Playbooks
Wide Zone Wk is an outside zone run out of Singleback Doubles South that stretches the defense laterally before letting the HB find a crease. The offensive line and TE flow together to the play side, reach blocking defenders to create a wall while the HB presses the edge and reads his blockers from the outside in. This is a run play, not a play-action or RPO, and the primary read progression starts with the play side edge defender's block, then works inside through the double team at the point of attack to the backside cutback lane if the front flows too hard.
Check the play side defensive end and outside linebacker alignment before the snap since a wide nine or heavy edge set can blow up the reach block and force an immediate cutback Watch for a Mike linebacker or user defender flowing hard downhill to the play side, which signals the backside cutback lane is the better track Identify safety depth and rotation since an eight man front with the strong safety cheating into the box will outnumber the zone blocking scheme and stuff the run Look for a scrape exchange from the defensive end to a linebacker crashing the backside gap, which is designed to defeat outside zone cutback lanes This run beats light boxes and cover 2 or cover 3 shells with passive linebackers, but it gets shut down by run blitzes, contain schemes that stay disciplined on the edge, and heavy fronts stacked with extra defenders in the box
Attack light boxes with six or fewer defenders in the box since the outside zone stretch needs numbers advantage on the edge to work
Use pre-snap motion or a quick check to identify if the defense is showing a run fit with a hard flowing linebacker crew, which opens the backside cutback
Hot route the play side WR into a stalk or crack block versus press corners on the perimeter to seal the edge defender if he is aligned wide
Pair this with HB Dive and HB Draw from the same personnel to keep the defense guessing between inside and outside zone tempo without changing your formation tendency
Call this on early downs like first and ten or second and short to stay ahead of the sticks and set up PA Rollout or PA Jet Sweep off the same zone action later in the series