Building the Wisconsin Football Modern Run Game With Inside Zone

Welcome back to Chapter Three of our Introduction to the Wisconsin Football Dairy Raid Offense series. Today, we will begin to take a look at an overlooked part of the Air Raid: the rushing game.

What comes to mind when you think of the Air Raid Offense?  Images of Mike Leach and his five-foot splits spreading the ball all over the field around with Texas Tech. You think quarterback play, you think receiver play, you think throwing the ball all over the place and looking for open grass. While that is the basis of where the Air Raid started, it’s where the philosophy grew over the years.  The run game is not the first thing that comes to your mind.

Beyond the playbook the philosophical approach to the Air Raid is getting the ball in open space to your playmakers. Over the years the system has expanded to include not only your receivers but your rushing backs and your quarterbacks in the run game. Even the masters of the Air Raid like Mike Leach eventually came to realize is sometimes you need to get the ball into space with as few moving parts as possible. There are a lot of moving parts to even the most basic hitch. In modern football, you need to have a well-balanced rushing attack if you want to have a well-balanced offense.

Balance is Crucial for Wisconsin Football

And when we’re talking about balance, I’m not talking about 50% run, 50% pass. I’m talking about the idea of the defense will tell you how to beat them. Some teams it’s going to be throwing the ball 50 times, some teams it’s going to be rushing the ball 50 times. If you have the ability to be balanced you allow the defense to dictate how to beat them. Then it opens up a lot of areas for success. You’re not married to one thing, and if that doesn’t work, you’re in trouble.

It’s with this understanding of balance that we want to try to bring the Air Raid philosophy to the Wisconsin football program and still build it with traditional Badger values. With a balanced rushing attack you can do that. A balanced rushing attack will stress the defense north/south, east/west. If we want to build modern components into it we want to look to create conflicts of assignment.

These basic tenants should sound familiar because they are built into the Air Raid in the passing game as well. We want to make the defense to cover the entire field, to stress them vertically and horizontally, and to create conflicts of assignment. In the run game we do that by running simple schemes that have components that we can build off of it. For run a run-to-spread or spread-to-run offense those simple schemes inside zone, outside zone, and power. And today we’re going to break down the first of those three run schemes, and that will be the inside zone.

Inside Zone is a Foundational Blocking Scheme

There is so much you can build upon the inside zone that you could build a full offense, balanced offense, around one scheme. It’s basic enough that you don’t have to have the world’s greatest offensive line to run it because the whole idea is building double teams.

Like most rushing schemes, the inside zone is a rules-based scheme. The difference with a zone scheme when you apply rules to it is in a gap scheme like power, you use rules to let your blockers know who on defense they need to block. With a zone scheme what you’re trying to use the rules do is to establish the direction and the flow of the blockers. So you’re blocking a zone, and the person who comes into your zone.

Inside Zone Rules

So that’s how we’re going to build up through it. Our rules here are pretty simple when we’re looking at inside zone: our blockers are responsible for the area from their backside shoulder. So, for example, we’re going to run inside zone left, they are going to be responsible for the area from their backside shoulder to the playside gap or the backside shoulder of the man next to this area. This zone is three dimensional extending from the line of scrimmage and up field. Then we look for a defender who is in that area to let us know where our initial footwork is going to carry us.

If there is nobody in our assigned Gap we want to get into a double team with the man next to us. Failing to do so we want to immediately get to the second level and try to pick up a second-level defender. For this to work, communication is key. We need to know who’s a part of the double team, we need to communicate it, we need to call out our blocks, and in doubt, we just flat out point to the guy that we’re blocking in the area that we’re going to. Now that we know our area that we are blocking, the next thing that we need to focus on is we need to make sure we understand are we covered or uncovered and what does it mean to be covered.

Covered or Uncovered

The definition of being covered having a defender in your framework either head up or on a shoulder. The alignment of the defender will determine your initial footwork.  If you are covered with the man directly on you then execute a drive block. Get low and get as much of a vertical push on that defender as possible. We don’t want him to get any forward momentum. If we are covered to our play side we want to take our play side foot and a flat step open to 45° down the middle of that defender.

Our second step wants to come parallel with that. We are looking to create more of the angular or horizontal push of that defender. If we are covered to the back side we don’t want to step towards him. Step vertically through his shoulder because what we want to do we want to create vertical push, and don’t want to counteract the push of our teammate who is helping us with a double team.

With the double team established we want to work the defender up to the 2nd level defender. A common mistake I see often with the inside zone scheme is blockers peeling off the first level too early causing us to lose momentum. Now the 1st level defender can make a play on the ball. By driving him into the 2nd level defender you actually force him to make a read often making it easier to establish that block or let the ball carrier make a read.

Simple Scheme, Many Options for Wisconsin Football

The beauty of this scheme lies with how easily it can be expanded upon.  It can be used with multiple backfield actions to attack the entire field. Your standard inside zone read is an A gap to A gap play. The spread veer is an down hill B gap hitter that works well with a built in pitch option to control flat defenders. And the standard speed option often uses inside zone blocking because it creates better downhill cutback lanes while forcing the defense to defend all the way to the sideline. When you build in RPOs, access throws, and play action you can run an entire balance offense with one singular blocking scheme. It is the true foundational blocking scheme.

Let’s take this to the classroom. We’ll break down the scheme and how to install it followed by film to show us how Phil Longo and the Wisconsin football program used the inside zone as a base scheme to build off of.

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