Free blocking zone

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Brandon Kincer

Can someone please explain the free blocking zone to me?

Depends what kind of explanation you want. Do you want a general rationale?

When it was realized long ago that hits on the back of a leg had a propensity to tear anterior cruciate ligaments, which are thin and the tearing of which produces a "trick knee", clipping was outlawed, but with two pragmatic compromises: it would still be allowed against a ballcarrier, and in some vicinity (in space and time) of where the ball was snapped. That vicinity wasn't well specified at first, but soon it was defined in space as a rectangle known as the "free blocking zone" (FBZ), called the "scrimmage zone" or "close line play area" in other codes. Since that formulation, its dimensions in NCAA & Fed have been reduced twice, to where it is now delimited by lines 3 yards on either side forward and back of the ball as ready for play, and 4 yards left and right.

Also other restrictions on blocking below the waist regardless of direction were adopted because why shouldn't the other knee ligaments get protection too? And more recently blocking in the back even above the waist. The FBZ was incorporated as an area of exception in the case of blocking in the back, but in an opposite manner in the case of blocking below the waist in NCAA & NFL, where players who outside the FBZ at the snap were prohibited from doing so in the FBZ. Later this last was amended to also prohibit it by backs who were in motion at the snap if that motion had not been entirely within the FBZ.

The temporal extent of the FBZ is manifest by its dissolving when the ball leaves it. This produces a difficult call in Fed for blocks below the waist that occur in the initial line charge while the ball is being snapped to a point outside the FBZ. Some state HSAs using Fed have instructed their officials to rule in such cases that either the ball will always have left the zone before the contact is initiated, or that the contact will have always been initiated before the ball has left the zone, depending on the State.

Robert in the Bronx