The Texans zone blocking scheme continues to be the target for a lot of discussion this month as the running game comes under preseason scrutiny. Steph Stradley talked about the success in power situations and how they differentiated from the regular success at the line, as spurred on by a commenter on her blog:
↵↵↵That said, it really does look like the "zone blocking teams struggle near the goal line" thing is just true. Here are the rankings by first Adjusted Line Yards and then power situation success rate for the Denver lines Dennison was responsible for, either as OL coach (2001-2005) or OC (2006-2008):
↵2001: 10th, 12th
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2002: 1st, 16th
2003: 9th, 17th
2004: 8th, 27th
2005: 3rd, 9th
2006: 18th, 16th
2007: 15th, 32nd
2008: 1st, 10th
I'd add the following splits into this discussion, with the caveat that I don't have this year's Football Outsiders book yet:
↵Texans DVOA/Red Zone DVOA
↵2008: 11.0%/-15.6% (14th/27th)
↵2007: 5.6%/3.6% (13th/15th)
↵2006: -2.5%/25.0% (17th/eighth)
↵Broncos
↵2008: 24.0%/1.5% (second/21st)
↵2007: 7.6%/7.6% (10th/14th)
↵2006: -8.3%/-3.4% (23rd/18th)
↵When you have to go back to 2006 to find the last time one of these teams were better in the red zone than they were on the other 80 yards on the field, thats a pretty telling sign to me that something is fishy. Idle speculation here, but perhaps now that the ZBS is more widespread, teams have learned how to exploit it's weaknesses? Particularly when they have less field to cover?
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