The Opening Drive 7/20: Todd Moken's Schemes to Know -- Wham and Crunch
Built like trap but with more bodies at the point of attack and quite aesthetically pleasing.
We spent time yesterday on how Todd Monken loves to use trap in his run game profile. The block works by telling one lineman one lie and exposing the running lanes. crunch works by telling that same lie to multiple defenders at the same time, in different directions, on the same snap. If trap is a trick, crunch is the version where the magician has three hands going at once and dares you to watch all of them.
Start with the piece defenses actually recognize by name: the wham. Wham is functionally identical to a trap block — an interior defender is left unblocked, sold on a clean shot into the backfield, then hit from the side before he gets there. The only difference is the player delivering the blow. A trap uses a pulling guard. Wham uses a tight end or fullback coming across the formation, which means the man doing the hitting isn’t even an offensive lineman the defensive tackle has been coached to expect. He believes he’s unblocked because, technically, for a half-second, he is — right up until a skill player runs him over from an angle no defensive line coach drilled for that week.
Crunch is what happens when an offense stops choosing between those two blocks and runs both on the same play. A guard executes a true trap on one gap while a tight end or H-back wham-blocks a different defender elsewhere along the line, with the rest of the offensive line pulling and flowing in a scissor action that crosses in front of the quarterback.
It’s not a bigger version of trap so much as trap doubled — two or three defenders getting the same lie at once, two lanes of misdirection opening in opposite directions, and a runner who has to find whichever one actually closes.
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