3 Blocking Tags That Will Take Your Offense to the Next Level
Adding tags to your core running plays will allow you to multiple, while keeping things simple for your kids. Tags will allow you to keep running your base plays when teams adjust and commit to stopping them. For us, tags are just calls that tell our players that they are changing or swapping blocking assignments with another player. The blocking rules for all other players don’t change. Below are our 3 favorite play tags that we utilize in our Gun T Offense (these can be implement in pretty much any offense).
3 Blocking Tags That Will Take Your Offense to the Next Level
Tag # 1: Hammer
Our Hammer Tag is our go-to when we face wide defensive tackles that are difficult to block. There will be times when our TE can’t get the defensive tackle washed down so we tag it ‘hammer’ and have our WB and TE switch responsibilities. Hammer is a tag we use on our Belly and Power plays that we run to our TE side. This tag can be implemented in any formation that utilizes a Wing and/ or H-back. We utilize this tag mostly against 6-2 or 4-4 defenses.
Jet Power Base
Here is a look at our Jet Power play. Our base way of blocking this is having our 4 kick-out the OLB / force player and have our Tight-end down block on the defensive end. Motion will influence the defensive end to widen so it’s an easy block for our 4. Below is our answer for when our TE can’t get that DE/ DT washed down.
Hammer Tag (Jet Power)
Here is our Hammer Tag we use when our Tight-end can’t get his defensive end or defensive tackle washed down. When our TE and WB (4) hear “Hammer” that tells them that they are switching responsibilities. Now, our 4 will down block on the DE and the TE will base out the outside linebacker (L) (or true DE). The (4) has an excellent blocking angle on the DE. The DE won’t even see this block coming.
Hammer Tag out of Split-backs
Tag # 2: Charley
Our Charley Tag is our go-to tag for when outside linebackers and/or a defensive ends (boxing / contain) widens in an effort to stop our Jet Sweep. This tag can be utilized with any play that attacks the edge of the defense (toss, jet, rocket sweep). We run our Jet Sweep with our play-side wing sealing the defensive end or the outside linebacker (depending on the defense), or whoever their force play is.
Charley is tag we created for when defenses don’t allow our play-side Wing Back to seal their D-end (base way of block Jet- our PS Wing Back will seal). The common answer for Jet Sweep is to widen out defensive ends (or whoever their force playera are). When defenses do that it becomes much more difficult to run Jet Sweep. However, when teams widen their DEs we will go to our Charley Tag and crack the wide DE with our Split-end. Our SE will have outside leverage on the DE. This will allow us to seal the edge and keep pounding the defense with Jet Sweep. It’s important that the SE cheats his split down so that he doesn’t clip the defender.
Tag # 3: Deuce (double team block)
Deuce is a tag we created that tells our TE and OT to double team the PS Defensive Tackle. There will be games when the defense will have very disruptive DTs and our answer is to double team them! Keep in mind that you can also use the Deuce tag to tell the DE and PS Wing Back to double the PS Defensive End. We like our deuce tag against wide Defensive Tackles, DT that we are struggling to block, and for when we just need to get a push on a short yardage situation.
Related Content (video): Handling Disruptive Defensive Tackles
Utilizing tags will allow your offense to be multiple while still running your base plays. Remember, if you want to be successful on the youth football level you need to keep things simple. You can run the same couple plays several different ways by just implementing some tags (blocking adjustments) and multiple formations (running the same plays out of different formations).
