Quarterback Outside Zone/Bubble RPO

By Chad Stadem
Head Coach/Offensive Coordinator
Washington High School (SD)
Twitter: @Mr_Stadem

Introduction:

There are many ways to have the quarterback run the football. Power, inverted veer, zone read, and midline read are among the most effective in today’s game. Another way to run the quarterback is with your zone game. We like to use outside zone with our quarterback to add another option for our run game without needing more practice time to perfect it.

QB Zone Basics:

We are an up-tempo, inside/outside zone team at Sioux Falls Washington. We have been fortunate the past few years to have good linemen and running backs to perform this type of run scheme. We have also had some good running quarterbacks as well. We believe in having multiple formations and keep our scheme simple enough to be able to run our schemes effectively. One play we like to run at teams is the quarterback outside zone. We will also add a simple RPO to these runs to make the defense defend more than just the run scheme. We feel that a running quarterback puts additional stress on the defense, and in some formations, we can gain an additional blocker by using our running back as a lead blocker. 

We teach our quarterbacks to run the outside zone just as our running backs would. During our mesh period, our QBs run the OZ play just like our running backs would, along with the same gap reads. With a tight end or H back, we read the C gap. With no tight end, we read the offensive tackle’s block. We like having our running back as a lead blocker because he already knows how to read the blocking. We find this to be an efficient way to add an additional blocker to the scheme.  We run the running back lead from the pistol and the gun.