Football at its highest level is almost amoebic in the way it forever changes its shape.
Yet the ways in which the game has evolved the most over the last several years have largely gone unnoticed except by the generals who design the plays and the warriors who execute them.
Pass-protection schemes of 2003 are nothing like the pass protections of 15 years ago. In terms of complexity and volume, pass protections have become a game within the game, and some would argue they have become the most important piece of any game plan.
Even in the quiet of May, coaches are studying tapes and analyzing trends in order to expand and improve their pass protections.
It has gotten to the point that Rams coach Mike Martz begins his game-plan session each week by working not on flashy passes or runs but on pass protections.
“Protections are first and foremost for me,” he says. “They are paramount to whatever success you may have.”
Pass protecting has become so critical and so difficult, Martz says, that in some aspects it was harder for the Rams to lose left tackle Orlando Pace last year than it was for the team to lose quarterback Kurt Warner.
“If you get a guy on the edge who never has played, it really limits what you can call,” Martz says. “You’re going to get mental mistakes, and you’re going to get the quarterback hit.”
Vikings coach Mike Tice says that in 1981, when he was a rookie tight end for the Seahawks, a team usually went into a game with one protection for a deep drop, one for a quick drop, a couple for play-action passes and one for a bootleg.
Twenty-two years later, the Chiefs are prepared to use 30 protections in a game, and sometimes teams must resort to protections that aren’t even in their game plans.
The evolution of pass protections was forced by the evolution of pass pressures. When Mike Munchak came into the league as a guard for the Oilers in 1982, defenses weren’t using anywhere near the number of blitzes they do today. And, when they did blitz, it was much simpler.
“It was mostly a four-man rush, this blitz or that blitz,” says Munchak, now the Titans’ offensive line coach. “So we did drastically less from a protection standpoint because we didn’t have to cover all this junk.”
In the early 1990s, defenses started to take advantage of the simple pass protections by dictating to offenses what they would be allowed to do. In recent years, offenses have struck back.
Although there are many possible pass protections for defenses to worry about, a blocker won’t have 30 different assignments for 30 different protections.
Typically, a team will have four or five categories of protections in a game plan, with about four different possibilities within each category. The assignments for all of the offensive linemen are the same in each category, but the assignments of the tight ends and backs are different based on the number of dropback steps the quarterback is taking, where the quarterback is setting up and if there is play-action.
Even the quarterback can be responsible for a pass rusher. In certain protections, he has to account for an unblocked blitzer by hitting his “hot” receiver or scrambling away from the pressure spot.
The first question San Diego quarterback Doug Flutie asks each week in positional meetings is: “Who am I responsible for in each protection?”
During one game, the Rams used five different protections on their first five snaps.
Flexibility has become the key to pass protections. Protections must allow offenses to cover for mismatches and also to react to the unexpected.
“You have to be able to change to a certain protection versus a blitz you ve never seen before,” Martz says. “The offensive line has to be great problem solvers.”
Dumb offensive linemen are like typewriters: Technology has rendered them useless. Mental mistakes by blockers still are a threat because of the complexity of what they are asked to do.
“The mistakes we see usually are judgment calls,” Munchak says.
“Two guys are coming–which one is the most dangerous? Or the center deciding to redirect protection when he didn’t have to. You have more bad decisions because there are more possibilities for decisions.”
One way coaches reduce the mental strain is by using more zone protections.
“When you zone it, you take a lot of the thinking out of it,” Tice says. “You don’t have the `I thought you thought … “‘
In zone pass protections, the offensive line usually slides to the side where it has a matchup problem. A fullback often goes to the end of the line that has been vacated. This is called a “turn back” or “slide cut.”
Many zone protections are partial zones, with three men playing zone, for instance. Partial zones work well for teams such as the Vikings, who have an interior player like center Matt Birk who can hold up man-to-man in pass protection against almost anyone.
No matter what the scheme, offensive linemen have a greater burden than at any previous point in NFL history.
