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Wednesday, August 30, 2000
The war zone
Interior linemen take a pounding every time the ball is snapped
By Lee Goddard
Caller-Times
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| David Adame/Caller-Times |
| Just before the offense's center snaps the ball to the quarterback, this is the view from the nose guard's standpoint. The scene is repeated about 50 times during the average high school football game. |
Each Saturday morning this fall, Phillip Brown will struggle to get out of bed. He will ache throughout, and his head will feel the effects of head-butting an opponent approximately 50 times the night before.
And all across the country, anyone who entrenches himself at center or nose guard will - literally - feel Brown's pain.
"I feel like I just got the crap kicked out of me," said Brown, a center at Carroll High School, of his Saturday mornings. "You're sore all over - your arms, your legs. You don't want to get out of bed. You feel as if you were in a fight the night before."
He was in a fight. The contact between interior linemen is as brutal as any place on the football field. The hitting is violent, the trash talking nasty and the gamesmanship vicious.
"They kind of hit you in your parts that you don't want to be hit," said Brown, an all-district center as a sophomore last season. "They step on your fingers, they'll try to get their facemasks and grind it into your hands. It's easy to work up hate for a nose guard."
'Nowhere for them to go'
Between the lines, it doesn't take long for the dislike to surface. On a typical play, the center breaks from the huddle and examines the defense, looking at what formation he's facing and which man he will be blocking.
He will face a variety of defenders, but usually must deal with defensive tackles or nose guards that line up in three- or five-man fronts.
While most nose guards line straight up against Refugio center Trace Claybrook, Brown finds most of his opponents line up slightly at an angle, trying to penetrate the gap between center and guard. Regardless of how he slants, the nose guard is almost always the center's man.
One defenders' goal will differ from another. Orange Grove nose guard Josh Noel is so small by interior line standards (5-11, 168), that he relies on quickness and is called upon to make tackles. Calallen's David Monroe, however, is not asked to rack up tackles. He just needs to divert as many offensive linemen as possible to help other teammates to make the play.
"I have to occupy people," said Monroe, a senior. "My main job is to plug the holes and make sure there is nowhere for them to go."
'Facemask to facemask'
Once the center spots his target - and calls for a double team if needed - it's crouch down and, for Brown and Claybrook, one hand on the ball, ready to snap.
"With one hand, I have the ball facing straight," Brown said, "and when I go to snap, I turn it so it's in the quarterback's hands and perfect for him if he needs to throw. I have the other hand free to punch the nose guard as soon as he comes off the ball."
With the snap comes the first collision. Helmet to helmet.
"The head-butting is straight up," said Claybrook, a senior. "Facemask to facemask."
Ground is lost and won back as the combatants try to gain leverage on each other. Blocking resembles a heavyweight brawl: slugging, punching, uppercuts to the jaw, headslaps, forearm shivers, clinching and pushing off until - and sometimes after - the whistle blows.
Defense's point of view
The defense has different ways of gauging success. While the center must absolutely block his man out of the play, nose guards don't have to make the play to consider it a victory. Monroe, who lines straight over the center, often gets tangled up in double teams, while Noel slants in one direction to attempt to wedge between the center and guard.
If he makes the play, fine. If not, he's likely occupying two blockers.
But even if the center takes care of his man, there's always the chance to really break a play open with an extra block.
"A center is either going to open the hole up or take care of the second level," Claybrook said. "The hole that the offensive line makes, well, the center can get that plugger coming up into that hole."
'I give ground a little'
If a pass play is called, the techniques are different. But the collisions are still jarring.
This is what Brown prefers. He has long arms to keep the defenders at bay, making pass protection his personal favorite.
"I give ground a little," he said, "especially when they're bull-rushing, when they try to overpower you. If you try to be too aggressive, they'll make one move and get by you."
While backing up, Brown forms a triangle with both hands, with the thumbs as the base. The idea is to get control inside of the defender and rein in his ability to move.
"We get our thumbs together and punch," Brown said. "Whoever gets the inside wins the battle. I can get my hands inside on his shoulder pads and hold on. Once we've got them there, we control the whole match."
And if you control the match, you get the upper hand in the war of words. While players say crowd noise is easy to block out, they find it difficult to tune out one another.
"There's more trash-talking on the inside," Noel said. "The officials don't hear it as much, so there's more on the lines than the skill positions. They say all sorts of things. I know you can't print what gets said in there."
"It's ungodly what gets said in there," added Claybrook.
But, according to Brown, as the game goes on and it's apparent who is winning the individual battle, the talking gradually ceases from one side of the line.
Silencing an opponent is one of the few personal rewards of playing in the trenches. But being on the line does have its moments.
"When you see a linebacker blitzing and pick him up, it feels good," Brown said. "You probably made that one key block to give the quarterback that extra bit of time, or the running back the hole to get through."
And that's the antidote to the pain centers like Brown are sure to feel the next morning.
Staff writer Lee Goddard can be reached at 886-3613 or by e-mail at goddardl@caller.com
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