Cut Blocking - Teach it or Reject it?

Want to see a great block? Watch this video of the right guard and center, on our nose tackle (the defender right over the ball).

But now watch this video, focusing on the same guys (right guard, nose tackle, and center) and what starts out to be the same sort of block.

So what is an offensive youth coach to do? You want your guy to block well. The nose tackle just made a play on that same series, and you don't want him to stop you any more.

Both of these blocks are legal by the way, as far as I know. Everything is just simultaneous enough, the blocks happen in the free blocking zone, and football is a physical game. The risk for injury is there on every play.

Some coaches don't teach this type of blocking at all. Some coaches teach the blocking shown in the first video, but the kids themselves will accidentally (or on purpose, if they're pissed off) end up with a high low as shown in the second situation.

(By the way, the kid was fine - no harm this time.)

Personally, I'd like to see this type of blocking outlawed, at least at the youth level, and probably at all levels. See this article for an NFL version of this controversy. Here are my reasons we should do away with it in FCCJC and the Blue Valley League, and CYO for that matter.

1. If the other team is doing it, and you're not, you feel like you have to do it too in order to give your team a better chance to win.
2. If the other team does it and you don't like it, you retaliate in kind - players and coaches both.
3. The retaliation escalates, and pretty soon your blocking purposes are not just to advance the ball - they're to hurt somebody.

Kids are pretty flexible, so this may not be as bad a problem as it seems to me. But if I were running the youth league, this would be illegal. Basically, the high school chop block rule would be amended in youth leagues to remove the 'delay' requirement. That's it. You could still cut block - you just couldn't do so at any time that the player you were cutting was being blocked by another player. Or put another way, both the blockers on a double team are responsible for staying high.

I think that would be simpler to teach than trying to warn and teach defensive players about avoiding and defeating high-low blocks - which is what we have to do these days.