Blocking Kicks - The Take Off, Bend and Approach

How Montclair State blocked 29 kicks in three years
by: Mike Kuchar
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Think special teams isn’t as vital a part of the game as offense and defense? You ever sit back and think about what type of effect Appalachian State’s win over Michigan last year in the Big House had on the landscape of college football? Sure, Big Blue rebounded to have a productive season. What Appalachian State did on that Saturday afternoon in early September was not only pull off a made-for-TV Hollywood style upset, but it got every coach who was fortunate enough to be watching that game on TV scratching their heads thinking, “Am I really seeing this? Did a Division I-AA school just knock off a top-25 team?” They did, and they did it with special teams by blocking two field goals. What’s worse (for Michigan fans) is that App State predicted it. Coach Jerry Moore, through film study, detected a weakness in the Wolverines field goal unit and went after it. Mighty Michigan was exposed and on national TV, none the less. So Appalachian State’s early season heroics brought special teams to the limelight. But the act of blocking a kick almost has become the lost art – the lunar eclipse in watching a football game. You never really expect it but when it does happen, it happens big. It doesn’t take a junior Belichick to go back and check all of last year’s games and realize that some form of special teams contributed to the outcome of that game – whether it was a field position swing, a blocked kick or a missed extra point. Sooner or later you come to the realization that much like dominant offenses and defenses, a stalwart special teams unit could keep you in games. Virginia Tech and ‘Beamer Ball’ have made a living off of that concept for years now – he was smart enough to realize how important it is. But the fact is more and more teams are committing to establishing not just a solid special teams unit, but dominant ones. The passive prior mindset of a ‘just get the kick off’ philosophies morphed into an aggressive, opportunistic mindset.

It’s that type of attitude that special teams coach Mike Cieri possesses when it comes to his units at D-III Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. The Red Hawks have blocked 29 total kicks (PAT, punt) in the last three seasons – the highest ratio in the country in that short a time period. As usual, there is a method to his madness and he’d be the first to tell you that it’s been a long time coming. “Without question special teams is the most under coached and under respected facet of football,” says Cieri. “Many players and coaches alike think that you could just put some athletes on the field, put their hand down and go get a kick. There’s a ton of technicalities that goes into it.” It is these technicalities of blocking a kick – such as the take-off, bend and approach – that Cieri shared with American Football Monthly.

THE TAKE-OFF

According to Cieri, it is without question that take-off is the most important element in blocking a kick but the hardest component to teach. Although it is the responsibility of the coach to seek and find the best possible players capable of blocking a kick, Cieri warns that just searching for speed may not be the answer. Take-off has a lot more to do with technique than just running fast at the snap. Like most other football fundamentals, the key to getting a good take-off is the proper stance. Cieri teaches a heel-to-toe stagger, allowing for a tighter and compact first step off the ball. “The biggest mistake that beginners make is they take too long a first step off the ball and their chest raises up,” said Cieri. “We don’t want to take an elongated first step. We want those guys on the punt team reaching for you in order to block you. Don’t just run into them. A lot of times they don’t focus on that and they become too anxious; when the ball is snapped they are waiting on the line of scrimmage frozen in time. We want them to be flat-backed and to fire out, not up. They have to get out of the gate in a hurry. So we really work on shortening the first step on the take-off.”

The butt should be slightly up with the arm raised. Raising the off arm puts the weight on the fingers so they have to go forward. Much like a defensive lineman, their down hand replaces the foot that is back. Depending on what side of the ball you are on, that foot is back. Little tricks help take-off like watching the twitch of the center’s fingers. Cieri will assess the abilities of take-off by using his take-off drill (See Diagram 1). He’ll line up eight to nine players shoulder to shoulder in length and give them a normal punt cadence. Once the ball is snapped, they will sprint ahead for 11 yards (simulating a punt block point, which we will address later). “They’ll do about five reps of these, usually in the beginning of practice,” said Cieri. “We put the stopwatch on them and our goal is to get to the point in under 1.9 seconds. We feel that if we get there in that time, we got a pretty good shot of getting it. It’s at that point where we’ll start weeding them out. The quicker guys will become outside rushers. Once we establish that, we start teaching the bend.”

Diagram 1: Take off drill

THE BEND

The second aspect of blocking the kick is making the bend. According to Cieri, the bend occurs when the rusher has the proper take-off and is ready to ‘bend’ into the point where the ball is being kicked. Cieri, also the defensive line coach at Montclair State, relates the bend facet of kick blocking to an effective pass rush. “Just like a defensive line pass rush, we only want to explode up field for about three steps. After the third step, we want to begin our bend technique. When we are even (hip to hip) with the opposing player trying to block us, we’re leaving. We try to get our inside hip even with his hip, then point that inside foot directly at the block point. Once they do this, they should drive and rip their near hand through the outside pad of the blocker and be able to replace his feet as you blow past him. In the game it doesn’t always happen that way but you’re teaching them the perfect form.”

According to Cieri, the block point is where the kicker exposes the ball and it generally depends on the punter. Two-step punters who setup at a depth of 15 yards have a block point of 11 yards from the line of scrimmage. However, most high school punters block point is at 9-9.5 yards because they are not as deep. Cieri stresses the act of ‘staring at the block point’ for his blockers. In fact, he emphasizes this in the bend drill (See Diagram 2) by placing a giant red ‘X’ on the turf to represent the block point. Now he’ll add a demo team for a regular spread punt setup. He’ll place a cone about four yards deep from the ball. Once the rusher gets up field to that cone, he’ll begin his bend and get to the block point. “They should be visualizing that giant X and getting there,” said Cieri. “They always accelerate to the block point. We work on torquing the body and hands. We try to get a rip and a bend at the same time. We either knock the arm down or knock it up and come underneath. If you are not by the guy in three steps, you may need to take two more. If you’re not there by then, you need to be off the punt rush unit.”

Diagram 2: Bend drill

THE APPROACH

Although getting a good take off and taking the proper angle to the kick is important, it certainly doesn’t guarantee a kick block. Cieri teaches an unorthodox style of approaching the kick by putting the hands down at the block point and running sideways, in order to provide for a bigger blocking surface. “My hands, which are interlocked at the thumbs, are going to be over the ball as I’m tilting my chest. We’re almost perpendicular to the line of scrimmage,” said Cieri. “Some kids look like Frankenstein, just reaching out for the ball not keeping their chest forward. It slows them down. If he doesn’t get a piece of the ball, at least he’s got more power. He has to put his hands down and swing his body. If his hands don’t get it, his body has a chance.”

Cieri bases how you approach the kicker on what side of his leg you are coming from. There have been plenty of roughing the kicker penalties because of body position that have been very costly and there is a certain way you can avoid them. “If you’re coming from the outside to the side of the kicker’s leg, you are allowed to cross over his leg to block the kick. If you are coming from the inside, like the A gap, and you are on the side of the kicker, you can’t cross his leg because you’ll get flagged. We’ll just get our hands down at the block point and run sideways so that if we miss the ball, we won’t run into him.” Cieri emphasizes pushing the ball to the ground on the block and not swatting at the kick and batting the ball.

THE SCHEME

Punt teams either rely on zone or man protection and Cieri has a productive answer for both. On zone protection teams, who make a living off kick sliding in their scheme, Cieri will put his best rusher as the farthest guy on the line of scrimmage, with an alignment of only one arm length outside the man he is aligned on. He’ll put his next best rusher directly next to him inside. Both players will speed rush right away, attacking the block point. Cieri believes that it takes three rushers on two blockers to block a kick. The inside rusher’s job is to make the zone blocker use his outside hand, thus turning his shoulders and opening up a rush lane. “He has to have the discipline not to get washed down into the guard. He has to occupy the tackle so that the tackle cannot reach the outside blocker. Since all teams believe in blocking the inside first, if the blocker can’t successfully block the inside rusher alone, he will require help by the wing. In that case, the outside player, and your best rusher, may have a clean release to the kick. Sometimes we’ll send the inside rusher right at the inside shoulder of the wing back, while the outside rusher will take three steps, plant and come underneath,” said Cieri. This stunt is known as the C-gap or Cyclone stunt (See Diagram 3).

Diagram 3: 'Cyclone stunt' zone protection

The most important coaching point against man protection teams is to use some form of hand-to-hand combat to get through the line of scrimmage. Whatever the case, in man blocking schemes, it is most important to not try to continually fight if the punt team player gets his hands on you. “If you ever watch you’ll see guys that try to continually fight through; the blocker cuts off another guy that is supposed to block the kick. We’ll just try to grab our guy and pull him towards us so that he’s ineffective in doing so,” said Cieri. “The bottom line is that it’s not the scheme that wins games. It’s finding a weak link and utilizing your best guys with their best technique to make a play.”

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