Blocking (American football)

Some teams base their entire offense on it, including the NFL's Washington Commanders, New Orleans Saints, Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, Green Bay Packers, and Los Angeles Rams.

The University of Michigan also started using zone blocking under head coach Lloyd Carr in the 2006 season, and continued to do so under his successor, Rich Rodriguez.

The power running game became stagnant, and especially ineffective in goal-line/short yardage situations, thus resulting in Henning's firing and the switch to zone blocking.

Thanks in part to the new blocking scheme they implemented, the Panthers saw their 2008 campaign characterized by the running of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart to great effect, gaining them play off status.

For example, in a run-based spread attack like West Virginia's the primary responsibility of receivers is less to catch passes than to execute downfield blocks, springing the ball carrier and extending the run.

Interference developed out of a practice called "guarding"; run by Princeton, wherein a player ran at each side of the runner, but not in advance.

During the 1880s and 1890s, teams developed increasingly complex blocking tactics including the interlocking interference technique known as the Flying wedge or "V-trick formation", which was first employed by Richard Hodge at Princeton in 1884 in a game against Penn, however, Princeton put the tactic aside for the next 4 years, only to revive it again in 1888 to combat the three-time All-American Yale guard Pudge Heffelfinger.

Heffelfinger soon figured out how to break up the formation by leaping high in the air with his legs tucked under him, striking the V like a human cannonball.

In 1892, during a game against Yale, Harvard fan and student Lorin F. Deland first introduced the flying wedge as a kickoff play.

Despite their effectiveness, the flying wedge, "V-trick formation" and other tactics which involved interlocking interference, were outlawed in 1905 through the efforts of the rule committee led by Parke H. Davis, because of its contribution to serious injury.