CFLThe block: Where courage trumps technique

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Weston Dressler (7) says a good block can turn a small play into a big one. (John Woods/Canadian Press)

Weston Dressler's internal slow motion replay machine can bring up the memory of the block in an instant.

It was the rookie season for the now established star receiver, and Saskatchewan was in Hamilton where Darian Durant hit the little rookie with what looked to be a 10-yard reception for a first down.

In stepped wide receiver Matt Dominguez, who stepped into his man beautifully.

"It wasn't a big hit, by any means, but he made a block and it sprung the play and that's what made the play a big play," said Dressler, in the quiet of a Toronto hotel lobby. 

"It took the play from a first down to a 60 yard [gain]."

The block. Knocking an onrushing defender down. Getting in their way. Keeping them out of the play if you are a receiver, or keeping them off the quarterback as a running back.

It seems so simple, and yet is one of the toughest things for a football player to learn, and especially to learn to do well.

One part technique mixed with two parts courage, its importance has never changed in football as so many other things have waxed and waned going back to when McGill and Harvard played in 1874 using a ball that really was the skin of a pig.

Football is filled with players who did it well, and thrived, and those who couldn't do it and saw their career die. It also features offensive players so good at what they do that their lack of blocking ability, or inclination, is overlooked.

Teammates will love you if you can do it, however.

"It's definitely one of those things people notice when you are doing it well," says Dressler, who does it well. 

"When you are outside [the play as a receiver] it can be easy to take a play off when we're running the ball up the middle, but you never know when a back is going to break one and bounce outside.

"All of a sudden, [the back] is 10 yards down the field and running into the defensive back that was over the top of you."

In other words, you missed that block and everyone knows. If they don't know, they'll surely see it the next day when the team gathers to watch film.

"The eye in the sky don't lie," says Brandon West, a rookie running back out of Western Michigan trying to make a name for himself in the CFL with the Riders. 

A cliché, yes, but right on when it comes to who misses, and who gets those blocks.

"A guy my size has to be a tough sucker," says West, who is 5-10 and 190 or so pounds. "You have to go in there and block somebody. That's the 'every down back' - a guy who can block is the every down back, and that's what I want to be considered as," he says.

If you can't block, you see, they take you out on obvious passing plays.

One of West's favourite highlights features Jacksonville's Maurice Jones-Drew, at 200 or so pounds, destroying San Diego's Shawne Merriman, at 270, with a devastating block a few years back (on You Tube, if you'd like to see it). 

That epitomizes what a running back wants to do when he's protecting his quarterback. And it shows how you do it from the backfield. You attack the guy, not wait for him to come to you.

"If you stand there and wait on them, they are going to get you every time," says West, who credits veteran coach Bob Stanley, at Western Michigan, with showing him how blocking is done properly. "No matter how tall you are, or how much you weigh, if you wait on it, they get you.

"So you might as well go and get him, before he gets you."

It has ever been thus. 

Argo legend Nick Volpe, who joined the Double Blue in 1948, and has since coached, managed and been a personnel director, says good blocking is, with tackling, one of the two basics of football.

And, it can be taught properly. Confidence created by good teaching can create courage.

"If the guy is confident about what he's doing, he'll do a better job," Volpe says, turning to golf as an example. "If a guy doesn't have it up here ... everybody can hit the ball, but you have to have it up here ... 'I know I can hit it up the middle' ... 'I know I'm going to tackle this guy.'"

So how much is technique and how much is courage?

Volpe says 60-40 courage. West thinks perhaps as much as 75-25.

"If you don't have the courage to block, you aren't going to block," West says. "You can't go after a guy with fear in your heart."

He believes it's 75-25 because "you can sometimes get away with bad technique, as long as you have the courage to stay on a guy and make contact."

With so much attention now being paid to YAC yards (Yards after Catch) in pro football now, those open field blocks are much more in the spotlight.

"As a receiver, when you catch a short pass and try to turn up field, there's no better sight than seeing two of your fellow receivers working their butts off, knocking two guys out of the way, clearing the way for you to run with the ball," Dressler says. 

Older folks tend to say that nothing is the same as it used to be. Including the quality of blocking. Volpe doesn't buy that when it comes to good blockers.

"It's not a lost art," the old artist says. "You can still pick out the good blockers out there. Absolutely."

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