by Ron Jaworski
“When we scouted the Bears, we noticed that everybody else brought in extra people to block that defense,” Shula explained. “But in the 46, there would always be one free blitzer unaccounted for. So instead of bringing everybody in, we spread everybody out. That way, we knew from their alignment where the free blitzer was going to be coming from. Marino recognized that the receiver would make a route adjustment, and Dan would get the ball to that receiver before the free blitzer got to him. There’d be times where Marshall or Fencik had to cover a fast receiver like Nat Moore, and that was a mismatch in our favor.
“The Bears did not go with any nickel defense against our three-wide-receiver set until very late in the third quarter. They played what they’d always played, because it had killed everybody else. Of course, everybody else didn’t have Marino at quarterback. And Moore was great catching the ball against one-on-one coverage. Whenever I’m at a speaking engagement, I tell the audience that the best half of football I ever saw was what we did against the Bears that night.”
“They rolled Marino away from Dent and pinned us in,” explained Ditka. “And as good as Marshall was, him playing man-toman on Nat Moore wasn’t going to work. So you should put in a nickel back, but we didn’t do that. At halftime I said to Buddy, ‘Put the nickel in and stop being so goddamn stubborn,’ and then we almost got into a fight—some pushing and shoving. A few players got between Buddy and me, and that was about it. I haven’t gotten a Christmas card from him since.”
Years later Ryan still refused to admit playing his base 46 personnel was the problem. “We get a punt blocked before the half, and they end up scoring. Another time we had ‘em third-and-long, Hampton’s rushing the passer, and the ball hits Dan in the helmet. It goes up in the air about forty feet, and one of their guys catches it for a touchdown. But mostly it was us screwing ourselves. Guys who were supposed to be containing were back inside, looking for Pro Bowl votes, playing by the seat of their pants, trying to be heroes rather than just doing their job.”
In evaluating the footage from the Dolphins game, I counted a total of just seventeen snaps where the Bears were in the 46 alignment. They actually didn’t do so badly in that defense. But they got killed whenever Nat Moore lined up as a third receiver. In the first half alone, Miami gained 163 yards and scored two touchdowns on eleven plays with Moore in the slot. Shula also had two backs line up on every first half snap, making it much tougher for Chicago’s rushers to get in clean. Most important was Marino’s pocket instincts and his quick release. He’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for games like this one, which has to be regarded as one of the finest moments in Dan’s career.
Chicago lost, 38–24—the only blemish on an otherwise perfect season that ended with the Bears’ demolition of the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Final score? Fittingly, 46–10. “I think we came into that [Dolphins] game cocky and overconfident,” Fencik admitted. “Dan got hot and caught us in some bad formations. But our losing that game was the best thing that could have happened to us.” Singletary agreed. “I think that loss helped us get back our focus. It made us understand we had to be ready every week if we were going to be world champions.”
Just moments after the final gun sounded at Super Bowl XX, I saw something I’d never seen before on a pro football field. As expected, a group of Bears lifted Ditka onto their shoulders and carried their head coach off on a victory ride. But just a few feet away, several members of the defense did the same thing for Ryan. That was unheard of: carrying off an assistant coach. But that’s how much Buddy’s players loved and respected him. They also understood this would be a farewell tribute. Within hours, Buddy Ryan became the new head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.
I was curious to find out what inspired that kind of devotion, and I didn’t have to wait long once Buddy arrived in Philly. From the start, he embraced the defensive players, while keeping his distance from us guys on the offense. One of my teammates, six-time Pro Bowl cornerback Eric Allen, explained to me why the defensive players became so loyal to their new coach. In the past, the offense had always been the “glamour” side of the ball, but Buddy made the Eagles’ defense the star unit. That summer at training camp, I couldn’t help but notice how much emphasis was put on forcing defensive turnovers—then having those guys score off them. Ryan devoted more time and energy to this than any coach I’d seen in all my years in the NFL. He wanted his defense to become the offense. Buddy’s defenses in Philadelphia were always aggressive, trying to punch the ball out, gambling on turnovers. I think this mind-set was both Buddy’s strength and his ultimate failing. And even though he basically kicked me out of Philadelphia after that one season, I was eventually able to be more objective and appreciate Buddy Ryan’s impact on the evolution of defensive football.
oug Plank, the man who whacked me around as a player, who beat my Arena League team more times than I would have liked, and whose jersey number gave the 46 its name, raised an interesting point when I spoke with him for this book. “If someone like Buddy Ryan hadn’t come along—someone who totally disrupted offenses—I wonder if there would have been the wholesale transition to spread offenses we see today,” he reflected. “The tightly packed eight man fronts from our day just can’t succeed as a base defense against spread formations. Offensive coordinators came to the conclusion fairly quickly that unless they spread defenses out, their quarterbacks were going to get hit again and again. That isn’t acceptable today, because more than ever, the NFL is a quarterback’s league.”
Another change the 46 brought about was how teams drafted. More and more personnel directors now pick receivers specifically to beat press coverage. Cornerbacks who cover wider field areas are also popular draft choices. And offenses have had to put in greater numbers of deception plays, such as quick screens where the quarterback gets the ball out fast to a receiver with linemen blocking in front of him.
As defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, Leslie Frazier knows that the original version of the 46 simply won’t work in the NFL of the twenty-first century. “It was a different time in the 1980s,” he explained. “With two-back sets, offenses operated in a more confined space, giving Buddy’s players shorter distances to rush, less ground to cover, and greater ability to disguise their blitzes. Other than Don Coryell and the Chargers, offenses didn’t go with three or four wide receivers back then. Coaches were afraid that if they spread things out too much, the quarterback wouldn’t be protected, and he’d get hit. The 46 can’t serve as a base defense today because offenses are spread so far it would be tough for defenses to pressure the same way we did with the Bears. But the 46 can and should still be part of an overall package in today’s NFL. There are times during a game when a pure 46 can be devastating.”
Former Baltimore Ravens coach and current broadcaster Brian Billick has identified another significant change. “Defenses can no longer apply so much pressure that put their corners at risk. When people finally caught up with the 46, it was coaches like Jeff Fisher, who took its basics and added wrinkles to keep it effective. Fisher was the first to adapt it to the modern game. He came up with zone concepts that appeared to give the same look as the original 46—but weren’t—and that created a new set of problems for offenses.”
Plank, Fisher, and Frazier are but three of the branches extending from Buddy Ryan’s coaching tree. You can also include current NFL coaches Mike Singletary with the 49ers and Ron Rivera at San Diego. Others with a direct Ryan lineage are his twin sons Rex and Rob, plus Fisher disciples Jim Schwartz in Detroit and Gregg Williams with the Saints.
The late Jim Johnson, Philadelphia’s longtime defensive coordinator, also sported a Ryan connection. After Buddy left Chicago to join the Eagles in ‘86, the Bears selected Vince Tobin as his replacement. Dave McGinnis, who coached the linebackers for Tobin, recalled, “Vince adapted these principles after Buddy was gone and began running the same schemes with zone coverage behind it. He then shared all this stuff with Jim Johnson, because they had pl
ayed together in college at Missouri and were close friends. You could see Buddy’s fingerprints all over what Jim did during his many years as Eagles coordinator.”
Having watched the Eagles as much as I have, I’d have to say that Johnson was the closest to Buddy as far as scheme aggressiveness and a gambling style. Jim would always bring one more guy than you could block—and that was risky. Jim was most interested in protection-scheme breakdown and was a true believer in the philosophy of the 46. By contrast, Jeff Fisher, at Tennessee, has dialed down much of the risk that was inherent in Ryan’s original defense. In Buddy’s scheme, you’d see unsound coverage principles at times, with potential receiving targets wide open, or in favorable one-on-one matchups. With the Titans, Jeff runs similar looks, but you don’t always get the same rush patterns after the ball is snapped. Fisher can start with something resembling 46 pressure and then will suddenly switch to a zone defense with people dropping back. It’s a more conservative 46, and over the long haul, it’s been very successful in Tennessee.
Fisher has since taught his version to Gregg Williams, who’s had a terrific track record at many places, including his present position as defensive coordinator for New Orleans. Gregg gives you disguised pressure with the green dog. You’ll recall that’s when a back or a tight end will initially be accounted for in man coverage. But the minute that one or both of them show that they’ll be blocking, Gregg will send his defenders after the quarterback. This tactic surfaced many times in 2009 during the Saints’ Super Bowl run.
There are pass coverage components of the original 46 that have become staples in every team’s defensive playbook. Most evident is Buddy’s “swipe” scheme, when a linebacker or safety can trade assignments in underneath coverage. But not all of Buddy’s disciples have embraced other aspects of the 46. As much as I believe Ron Rivera would like to use it, he has to take into account what players he has in San Diego and whether they’re best suited to succeed with the 46. At Minnesota, Frazier has never been an advocate of the blitz. In part, that’s because he’s had the great front four that included Jared Allen and the two Williamses (perennial Pro Bowl tackles Kevin and Pat), but I think there’s more to it than that. Leslie has developed his own system and doesn’t gamble much in pressure situations. He does, however, tap in heavily to the coverage principles of the 46. Maybe Frazier still remembers what it was like to be that cornerback on an island; the anxiety of being isolated on a receiver and the uncertainty as to whether the pass rush has done its job.
As far as Singletary is concerned, it’s simply a matter of available talent. “With my team in San Francisco, we don’t quite have all the pieces yet to run the 46, and you have to have those pieces or you can’t run it,” he said candidly. “The 46 is all about pressure, and if you don’t have the right guys at the key positions, it’s going to hurt more than help.”
Singletary was once asked if the ‘85 Bears defense is the greatest of all time. “You can come up with comparative stats or the names of the players,” Mike replied. “But the best way to tell is to take out the film of any team you want to compare us with: the Steel Curtain, the Vikings’ Purple People Eaters, the 2000 Ravens, Dallas’s ‘Doomsday Defense.’ They’re all tremendous. Watch them. Then put Bears film on and don’t say a word. Our film will talk to you. What will it say? You’ll know when you see it, because the film does not lie.”
Rex Ryan agrees: “I was the D-line coach at Baltimore with the 2000 Ravens defense that set league records for fewest points and rushing yardage. The difference between that Ravens team and the ‘85 Bears was simple. Opponents who played Baltimore thought they had a chance to beat us right up until the game began. Then they’d start playing and realize our speed and size was too much to overcome. Before teams played the Bears, they weren’t even thinking about winning. They were just hoping to survive—they didn’t want to get the crap kicked out of ‘em. The ‘85 Bears had teams beat before they even played.”
As a defensive assistant with the Jets in 2009, Doug Plank had an insider’s view of the newest schemes from the current generation of Ryan family coaches. “Rex has taken his father’s ideas and improved on them,” he observed. “He’s created more new looks, more opportunities for his defenders to make plays. It’s still all about creating confusion in the quarterback’s mind, not just hitting people hard. Rex looks for favorable matchups. He’ll give players multiple responsibilities on each play, so when he moves people around, he has the capability of making it look like a totally different defense. The number of men he uses up front is constantly changing. He’ll get more movement from hybrid players rushing from a variety of different angles. Rex’s schemes rely on the threat of pressure coming, but that pressure isn’t always geared to overpowering the opponent each play.”
I think Rex has expanded the scope of the 46 in ways his father could not have envisioned. Rex will take a linebacker from one side of the field and move him to cover a wide receiver—and rotate his down linemen in unconventional ways—with coverage concepts I’ve never seen before. Rex is vigorously responding to the many new looks he sees from offenses, figuring that he needs to be aggressive in order to stay ahead. In that respect, he’s a chip off the old block. Mike Singletary has noticed the resemblance, saying, “It’s obvious Rex is carrying on his father’s legacy. He’s so much like Buddy, it’s frightening.”
Buddy Ryan and I were hardly the best of friends. He didn’t always treat me with respect. I thought his behavior was often unprofessional, and I still don’t think he has a clue about offensive football. But I know a genius when I see one. Defensively, Buddy was exactly that. And I recognize his influence every Sunday, in every game, with every team. Ryan intuitively understood where pro football was headed, almost before anyone else. At a time when the running game was still king, Buddy could see the future: a future where passing would become the league’s dominant offensive weapon. That is the world in which the NFL now exists. Buddy Ryan’s 46 defense was a response to that developing trend, and it has had a wide-reaching and permanent impact on the tactics and psychological mind-set of today’s NFL defenses.
Sunday No. 6
1992 AFC DIVISIONAL PLAYOFF
BUFFALO BILLS VS. PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania —January 9, 1993
he first decade of the twenty-first century may not have been an especially robust time for America’s economy, but it was clearly the best sustained period ever for exciting Super Bowls. You can begin in 2000 with the St. Louis Rams’ goal-line stop of the Titans to win Super Bowl XXXIV. There was New England’s shocking last-second upset of those same Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI (covered in the next chapter). Follow those up with back-to-back 3-point thrillers by the Patriots over the Carolina Panthers and the Eagles. Then it was Bill Belichick’s crew feeling the sting of defeat when its dream of a perfect 19–0 season was shattered by the Giants in Super Bowl XLII.
The Arizona Cardinals–Pittsburgh Steelers classic in Super Bowl XLIII closed out the decade and may have been the best of them all. The signature moment of that game is arguably the greatest defensive play in Super Bowl history: an astonishing effort from linebacker James Harrison. Everything about it speaks to the toughness and mental awareness that has characterized the Steelers defenses coached by Dick LeBeau over the past twenty-five years.
With eighteen seconds remaining in the first half, the Steelers were clinging to a 10–7 lead, but the Cardinals had the ball on Pittsburgh’s 1-yard line. There was still time for one more pass, and maybe even two before Arizona would need to kick a field goal. Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will remember the next play until the day he dies. “With so little time left, the Cardinals couldn’t run the risk of running the football, so we dialed up an all-out blitz,” he said. “One of our linebackers, Lawrence Timmons, hit a gap at the line of scrimmage and got through there clean. And as he went by, Harrison knew there was a guy responsible for blocking him, so he simply backed out of the bl
itz and ended up in the throwing lane.”
Five years in LeBeau’s system had prepared Harrison for this moment. “I figured they had to do a quick slant in or out, and it seemed like we’d been a step late in getting to them all day,” he explained. “If I just stepped at the tackle and got him to step out at me, that would free Timmons to get inside on his blitz. I figured that as long as I did my job and didn’t hurt anybody else from doing what they were supposed to do, it was worth the gamble.”
Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner never saw Harrison. He was in a place Warner did not expect him to be. The pass was intended for Cardinals receiver Anquan Boldin, but Harrison grabbed it instead. He took off in the opposite direction, preserving the Steelers lead—and much more. “I was hoping we’d get the ball to midfield for a shot at a field goal,” admitted Tomlin. “Under no circumstances did I think James was going to take the thing back a hundred yards!” Harrison’s touchdown was more than the longest play of any kind in a Super Bowl. It was a literal reversal of fortune, a defining moment in Pittsburgh’s eventual 27–23 win. It helped earn LeBeau and his players their second Super Bowl ring in four years.
hile writing this book, I’ve spent considerable time studying my selected games and the coaches whose innovations made those games so important. And it’s clear to me that the common thread binding these coaches is that each one had both the brains and the guts to move in a different direction. Their creations stood in stark contrast to existing and accepted strategies.