Zone Insert & Pin & Pull: Simple Tweaks, Big Plays for Indiana

In Indiana’s CFP semifinal matchup against Oregon, the Hoosiers didn’t reinvent the wheel in the run game they just made it harder to defend. We saw plenty of the usual suspects: zone read, split zone, duo, and outside zone. But two simple variations Zone Insert and Pin & Pull created some of the biggest explosive plays of the night.

What stood out wasn’t complexity. It was how Indiana isolated defenders at the point of attack and forced Oregon to be wrong with numbers and leverage. For high school coaches, this is a great example of how small tweaks within familiar schemes can lead to massive gains.

Zone Insert

Oregon lines up in a four-man front with two linebackers in the box, while Indiana shows a winged trips formation to the field. Pre-snap, the Hoosiers motion the wing across the formation and Oregon responds by walking both interior linebackers out of the box and into the alley.

I’m not entirely sure what problem Oregon thought they were solving here, but Indiana was more than happy to take the answer.

Indiana runs what looks like inside zone to the front side while being man-blocked on the backside. Some coaches refer to this as Zone Lock, I simply call it Base. From a rules standpoint, this mirrors half-slide pass protection, which makes it an easy install and a clean rep for offensive linemen.

The H (wing) is responsible for inserting on the backside linebacker. With that linebacker vacating the box, the H climbs all the way to the safety and gets an easy isolation block. The running back presses the track and cuts it through the backside A gap for a 12-yard gain.

Clean rules. Clean picture. Easy yards.