Howie Long On Fox Sports NFL Is Wrong: Zone Blocking Is Part Of West Coast Offense, Not An Offense
ONN – Howie Long On Fox Sports NFL Is Wrong: Zone Blocking Is Part Of West Coast Offense, Not An Offense – vlog by Zennie62 YouTube
On Fox Sports NFL Sunday this morning, and before the L.A. Rams at Green Bay Packers NFL Divisional Playoff Game, former Oakland Raiders Legend and NFL Hall of Famer, Howie Long made a statement about Zone Blocking and the West Coast Offense, that’s factually wrong.
He said that for decades the West Coast Offense was the favored system. He did not complete his thought, but then he said that “Zone Offense” was something that was brought into the league by former Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders Coach Mike Shanahan. That’s wrong.
All one has to do to learn this is go to Google and type “zone blocking west coast offense” to see this. There is no “Zone Offense”, but there is “zone blocking”. As the literature will tell you, the San Francisco 49ers under Bill Walsh and the legendary offensive line coach Bob McKittrick, popularized and refined the use of zone blocking in the 1980s.
Now, why did Howie Long say that? Because his producers told him to. Football strategy at a detailed level is not Mr. Long’s strength. The reason I know is because I talked to him about a particular play approach I thought the Las Vegas Raiders should use when we both were at the Raiders Sponsor Party at CES 2019 at the Skyfall Lounge in the Delano Hotel. It was the same one where I took this photo of myself, Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones, and someone who also wanted to be in the photo.
As I drew the play on a napkin, Howie told me that he wasn’t the x and o specialist, or words to that effect. Sadly, for me, the comment stopped what would have been a fun talk about technical football. But that’s my thing; he’s a good man, nonetheless.
Stay tuned.
Note from Zennie62Media’s Zennie62 YouTube and Oakland News Now Today Blog SF Bay Area: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.