O-Linemen Contact Drills

Question
Hello!
My name is Elimar and I'm a football coach here in Brazil. First of all, thank you for all your support. Football is analmost unknow sport here and It's very hard to find someone to give us advices on how to help our players getting better. This is very important to us! Thank you!

I really need some help developing my OLinemen skills. They have very good posture, technique and strength when we are doing our drills on the blocking shields or the sled. But when they go to a 1-on-1 drill or in actual scrimmage situation, they loose it all. They are not using the correct technique, specially on hand placement, punch and driving the legs.
I would like to know if you have any tips on how can we improve this. The only contact drill we do with OLinemen is the Oklahoma, having them against DLinemen. Are there any other drills that can help this? Anything I'm missing?

Thank you Coach!

Answer
Coach,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.  I am coaching again.  I was asked to come over and put in an offense at a friend's school and I have not left.

I really do not think you are missing much.  We do not use contact drills very much.  You could think of bird dogging everything to get them into place.  If you are not familiar with bird dog it goes like this.  On snap count you have your linemen take the first step in their blocking progression.  On the next and subsequent whistles they take steps, two, three...  Have them freeze after each step to ensure they are using proper technique.  I like to use a word with each step that all linemen say during each step.  Linemen are learning by doing the drill physically, hearing auditory commands to go with each step and are seeing everything happen.  So, they are learning to do one thing in three different ways.  Everyone learns differently and it has helped me to teach players of different abilities.

For example when we fire out we use LOAD - BAM - EXPLODE.
On the snap we lift our playside foot and LOAD our arms back.
On the whistle we bring our back foot and arms in unison forward to BAM into the defender.
On the last whistle we EXPLODE and drive our legs and push through the defender.

You could bird dog everything in drills and then progress to full speed as everything becomes more natural for them.

Hope it helps,
Jeff