I played tackle in 9-10 playground ball….

Yeah, they should have blocking assignments such as on, over, play side, back side. It’s really not rocket science…

Played guard in jr high and high school. OLine coaches always preached, if you don’t know who to block, hit the first odd color jersey you see. Check the inside backer first. Always protect inside first then fan out. Have freakin peripheral vision. It’s not rocket science folks. For the life of me I cannot understand how lineman can just let someone go by them unmolested at times.

Do you have any eligibility left?

They absolutely do have assignments. Its a simple gap protection that they should all have memorized. You help if you have no one, but you gotta keep your eyes open for a backer flying up on your gap.

Ive seen these rookies forget their gap assignment just because the defender is coming in after the initial pop up.

this is a very interesting discussion. I played ball too but was never really involved with the o-line and didn’t understand the voodoo instructions they had on each play or who was responsible for what. I was buddies w most of those linemen though and they weren’t a bunch of rocket surgeons. That said, they did a pretty damn good job, often against dudes a lot bigger. I think our coaches knew how to dumb things down just enough to make the system work. They tailored it to our talent level and created an average to above average unit which performed slightly above the sum of their natural abilities.

LSU would prob be in the playoffs w a unit like that. One that was well versed in some very simple fundamentals like “if you don’t know who your man is…”