Aug. 21, 2009

By Lee Pace
Extra Points

No matter the coach, no matter the era, no matter the hair style and tie width of the day, no matter what's hot in college football--from the split-back veer of the late-1970s to the I-formation of the 1990s to the four-wides of recent times -- one of the constants of daily football practice is the 1-on-1 pass protection drill.

It was during these 10 to 15 minutes on Navy Field over the years that Lawrence Taylor, at 240 pounds, bull-rushed 300-pound tackles, grabbed them by the shoulder pads and pitched them into the weeds behind Parker Dorm. Here Vonnie Holliday perfected his version of the Reggie White "hump move," where he'd fake a step in one direction, get the blocker to commit, then club the opponent with his inside arm and cut to the opposite side. Marcus Jones used his herculean upper body strength to overpower a guard and knock him into the quarterback on one snap, then change it up with an aggressive rip and spin the next rep. Offensive players have enjoyed their moments as well in notching a pancake block on a "clerk"--a derisive tag for a weak defensive lineman, the kind of "guy who should be carrying your groceries to the car." Jason Brown certainly comes to mind.

While the lithe and speedy athletes are perfecting the passing game going 7-on-7 on one side the Tar Heels' practice expanse, the big burlies are hooting and hollering on the other side as they fight mano-a-mano in an exercise that puts the microscope on their skills--the offensive players' ability to protect the quarterback and their opposites' wherewithal in hounding the passer to the ground, or, at the least, into a squirrely throw. Guffaws flow fast and furious from the onlookers on the victorious side.

"It's basically the only 1-on-1 competitive drill we do," guard Alan Pelc says. "It's just one guy on offense, one on defense, we execute and have a clear winner and a clear loser. That's the reason guys get jacked up. We're competitive by nature and someone wins every rep. The competition is fun, but it's a great drill also because it helps us get better."

"The drill definitely brings out our competitiveness," adds tackle Kyle Jolly. "People take it real serious and try to get after it."

Defensive end E.J. Wilson notes the defense's limited success in 2008 in nailing the quarterback--only 22 sacks, next to last in the ACC--making the development of the linemen's rush skills paramount as the clock ticks toward the opening of the 2009 season.

"Last year, getting to the quarterback was not one of our strong points, so it's an important part of getting better," Wilson says. "It's just you, the offensive guy, the camera and the coach. If you mess up, it's on you. There's no one to blame it on. All eyes are on you. Any flaws in your technique get exposed quickly. It's a competitive drill and we look forward to it."

The maneuver is conducted almost daily, usually about halfway through a two-hour schedule. The football is placed on the ground and five offensive linemen take their splits across the line of scrimmage, with four defensive counterparts aligned across the way. The center snaps the ball, often to a manager who plays the role of quarterback, and one designated offensive player and his defensive counterpart react on the snap. The blocker "kicks" into position--back straight, head up, weight over the tailbone, hands in front of the numbers. The defender charges across the line and the battle ensues until he gets to the quarterback or is held off for about five seconds. Then it's on down the line to the next pair, over and over again.

It's football's version of the snake pit. It's part martial arts--it's hand-to-hand combat and keeping the opponent's hands off you. It's part boxing--a jab and a counter. It's part baseball pitching--with the defender having to have at least three good "pitches" and knowing how to set each one up. There's the bull rush, the speed rush, the rip and the swim, among many moves.

And it's part World Wide Wrestling--with two heaving behemoths, sweat coursing down their massive arms and heaving stomachs, grunting and grimacing and straining with every fiber of their being, the offensive players cocooned in knee braces, neck wraps and forearm pads.

"You see the competitiveness of the player, you see a little more of what he's made of in this drill," offensive line coach Sam Pittman says. "You want guys to step up and compete against the best we have. If a guy loses, I want it to bother him. I want it to bother him a lot. I want him to get over it, but I want it to bother him. I want competitive guys."

"There are no distractions going 1-on-1," adds defensive line coach John Blake. "The quarterback's not scrambling, there are no stunts, there's no looking for the run. We coach it on the field but just as much on film later that night. What does your take-off look like? How are you knocking down his hands? Are you too high, too low? It's a great drill to fine-tune technique."

The drill is skewed somewhat in favor of the defense, as there is no traffic around the defender and his only concern is in rushing the passer. And there's no question that Carolina has enjoyed more riches of talent on defense the last two decades--witness 18 NFL draft picks since 1989 from the defensive line and five from the O-line.

"I've got some good film of Vonnie Holliday, Greg Ellis, Rick Terry and those guys," says Kenny Browning, the Tar Heels' running backs coach who tutored the defensive front during the Nineties heyday. "They were dominating. If you had a really good move, I used that drill to help them develop a counter to it. All of them had something that was their `go-to' move. They would win with it almost every time. We'd use the 1-on-1 period to teach them something new and get them to perfect it before game time."

Checkmate for the offensive player is getting his hands locked on the rusher (grabbing and holding is legal as long as the hands are inside the frame of the body)--"Whoever has his hands inside, wins," says Pittman. Accomplishing that requires excellent body position to "cover up" the defender and keep your body squarely between the defender and the quarterback. Spacing is important; the closer the blocker is to his opponent, the better.

"If you keep your hands inside, your feet are established and you're low to the ground, you've won the rep," Pelc says.

"We want less space, they want more space," Jolly says. "We want them to be right next to us, they want space to use their athletic skills to do their juking and jiving, to get us to lunge one way or the other."

One thread that runs through Pittman's exhortations to his players is for them to have "patient hands."

"You wait for them to make their move, to show their hand," says Jolly, "so you'll know what to attack. If the defensive end is going to speed rush, they'll dip their shoulder, so we're waiting for them to dip their shoulder and then we attack that move."

Checkmate for the defensive player is getting off the ball fast, particularly if you're playing on the edge; if you're too quick, the blocker can't hold you. That's harder to do in the interior of the line, thus the cat-and-mouse contest of keeping the blocker's hands at bay is paramount.

"Get his hands down, that's the key," Wilson says. "Knock them down. If he gets his hands on you, he has the edge and you're probably not going to get to the quarterback."

Butch Davis coached the defensive line at Miami in the late 1980s and then at Dallas in the NFL during the early 1990s. He had great players under his tutelage at both stops and saw how defensive domination at times early in training camp helped the team's offense come October.

"All the 1-on-1 reps that offensive linemen go through pay dividends," Davis says. "It's baptism under fire. The offensive lines at Miami got better every day because they had to block Cortez Kennedy or Jerome Brown or Russell Maryland. You had to work on their confidence level so that every day they could see they were getting better. They got into the season and found out what was tough during training camp turned out to be a blessing."

The Tar Heels will need those blessings come the season as they are understaffed along the all-important O-line (two losses to graduation, two to attrition and one to injury), so freshmen like Travis Bond and Brennan Williams are tossed to the wolves every day to learn the difficult skill of pass protection.

"Those guys have been like sponges, soaking everything up," center Lowell Dyer notes. "Pass blocking in high school is pretty easy--you just lock on and take a guy for a ride. At this level, it's different."

Tune in next month as the O-line erects a fence around T.J. Yates and the D-line storms the opposing quarterback. As the age-old 1-on-1 drill attests, there's more to those efforts than meets the eye.

---

Lee Pace is in his 20th year of writing about Tar Heel football through his popular "Extra Points" feature. Look for another installment next Friday. Pace can be reached at leepace7@gmail.com.