Le’Veon Bell’s wait-wait-wait style is so unique, the Pittsburgh Steelers have had the modify the way they coach their offensive linemen. This nugget comes from Mike Kuchar of X and O’Labs, one of my absolute favorite football-nerd websites.
He tweeted this bit of info out from Mike Munchak.
It sounds like Munchak was part of an offensive line clinic so fingers crossed for some more good nuggets of info going forward. We rarely hear from Munchak in general, much less anything specific and useful to stash away for when the season starts back up.
To explain on a broad sense, on zone runs, a covered and uncovered linemen will initially combo block a defensive linemen before the covered one peels off when the uncovered overtakes. But because of Bell’s patience, and never being sure exactly where he’s going to end up, it sounds like Munchak is teaching his linemen to hold that first level block longer.
That, I assume, will give Bell more time to press the hole and move the linebackers, in essence, taking care of the second level work for the offensive line. And that’s what makes Bell so good. His eye manipulation of linebackers with the lateral agility to execute. There isn’t a back in the league who can do that.
Of course, much credit goes to Coach Munch too. He’s the best in the business at what he does too and has turned the Steelers’ offensive line into a top five, arguably top three, unit coming off one of their best seasons ever. He’s adaptable, running every blocking scheme you can imagine, and clearly, has no problem tweaking how he coaches his line to benefit his back. That’s what the best leaders do.
