also: pulling · puller
An offensive lineman leaving his spot at the snap and going somewhere else to block. The technique that makes gap schemes work and the one that decides whether a roster can run them.
2 meanings, all below. Jump to the one you heard.
At the snap, instead of blocking anybody near him, a lineman opens his hips and runs, usually along the line and usually to the other side of the formation, to block somebody there. Somebody else is responsible for the space he left, normally by blocking down into it.
What pulling buys is force arriving where the defense did not align. It is also the single hardest physical requirement in gap-scheme football, because it needs a lineman who can move, and that is a roster fact rather than a coaching one.
pullingveer release, climbMost schemes ask for two different pulls and coaches teach them as separate techniques. The flat, shallow pull gets to the edge fast and finishes on the end man on the line. The deeper pull gains ground backward before coming downhill, so the puller arrives through the hole and up onto a linebacker rather than at the edge.
On a play with two pullers, they are usually running these two different pulls at once, and they cannot be run at the same depth without colliding. That is the practical reason "both guards pull" is not a single instruction.
skip pull, open pullPull names the action, not the target. A puller may kick out, log, lead up through the alley, or wrap around, and every one of those is a pull. The assignment is always the pull plus what he does when he arrives.
Whether a program can pull is the most honest test of whether it can run a gap scheme at all. Two guards who can get out of their stance and run is a personnel requirement, and no amount of install fixes its absence.