O-Line Technique Drills to play like Trent Williams | Way to Play

Welcome to this week's episode of the NFL's Way to Play Performance Series. And on this episode, we're highlighting the great Trent Williams. If there were an NFL Mount Rushmore of the most physically dominating offensive linemen to ever play this game, without a doubt, Trent Williams would be up there. His physical dominance is what has separated him over his career. Now, what does it take to become a physically imposing offensive lineman? Well, we're gonna walk you through and talk you through the necessary skills and traits you will need to become as close as you can be to Trent Williams.

One of the things that makes Trent Williams so dominant as an offensive line athlete is his power and his explosiveness off the ball. But before we look at the impressive pancake blocks, we need to look at his stance and how his stance sets up all that power. Because offensive line athletes, they don't have a lot of time to generate that power. Contact comes relatively quickly. And because they're starting from a static position, unlike defensive linemen who are allowed to move before the snap, they have to make sure their stance is putting them in the best position to be explosive. Now, in Trent Williams' case, he has a really wide, powerful base. He has his feet solid in the ground, and he's able to explode off the ball on any angle. So we're going to give you a movement to include in your training that's going to replicate the stance and the base that Trent Williams plays out of, and all good offensive line athletes play out of as well. And that's going to be the sumo deadlift. Now why are we doing the sumo deadlift? We're doing the sumo deadlift because it takes us outside the frame of our body. Most of the movements that you do in training are gonna have your feet relatively under your hips and shoulders, but when we're on the field, we need to move through all these angles, and having a wide base is going to help us move through all those angles. So Boggs is gonna set up a sumo deadlift here with the band because not everyone has access to barbells or dumbbells. We're gonna show you how to use this movement with the band and get a lot of benefits out of it. Now if you notice, Boggs' feet here are really wide. He's creating 10 tension in the band, so that gives us a little bit more resistance. His feet are going to be all the way in the ground, slightly pointed off at an angle. Now, if we were looking at this stance, it would look very similar to the width of Trent Williams' stance, and even this is the stance that most centers play out of. So when we're setting up for the sumo deadlift, we're going to go down and grab the band. It's going to be hard to maintain kind of the stableness at the bottom because it's so low to the ground, but as we get set up, we want to make sure we pull the shoulders back, we're not slouching forward, and where our upper back is in a straight line with a little bit of a forward lean loading our hips. Now all Boggs is going to do is he's going to push force through the ground, stand up tall, make sure he's squeezing his glutes on the way through, really squeezing the butt, getting himself as tall as possible. We're going to go through a few reps here. Now, one thing that this movement does really well is it trains the inner muscles of the thigh, the adductors, the muscles that really help us pull our body in together and allow us to change direction quickly. Go ahead and do a few more reps. This movement is also good for building mobility as well, so you can get into a better stance. So one variation we like for this is pulsing at the bottom. So Boggs is going to go to as low as he can while maintaining good posture, and he's just going to squeeze up and down a few inches at a time. This is really building that bottom end strength that is going to improve your mobility and improve your functional strength on the field. Now, once you get a little more advanced, or if you have access to more equipment. You can use dumbbells and even barbells to get a little more of a load into the movement. But this is a movement that all offensive line athletes should do because it's so similar to the base of our stance, and it's going to build that strength in the stance so we can be more powerful off the ball.

Trent Williams' dominance is rooted in his horsepower off the ball. Whatever you want to call it, be it force, be it speed, be it velocity, he's got to figure out a way to get his body moving on angles quickly and effectively where he can dominate his defenders on those particular angles. Maybe he's moving defenders against his will, or he's getting to spots where he has to deal with contact and prevent them from getting to the quarterback. We have a drill for you today, and this drill is pretty simple. And all we're going to do is we're going to put you in a position where you have to really drive force through the ground and just kind of give you a little bit of principle of movement. If you want to go to the right, if you want to go to the left, you always have to push from the opposite direction that you're trying to go. Think about if you were in a race and me and Josh were in a race and we're trying to run and see who can beat each other. Well, we gotta push force behind us through the ground as fast as possible to go forward. So that principle, we're gonna apply it in the run game, in the pass game, and we're gonna start with the run game. So let's just say we're going on an angle to our left and, you know, maybe there's a defender right here. He has to drive and get on his angle. Well, being in this position, okay, it's gonna entice us to drive off of this opposite leg, which is gonna get us on that angle to the left.

Ready?

Set.

Go.

Good. Very good. As you can see, right, all that force came from the opposite leg, and that's how you're gonna be able to generate movement, generate that power, that horsepower that we're looking for. Now let's say it's a pass set. And let's say he has to set a defender, and let's say I'm that defender. I'm right here. He has to drive now on this angle, so he's going to use this leg. He's going to drive opposite. Ready? Say go. Good. As you can see, right, he's able to generate that force to the ground that we need and be able to move explosively with that horsepower. Now, we have a med ball here because driving from the knee could be— it could be intense, right? You got to be strong. You got to be able to engage your core. It's a full-body movement. To take that intensity down a little bit, all we're going to do is put a med ball under that knee that is on the ground. And when you drive, you can still generate power, but it's not going to be as intense. So grab a med ball if you're having trouble getting out from the ground. We don't want your body to be all loosey-goosey. We want it to be stiff. That way you can generate the power that you need. Now, as we're doing these particular movements, all you have to do now is think about the angle that you need, right? So maybe, uh, the angle is going to the right, or maybe the angle is going to the left. Think about it, right? Understand that you're to the drive force opposite and use the opposite leg. So let's just say we're going to backside cutoff, right? Because right there we showed you kind of frontside, just to kind of keep your brain moving a little bit. All we would do is put the opposite leg down. So come over here, put the right leg down now, right? So hey, now he's got a backside cutoff, right? Strive with the opposite leg. Good. And a good thing to do is right after you do that, okay, maybe get into a stance. Now get into a stance. That leg is primed. Now drive. Good. So every time you go from the knee or you go from the med ball, every now and then get into that stance and understand, like, where that force is coming from so you can feel it, so you can get that horsepower and give the most force to the ground that you actually have just in yourself. So that's what we have for you. That's force to the ground, and that's how we're gonna own these angles and move with horsepower, kind of like Trent Williams does.

When we talk about Trent Williams as a dominant athlete, we have to take a look at the fact that not only is he able to stop himself, but he's also able to stop another defender. And this is a skill we have to develop. In developing that skill, we have a drill we love. It's called the stance drop. I'm gonna show you stance drop real quick, and I'll explain and break it down and see— show you why it's important. CJ's gonna start here with a narrow base. He's up on his tiptoes. I'm gonna apply pressure to him, much like a defender, and he's catching himself in a stance. Why is that important? When we talk about the stance, that's not only the position that Trent Williams is starting on the line of scrimmage of, But that's the position oftentimes he's finishing in when he's stopping defender's pressure. So this is really preparing the athlete's body to absorb those forces. I'm applying force not like you would see in a weight room, but like you would see on the field of play. The athlete is getting better at absorbing those forces on the ground, and the athlete is also getting more competent with their body in space. They're very disconnected, they're on their tiptoes, and they're being pushed, and they're finding this strong, stable position that we see Trent Williams finishing all the time. So to kind of progress through this, we start out tiptoes and we'll apply pressure directly on. That might not be what you see a defender— maybe they're normally coming at an angle, but this is our starting spot. And then from there, we'll just mess with different angles. I could push him from this side, he's finding himself in a good position again. Or I could push him from this side, finding himself in a good position again. The point is, is that his tissues are getting stronger and he's getting more competent in space. And we really want to kick it up And really, we feel the athlete's really competent and he's getting good at recreating that stance and taking on pressure. I'll push him down one time. He's gonna hold this position and I'll give him another push. And again, he's re-finding that good stance, re-finding that good fighting position and being strong and finishing hopefully like Trent Williams.

We now know what it takes to be a high-level offensive line athlete. You have to be strong in the proper places. You have to be able to accelerate out of your stance. And you have to be able to play through a functional stance. But in relation to today's game, today's game is all about throwing the football, which means there's a premium placed on high-level pass blocking. Trent Williams, he's great in the run game, but he's just as great as a pass blocker. What he has is an ability to feel himself in space and create proper body position between himself and the opponent prior to contact. And that proper position is simply this: you wanna make sure that your outside knee is to the midline of the defender. Let's take a look here at Trent Williams in PassPro. As you can see, he's starting in a functional stance. He's able to apply some force to the ground to get out of that stance, thus accelerate. But he's not just accelerating to no man's land, he's getting himself to an inside-out relationship to the defender. This relationship gives you the best chance to be consistent as a pass blocker. Does it always go perfect? No, nothing on the football field ever goes 100% as planned. But what it does do, it limits the option for the opponents. When we're foot to foot, the defender now has options. He can play inside, outside, or through you. But when we're playing to the midline of the defender, we now limit their options. And that's what football is about at every position, limiting your opponent's options. And that's what Trent Williams does in Pass Pro, is he limits the opponent's option by staying inside-out. As you can see, there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into becoming a great offensive line athlete. Invest into yourself. Spend the time working on the details. And hopefully one day you will be on the path to becoming the next great Trent Williams. So let's get out here and play some football.