have Listed above are just a few of the major factors you must take into account when deciding the suitable blocking assignments to teach your youth football team. Another important area of consideration is how easy the scheme will be to teach your players. Take special care in making the assignments easy for your young kids.

The Gap On Man blocking scheme seeks to give a solid set of rules each offensive lineman should follow on each play. In the real world this is impossible, but many coaches will use GOM (Gap on man abbreviated) for a generic run-blocking strategy.

The GOM base rules explain that each offensive lineman will make his determination on who to block based on the set of the rules. All decisions every player makes start on where the center is lined up, on his right or left. GOM base rules instruct each lineman to block the first defender that fits a rule in order.

Beneath is the exact rules, in order, that each lineman will base his decision on. These descriptions are if you are playing a guard:

GAP - if there is an opposing player set up in the GAP (the gap is the region between the center and the guard), this is the primary rule and the player you should block ON - if there is no opposing player in the GAP, but a player is lined up straight across from you, this is your primary block.

MAN - if there is neither an opposing player on defense in the GAP or set up straight across from you, or ON, your rule is to block the first MAN (player) in front of you. This can be a linebacker, defensive end or safety. Gap On Man may appear to be the answer to your prays since it seems to be easy to teach and appears to have a simple answer on who to block no matter how the defense lines up. Your line will have to work as a group and have faith their fellow linemen, trusting they will be blocking the correct players on defense.

Jim Oddo has been coaching pee wee, flag, pop warner and youth football for over 23 years. He has attained an 80+% winning percentage. Read how to win with over 400 FREE tips and posts regarding every area of little guy football at: http://footballplaybooks.info. In addition to coaching tips, there are many different offensive and defensive playbooks all modified in Youth Football Playbooks.

The Free Blocking Zone In Youth Football

Most Youth Football Teams play in leagues that are governed by the prevailing HIGH SCHOOL rules of the state with a few nuances like weight limits and for some; minimum play rules. Some leagues will also have special rules pertaining to unique scoring for extra point plays or exception rules on special teams plays like automatic or "no rush" punts.

What I have yet to see is any youth football league that had any special rules when it comes to the "free blocking zone". Unfortunately many youth coaches are unfamiliar with what the "free blocking zone" is and the rules that pertain to it.

What doesn't vary in youth football is the application of High School rules for everything but the exception rules that the league designates for itself. There are two sets of High School Rules, Federation Rules, which covers all states with the exception of Massachusetts and Texas, which are governed by NCAA Rules.

Unfortunately many youth football coaches get High School, College and NFL rules confused with one another and often look foolish to the referees doing their games. In our league we use local High School referees who have to endure some of these uninformed youth coaches who give many of us a bad name. Our home league referees check their egos at the door, try to be patient and try to keep the eye rolling to a minimum, which may be hard for them to do in many cases. I've also coached in leagues that didn't use High School refs, where the quality varied quite a bit.

A few years back we played a game where an opposing team was called for a blatant pass interference. The ball had been thrown well over our receivers head, but the defender came up and crushed our receiver well before the ball arrived. The opposing coach went ballistic, screamed yelled and even called time-out, yelling that the ball was "uncatchable." The prevailing High School refs doing this game endured the rant and calmly explained in low tones the ruling. Well according to High School Rules, it does not matter if the ball is "catchable" or not. This coach wasted a timeout, caused his team unwanted grief, made himself out to look foolish and burned any credibility he had with the referee crew because he didn't know the rules. Not all referees are great, but most of the High School guys are ok and they try to do a good job and earn a few extra dollars for their families. I've spoken to a number of these guys, they have great stories to tell. Some of the things they hear or have to put up with are down right embarrassing.

One of the things youth coaches often misunderstand is what the "free blocking zone" is. According to Federation High School Rules it is: According to Rule 2, Section 17 Article 1: The free blocking zone extends from 4 yards to the right and left of the ball.

It is perfectly legal in that zone for your LINEMEN to block below the waist via what most people call crab blocks, scramble blocks, shoeshine blocks and cut blocks against defenders that line up on the line of scrimmage. NCAA rules also allow for these types of blocks in this zone as well. These are all legit blocking techniques that most youth players will use if they go on to play High School football and are great equalizers when playing much bigger and more athletic teams.

Get to know High School rules and the exception rules used in your league and if you are unsure, ask, don't yell. Save yourself headache and embarrassment as well as set the right example for the kids and parents.

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues. His web site is: Football Plays For 150 free youth football practice tips: Youth Football Plays

Copyright 2007 Cisar Management and http://winningyouthfootball.com republishing this article are parts of it without including this paragraph and the links is copyright infringement. Please republish, just include the links.

Zone Blocking For Youth Football Teams

There are many differences between youth football players and College, Pro and High School players. To say the difference is night and day would not do justice to how different they are. It would be like the differences in the beauty of Miss America and the 1,000 pound bearded lady at the State Fair.

College, Pro and even High School players practice 6 days a week and play their games on a 7th day. Most of these guys practice 20-30 hours each week, youth football teams practice from 4-8 hours every week. Pro, College and High School players have played the game for 7-25 years, they have the basics down, they know the game. Youth football players have 1-2 years of experience and many youth teams are made up of a majority of kids that have never played before. Most youth football players don’t know the difference between a 3 technique and a footstool. Pro, College and High School kids are 16-35 years old, they can move faster, control their bodies better and retain and process much more information than youth football players. Pro, College and High School teams cut weak players, they are the best of the best. The pros and college teams cut kids every day that were the best players in their respective youth and High School teams. Even the High Schools cut weaker players, they also send weaker kids to JV or Reserve teams.

Pro, College and even some High School players are being taught by coaches that coach for a living. Most devote 50-70 hour weeks to learning their craft and most have 10-15 years of experience playing the game. This compares to the amount of experience and time a youth coach can spend on developing himself as a coach, which for most doesn't even allow for the time to go to a single weekend coaches clinic or the purchase of a single Coaching Book or DVD. The difference in the levels of coaching expertise is just huge, yet a youth coach with no experience with complex zone blocking is going to teach it to others?

In a nutshell Pro, College and even most High School teams are made up of great players athletically compared to the typical youth football player that will never play High School football let alone even sniff at College or Pro Football. Youth teams are made up of a very limited amount of players, you cant send the kids down to JV, Reserve or Frosh teams, and you can't cut them. In fact you are going to play them, some probably will even start on your offensive line. While I have been blessed with talent on some of my teams, others had offensive lines that looked like the characters from the "Land of Misfit Toys."

By the time the youth kids get to High School, most of the real weak players have already quit playing, realizing football is just not their game. But today on your youth football team, these kids are still playing, still trying to figure out how to play and if this is their game. At the youth level in most leagues, everyone has to play some and most often you are going to have some unathletic players playing offensive line. Thast playing, not being cut or sent down to another team.

Pro, College and High School teams are not required to play all their kids, most youth teams do require you play everyone at least for a handful of plays. These less athletic kids are then playing a postion that greatly impacts every single play (offensive line) and they are going to zone block? Okay, that's great if I'm the defensive coordinator of the other team, but terrible if I'm the running back or the dad of the poor running back on the zone blocking team.

This is how perfectly good youth football players get soured on the game and quit and become part of the 70% of youth players that never play a down of High School football. It's a real shame and is the main reason I wrote the book, do all the clinics and developed the DVDs. Too many good kids get run off of playing football by poor coaches and terrible schemes, no wonder so many High School and Youth Football programs have love/hate relationships.

On the technical side, the zone schemes cornerstone is the “combo” block, where the offensive linemen gets an initial push on a defensive linemen, then comes off the block once good movement has been made, to then block a linebacker. This block mind you is blocked based on the type of defensive front the offensive linemen sees and can recognize, often involving line calls. This would be quite a lot to ask from a 9 year old youth player maybe playing his first game. Most kids that age are still struggling to figure out how to make a sound drive block on a player within 1 foot of them and making sure they remember to block on offense and tackle on defense.

Most High School teams can’t even zone block well with Spring Football, year round football workouts, excellent offensive line coaches and 6 days a week practice. And you are going to do it successfully with youth players? With team sizes of 24-25 for many teams, your worst athletes are playing offensive line. So you are going to ask this weaker player to recognize the front correctly, make the right line call, make an effective double team block, get movement on a double team block, spy the linebacker at the same time, then know when to peel off at the exact right time and block the speedy and strong linebacker "in space" on the run on the same play?

So one of your least athletic kids is going to spy and track down and block in open space the other teams fastest and most athletic player (linebacker) after engaging another linemen? Wow that will be quite an accomplishment akin to building an atomic bomb out of a few leftover juice cans and some old mothballs, good luck pulling that all off. If you can teach that at the youth level, you have a Select Football team, should be playing in the National Championship game and as a coach should be coaching O-Line in the NFL. Zone blocking takes GREAT coaching, lots of time, excellent athletic linemen and savy smart experienced football players that can recognize fronts and have impeccable timing, none of which is in abundance at the youth football level.

Simple rule blocking using angles and overwhelming numbers in limited space is what works within the constraints of youth football and is what we teach in the book and DVDs. Zone blocking will fail and frustrate the kids and coaches. It did not surprise me that this zone blocking suggestion came from one of those one-dimensional fails-every-time youth coaches that uses such failed and useless tactics like “attack the center”. Probably uses the famous “Hit Somebody” phrase and runs kids to death in football practice, then wonders why his teams can’t win any games.

No doubt when this guys team loses, he's the one that blames it all on a lack of talent (every year) or "the kids just didn't want it bad enough". Geez I tire of these kind of guys, they ruin so many kids and teams. Unfortunately we see too many coaches like that in our game and is one of the main reasons over 70% of youth football players never go on to play High School football, it’s a shame to see.

When coaching youth football, it’s your job to pick out a scheme that will work with the talent levels, athleticism, maturity, practice time and coaching ability you have available. Playing a youth football team trying to zone block would be like shooting fish in a barrel, the poor running backs, the horror, the horror.

For 150 free youth football coaching tips and coaching ideas, please stop here: Coaching Youth Football

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.
His web site is: Football Plays

Cross Blocking In Youth Football

The key to the cross block is making sure the two linemen working the cross block work well together. In most schemes, the outside offensive lineman attacks the inside players blocking target first, then the inside offensive linemen comes behind the outside offensive lineman to block the outside offensive lineman’s initial blocking target. It is important that there is very little depth gained by the inside offensive lineman, he has to mesh just off the heels of the outside offensive lineman, hence the need for great teamwork.

Obviously for the youth football lineman this is something you would not teach until they were very solid doing the base blocking techniques, know their base blocking rules and only after you have them set in positions. You would practice this against tall dummies with the two partners working with each other exclusively, making sure the head placement was on the inside of the defender for our inside offensive lineman and outside the defender for out outside offensive lineman.

Unlike other offenses we do not cross block on specific plays, but we do allow our players to cross block if we see it would give us an advantage and we make a specific call. When you want to cross block just add a “tag” to the play, something like “Creek or Cable” anything with a C in the front to let the 2 kids at the point of attack know they are going to cross block.

We rarely cross block and teach it based on the age and experience level of the kids. I had an age 8-10 team with about 50% veterans, that was a team cross blocking made sense with. Nearly all my 11-12 or 13-14 age teams learned to cross block as the season progressed.

This technique is also a nice change up for even your two wideouts like in our Mesh Formation. Stalk blocks tend to be as successful as the quality of the players performing them, cross blocks can foul up the keys of the defensive backs and provide your receivers with easy blocking angles even on wide sweep plays.

If you have the right age and experience level and your youth football team is progressing well with your base schemes, the cross block may make sense. Coaching youth football well means you have to figure out if your team meets the criteria or not.

150 free youth football coaching tips for you here: Youth Football

Copyright 2006 Cisar Management, All Rights reserved,

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.
His web site is: Football Plays

Reach Blocking in Youth Football

Even as a High School player who loved to block, the reach block was very difficult for me or my team mates to execute, we hated it. You will find the same is true for your youth football players. Why do you think the technique is taught so the offensive player gains OUTSIDE leverage on the defender by swinging the offensive players hips to the outside? Why not have a blocking scheme that allows your players this outside leverage and angle every play without having to take an outside drop step and without having to have very quick feet and hips swung into the proper position?

Reach blocks on interior linemen are doable if the line splits are tight and the defenders are not too wide. But in youth football, blocking the end man on the line of scrimmage (EMLOS), usually a defensive end, is near impossible for most tight ends. In youth football, the play every team is trying to defend is the sweep, so EMLOS players line up and play wider than the High School, College and Pro teams and the youth EMLOS player is very conscious of not being reach blocked. That is something even poorly coached youth football teams work on quite a bit. Hence that is why most reach blocks in youth football on the EMLOS player that is half-way disciplined, fails.

On the other hand, the easiest block in youth football is the down block. This is a tactic that has your offensive linemen blocking the next man down to their inside, often over their offensive team mate. Even the weakest offensive linemen on most teams can make this block. Momentum is always in the same direction and all we are looking for here is to stop penetration, no movement on the defender is required.

Using this scheme, the EMLOS player is usually pinned in (Pin Block), by an easy block by a running back positioned in the slot or wing position, outflanking the EMLOS player. The “Pin” block can even be executed by a motioning player from the other side of the formation that comes across the formation and then when the motion man is just to the outside shoulder of the EMLOS, the ball is snapped and the EMLOS player is flanked and easily blocked by the motion man. Some youth teams even use a crack block to accomplish this, by motioning a back from very wide on the playside to block the playside EMLOS player. This is often a devastating block, but requires very good timing and a requirement that the motioning player does not block the EMLOS player in the back or below the knees.

I coached a reach blocked sweep for 9 years, it worked well when we had a very athletic and aggressive tight end and a blazer at tailback. But when teams widened their defensive ends or we didn’t have that stud tailback and tight end, the play failed. After going to a down and pin scheme 6 years ago, the play has been very consistent regardless of talent.

When coaching youth football well, you want to put your kids in situations where they have the best chance of succeeding. Reach blocking is one technique most youth football teams probably want to avoid.

For 150 free youth football practice tips: Football Practice [http://winningyouthfootball.com/author]
Copyright 2007 Cisar Management and http://winningyouthfootball.com republishing this article are parts of it without including this paragraph is copyright infringement

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues. His web site is: Football Plays

Cross Blocking In Youth Football

The key to the cross block is making sure the two linemen working the cross block work well together. In most schemes, the outside offensive lineman attacks the inside players blocking target first, then the inside offensive linemen comes behind the outside offensive lineman to block the outside offensive lineman’s initial blocking target. It is important that there is very little depth gained by the inside offensive lineman, he has to mesh just off the heels of the outside offensive lineman, hence the need for great teamwork.

Obviously for the youth football lineman this is something you would not teach until they were very solid doing the base blocking techniques, know their base blocking rules and only after you have them set in positions. You would practice this against tall dummies with the two partners working with each other exclusively, making sure the head placement was on the inside of the defender for our inside offensive lineman and outside the defender for out outside offensive lineman.

Unlike other offenses we do not cross block on specific plays, but we do allow our players to cross block if we see it would give us an advantage and we make a specific call. When you want to cross block just add a “tag” to the play, something like “Creek or Cable” anything with a C in the front to let the 2 kids at the point of attack know they are going to cross block.

We rarely cross block and teach it based on the age and experience level of the kids. I had an age 8-10 team with about 50% veterans, that was a team cross blocking made sense with. Nearly all my 11-12 or 13-14 age teams learned to cross block as the season progressed.

This technique is also a nice change up for even your two wideouts like in our Mesh Formation. Stalk blocks tend to be as successful as the quality of the players performing them, cross blocks can foul up the keys of the defensive backs and provide your receivers with easy blocking angles even on wide sweep plays.

If you have the right age and experience level and your youth football team is progressing well with your base schemes, the cross block may make sense. Coaching youth football well means you have to figure out if your team meets the criteria or not.

150 free youth football coaching tips for you here: Youth Football

Copyright 2006 Cisar Management, All Rights reserved,

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.
His web site is: Football Plays

Zone Blocking For Youth Football Teams

There are many differences between youth football players and College, Pro and High School players. To say the difference is night and day would not do justice to how different they are. It would be like the differences in the beauty of Miss America and the 1,000 pound bearded lady at the State Fair.

College, Pro and even High School players practice 6 days a week and play their games on a 7th day. Most of these guys practice 20-30 hours each week, youth football teams practice from 4-8 hours every week. Pro, College and High School players have played the game for 7-25 years, they have the basics down, they know the game. Youth football players have 1-2 years of experience and many youth teams are made up of a majority of kids that have never played before. Most youth football players don’t know the difference between a 3 technique and a footstool. Pro, College and High School kids are 16-35 years old, they can move faster, control their bodies better and retain and process much more information than youth football players. Pro, College and High School teams cut weak players, they are the best of the best. The pros and college teams cut kids every day that were the best players in their respective youth and High School teams. Even the High Schools cut weaker players, they also send weaker kids to JV or Reserve teams.

Pro, College and even some High School players are being taught by coaches that coach for a living. Most devote 50-70 hour weeks to learning their craft and most have 10-15 years of experience playing the game. This compares to the amount of experience and time a youth coach can spend on developing himself as a coach, which for most doesn't even allow for the time to go to a single weekend coaches clinic or the purchase of a single Coaching Book or DVD. The difference in the levels of coaching expertise is just huge, yet a youth coach with no experience with complex zone blocking is going to teach it to others?

In a nutshell Pro, College and even most High School teams are made up of great players athletically compared to the typical youth football player that will never play High School football let alone even sniff at College or Pro Football. Youth teams are made up of a very limited amount of players, you cant send the kids down to JV, Reserve or Frosh teams, and you can't cut them. In fact you are going to play them, some probably will even start on your offensive line. While I have been blessed with talent on some of my teams, others had offensive lines that looked like the characters from the "Land of Misfit Toys."

By the time the youth kids get to High School, most of the real weak players have already quit playing, realizing football is just not their game. But today on your youth football team, these kids are still playing, still trying to figure out how to play and if this is their game. At the youth level in most leagues, everyone has to play some and most often you are going to have some unathletic players playing offensive line. Thast playing, not being cut or sent down to another team.

Pro, College and High School teams are not required to play all their kids, most youth teams do require you play everyone at least for a handful of plays. These less athletic kids are then playing a postion that greatly impacts every single play (offensive line) and they are going to zone block? Okay, that's great if I'm the defensive coordinator of the other team, but terrible if I'm the running back or the dad of the poor running back on the zone blocking team.

This is how perfectly good youth football players get soured on the game and quit and become part of the 70% of youth players that never play a down of High School football. It's a real shame and is the main reason I wrote the book, do all the clinics and developed the DVDs. Too many good kids get run off of playing football by poor coaches and terrible schemes, no wonder so many High School and Youth Football programs have love/hate relationships.

On the technical side, the zone schemes cornerstone is the “combo” block, where the offensive linemen gets an initial push on a defensive linemen, then comes off the block once good movement has been made, to then block a linebacker. This block mind you is blocked based on the type of defensive front the offensive linemen sees and can recognize, often involving line calls. This would be quite a lot to ask from a 9 year old youth player maybe playing his first game. Most kids that age are still struggling to figure out how to make a sound drive block on a player within 1 foot of them and making sure they remember to block on offense and tackle on defense.

Most High School teams can’t even zone block well with Spring Football, year round football workouts, excellent offensive line coaches and 6 days a week practice. And you are going to do it successfully with youth players? With team sizes of 24-25 for many teams, your worst athletes are playing offensive line. So you are going to ask this weaker player to recognize the front correctly, make the right line call, make an effective double team block, get movement on a double team block, spy the linebacker at the same time, then know when to peel off at the exact right time and block the speedy and strong linebacker "in space" on the run on the same play?

So one of your least athletic kids is going to spy and track down and block in open space the other teams fastest and most athletic player (linebacker) after engaging another linemen? Wow that will be quite an accomplishment akin to building an atomic bomb out of a few leftover juice cans and some old mothballs, good luck pulling that all off. If you can teach that at the youth level, you have a Select Football team, should be playing in the National Championship game and as a coach should be coaching O-Line in the NFL. Zone blocking takes GREAT coaching, lots of time, excellent athletic linemen and savy smart experienced football players that can recognize fronts and have impeccable timing, none of which is in abundance at the youth football level.

Simple rule blocking using angles and overwhelming numbers in limited space is what works within the constraints of youth football and is what we teach in the book and DVDs. Zone blocking will fail and frustrate the kids and coaches. It did not surprise me that this zone blocking suggestion came from one of those one-dimensional fails-every-time youth coaches that uses such failed and useless tactics like “attack the center”. Probably uses the famous “Hit Somebody” phrase and runs kids to death in football practice, then wonders why his teams can’t win any games.

No doubt when this guys team loses, he's the one that blames it all on a lack of talent (every year) or "the kids just didn't want it bad enough". Geez I tire of these kind of guys, they ruin so many kids and teams. Unfortunately we see too many coaches like that in our game and is one of the main reasons over 70% of youth football players never go on to play High School football, it’s a shame to see.

When coaching youth football, it’s your job to pick out a scheme that will work with the talent levels, athleticism, maturity, practice time and coaching ability you have available. Playing a youth football team trying to zone block would be like shooting fish in a barrel, the poor running backs, the horror, the horror.

For 150 free youth football coaching tips and coaching ideas, please stop here: Coaching Youth Football

Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive and well organized. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book “Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan” was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington.

With over 15 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams. His personal teams to using this system to date have won 97% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.
His web site is: Football Plays