How To Coach The Inside Zone Run Scheme

It’s widely known and agreed upon that the Inside Zone run is one of the best and most popular plays that teams can run.

Especially in today’s age of spread and multiple pro style spread offenses.

But if you start to research how to block it, you will find a crazy amount of different ways to block it and coach it.

In fact, while the concept sounds simple, being confident and executing it against every kind of defense imaginable makes things a little bit more challenging.

Fortunately there is a simple way to block the inside zone that only requires you to be able to count to 3. That’s it!

But before we get into the blocking assignments, let’s first look at the 4 Key Concepts of Blocking the Inside Zone that will guide the strategies we will be using in both design and execution. Here’s the first video from Coach Wilson to get things started.

Next we can dive into the actual blocking scheme and Coach Wilson shows us that by counting, we can make sure that every lineman knows exactly who he is blocking.

Now let’s take a look at how this all fits together against some of the more common defensive fronts. Starting with the 4-3 as an Even Front, Coach Wilson breaks it down like this…

Next up, we have the basic breakdown of the Inside Zone against an Odd Front in the 3-4 defensive structure right here…

As you can see, the numbering system works for any kind of defensive front that you would see.

So if you like Coach Wilson’s breakdown’s, you can find the rest of his course detailing exactly how to run Inside Zone using today modern techniques at the High School level.

Coach Wilson also shows you the techniques and drills he uses to teach his offensive lineman how to block Inside Zone.