As we all know by now, LSU’s run game was built on the legs of (Rookie of the Year frontrunner) Jayden Daniels and the ability of (will probably finish 2nd and 3rd) Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr to force safeties way out of the box. With nobody left inside, it was easy for them to run the football with nothing but inside-zone. Now, the deck has been shuffled and LSU is having a lot of problems with its new hand. They couldn’t keep running inside-zone because the QB isn’t a threat to keep and they can’t control box count, and they have tried/are struggling to teach the OL to successfully block counter. LSU used this week to try something totally different that they’d only used sparingly: outside-zone.
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— MTFilmClips (@MTFilm) October 22, 2024
Unlike counter or inside-zone, OZ is a horizontal run built on athleticism along the front rather than physicality. Despite the similarity in assignment determination principles to inside-zone (zone blocking with double teams and climbs), the technique is different. The line is trying to get across the face of their counterparts and cut them off backside creating a lane for the RB to cut back if the perimeter is closed (this is part of why it’s not great from the offset-shotgun like this, but more on that issue later). If they can’t get across their guy, it works just as well to run them wide to the frontside and allow the RB to cut it behind them. This can even result in the whole front washing everything frontside with the back winding it all-the-way behind the backside tackle like in the above clip. This play from 4-wide gives a good isolation look at what the offensive line is doing, which remains more or less the same with every variation of the play.
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— MTFilmClips (@MTFilm) October 23, 2024
Now let’s look at some of the other key blocks in the play. There are basically two additional blocks that need to be made in/around the formation. First, you need the TE, if he is to the side of the run, to take any immediate, on-ball edge defender aligned outside of him, if there’s nobody, he helps the OT on a double-team and climbs to the second level to take the first guy there (covered/uncovered rules). His technique is to pin him inside or turn him out/upfield like is done here. Arkansas shows slot pressure so that guy becomes the immediate edge, which puts Mason Taylor on him. Nussmeier alerts Taylor to the slot pressure and he takes care of it.
The other guy that needs to be blocked inside the formation is the extra guy who can enter the box. This is usually one of the Safeties (ignore the CBs and backside S as they aren’t considered people you need to really block in the box) but it can be a slot defender. This guy is known as the “support” defender, that one guy you can’t block with the 5 OL and TE. This guy is usually blocked by whomever the 7th blocker is. That’s either a FB, 2nd TE, or one of the receivers, depending on what those other guys are doing. In this case, that’s slot WR/Flex TE Trey’Dez Green. He initially has the slot defender when he appears to be off the ball, which would make him the support defender and, because the TE is free to climb to he SS, make that guy functionally the SAM LB (like the illustration). When the slot shows blitz and becomes, again in the eyes of the blocking scheme, the defensive end, they trade and Green has the new support defender, the SS. That’s a lot of detail, but you can see in the illustration from the 49ers playbook how this works visually. It’s fairly intuitive who blocks whom when you understand the base rules of the OL and who they account for. as a rule of thumb, just think of the support defender as the first guy to the outside, from the 2nd or 3rd level of the D, to the side of the run…