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Alaskan
The 1st Round Pick
Allow me to clarify, if I may.
We have been far more effective with the outside zone and stretch plays than we have with the inside zone, although I wouldn’t necessarily put this on Torain. It may reflect more on the skill set of our offensive linemen.
However, the outside zone and stretch plays still involve a cutback. When the defense maintains the gaps and take away the cutback lanes, Torain lacks the speed to beat them to the outside. He is better off in that case, turning up field anyway, accepting a short gain rather than extending the play to the sideline.
Neither the quickness of his cuts nor his burst through the hole are particularly impressive unlike what you would expect of a good outside runner. However, once he makes those cuts two factors that are particularly impressive come into play. One is his obvious lower body strength and his balance. With the defense running laterally to the line of scrimmage and suddenly having to change directions as he cuts back, they can’t square up and make a clean hit on him. So while he may not have the sharpest cuts and the quickest bursts that allow him to hit those holes untouched, his strength and balance allow him to shed those tackles. Many times over the last two weeks, we saw him hit near the line of scrimmage and the next moment he was 10 yards down the field.
This is very much in contrast with Portis who seems to run outside in an almost unbalanced manner and relies on his burst to get free. Torain seems to run outside the tackles like a strong inside runner and although he probably won’t break off many 70 yarders, he did break off 3 20+ gains (all in the 4th quarter.)
The announcers made a big deal during the replay of the third and one play, in the 4th quarter with about 4 minutes left, about how Torain did not follow his blockers who got a push to the right while he cut it back to the left right into the arms of the DE and OLB on the left side. However, following the blockers would have meant that it was man blocking rather than zone blocking. I suspect that the play was designed to cut back to the left and that the failure was on left side of the defensive line that didn't seal off the back side of the play. Maybe the DE took a strong inside move and the guard and tackle couldn’t handle him. I don’t have a recording (being geographically challenged and all) but it would be interesting to see what the left guard and tackle were doing on that play because they sure didn’t seem to block anybody. Keep in mind that in a zone blocking scheme, the runner’s cutback actually helps create the cutback lane as the defensive line runs themselves out of the play. So the runner actually has to commit to the cutback before it is really there. But for it to work, the back side has to be sealed off. During the Indy game the announcers pointed out how we were committing a blocker (often Sellers) to sealing off the Colts fast DE’s. It looked to me like we didn’t seal off on this particular play.
Perhaps someone with a recording could enlighten us.
) But we don't really know how the play is designed. I just saw the play and the replay and during the replay was focued on Aikman's analysis and didn't really pay attention to what Williams and Lictensteiger were doing. 