Zone Blocking for Panther’s 2007 Season

The upcoming NFL season may see the Carolina Panther’s executing a zone blocking scheme where each offensive lineman is accountable for one defensive player when drive blocking, while the running back works the gap on the play. Even though there is a player on player emphasis in a zone blocking scheme each line is respectively blocking an area, which means if the player they are blocking moves out of their respective area and into another players they do not follow their move.

Zone blocking does allow for long runs to happen and really consists of two techniques. When promoting plays to the right of the center it is of course zone right, and zone left supports plays that are meant to be played to the left of the center. “If someone comes into your gap, that’s going to be your guy no matter where he came from,” Carolina guard Evan Mathis says, “this works because on defense, every guy has a certain gap responsibility. They’re not going to put two guys in one gap, and they’re not going to leave a gap open.”

Both blocking schemes can be very effective, but are really dependent of the people involved, “In man blocking, if you have maulers on your offensive line who can just blow people up and put them in the linebackers’ lap, then you’re going to create holes and things are going to happen. We have a lot of strong and athletic guys here, but we don’t really have any behemoths on the line,” says Mathis.

The Atlanta Falcons have been the lead rushing team with zone blocking schemes followed by the Denver Broncos, Houston Texans, and Green Bay Packers for the last two NFL seasons. Atlanta and Denver do not have outstanding large offensive lines and employ a zone defense to cover the inside game, challenging their opponent to work them from the outside. “It also takes the right offensive line to make zone blocking work, and it also takes a back who can take advantage of it. You have to have the right running back to make any scheme work. If I was running the ball, nobody could clear holes big enough for me to make anything happen, regardless of the scheme,” Mathis added.

Zone blocking is really a tool to aid the running back in gaining more yards and Carolina has challenged the Falcons’ rushing lead in their last few bouts. Zone blocking is not defensive in nature and encourages that if an offensive lineman is not covering a defensive player that he move to cover the linebacker. Zone blocking schemes are really an offensive play and are a reasonable consideration for Carolina. See them play the upcoming NFL season by getting your tickets on StubHub.com.