The modern wide zone offense

Is the time right for the return of wide zone offense to the college game?

So how does the wide zone offense work in the modern setting and can it serve as a better way to run offense than the present day alternatives?

As I broached in the last column, the wide zone play is pretty distinctive from other varieties of zone blocking and probably the primary reason it’s less common in the college game is it’s lack of compatibility with the shotgun formation.

Well college offenses love the shotgun because it allows the quarterback to read defenders on option plays, either run keepers or RPOs thrown outside or down the field, whereas under center formations and wide zone blocking in particular do not.

The rise of the shotgun and the increased emphasis on passing has elevated inside zone and power/gap schemes which attack faster and more downhill, complementing the lateral stress created by spread out receivers. You don’t really need to threaten the perimeter as much with the run game if you can just toss the ball out into space to one of your fastest players.

Inside zone and gap scheme linemen also correspond nicely to the sorts of guys who make good pass protectors. Big, tall, wide dudes with long arms.

Of course as everyone has gone in that direction, it’s left a market inefficiency for teams who might zag with wide zone and collecting shorter, scrappy, quick dudes. The problem has been that you’d lose all the cutting edge tricks of modern offense such as zone-read, power-read, shotgun sweeps that count as forward passes, RPOs, all of it.

So what does the modern wide zone offense have to offer in comparison?