West Virginia has a proven plan along the offensive line.
The way that position coach Matt Moore teaches his group is that they want to have multiple schemes in place with inside zone, outside zone and gap blocking.
“We teach them all,” he said.
The inside zone gets more vertical, while the outside zone is more lateral with the gap blocking scheme consisting of several different things.
But the goal is to be prepared to handle each of them and that was on display last year when the Mountaineers rushed for 336 yards against BYU running outside zone over and over. Then the following week against Cincinnati the Bearcats had a plan to go against the outside zone scheme and the offensive line instead used gap blocking to rush for 424 yards.
“We don’t set out saying this is what we’re going to be. We set out saying we want to be good at all three of these and when we go into a game which one is working against this team,” Moore said.
But because of the athleticism that is required to play outside zone the Mountaineers try to recruit to that and find players that can add weight to their frame instead of big guys that just downblock.
“The big heavy footed guys, you can take that off. They aren’t going to be very good at that,” he said.
For two straight years West Virginia has finished top three nationally in terms of the percentage of unblocked players at the point of attack which is a reflection of the understanding of what is being done as well as how the offensive line has communicated.
That is a key aspect to playing the position along with straining and running their feet.
“You want to move people. You want to knock people back but what you don’t want to do is knock somebody back one time and turn a guy loose two times,” Moore said. “It’s about communication, understanding defenses and getting hats on hats.”
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @wesleyshoe
