As we close the season out with a review of a tough win over Liberty, let’s look at it through the efforts of two Virginia Tech redshirt-seniors.

Jalen Holston and the Return of the Split Zone

The offense sure surprised me on Saturday when, instead of trying to work the edges, Tech went with Inside Zone variations, and of those, they ran almost exclusively Split Zone. The Hokies not only doubled-down on Split Zone, they made it work. And on just about all of those runs, Jalen Holston had the rock.

Split Zone with a wing (which for most teams is just “Split Zone,” which is what we’ll call it) was the cornerstone of the Joe Moorhead offense, and it was the greatest coaching commonality among Tyler Bowen, Joe Rudolph, and Brad Glenn, meaning the call was almost assured to be the Hokies’ foundational play. And it has been. But despite looking good in the Spring Game, the Hokies couldn’t get it to click in the regular season…until they went to Lynchburg.

Split Zone works like a combined zone/gap play. The guys on the line of scrimmage all block in one direction in traditional zone fashion, while the wingback pulls on a “slice” block and kicks out the end like you’d see in a gap play like Counter. The kickout block creates a hard gap for the back, while the zone blocking both pulls the defense away from that gap and it gives the defensive front a long, nebulous stretch of gaps to defend. Unlike most gap plays, though, there isn’t someone leading through the hole, so the back has to figure out if the defense is leaving that gap open or not.

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