by Ron Jaworski
“The Bills were still a notch above us then, but our performance in that game gave us a glimpse that showed us we could now play with anybody,” LeBeau observed later. “It was a major stepping stone for our team in terms of gaining confidence and seeing what it took to go into big games against a top opponent—and eventually beat them.”
ick LeBeau is among the most culturally knowledgeable people I know in the coaching profession. He can quote from diverse sources, ranging from Bob Dylan to ancient European kings. “One of my favorite sayings comes from Frederick the Great, back in the seventeen hundreds. He said, ‘He who defends everything defends nothing.’ He knew his army wasn’t big enough to protect all of Germany. But if he picked strategic parts to defend, then they’d be okay.”
Steelers defenses applied this principle to all their opponents, but it was particularly effective against Buffalo. Whenever the Bills tried to spread the field, Pittsburgh countered with surgical strikes, coming from ever-changing starting points. And as the nineties progressed, Pittsburgh began to dominate. Even though the Bills got back to the Super Bowl in ‘93 and remained a playoff contender for most of the decade, they could not beat any Steelers defense coached by LeBeau. After finishing my study of the ‘92 playoff game, I watched tape of the next three games the teams played against each other: Monday night matchups in ‘93 and ‘94 and a divisional playoff game in ‘95. Each time, the Steelers added more defensive wrinkles, and the Bills seemingly couldn’t handle any of them.
You’d think these lopsided losses on national TV might have motivated the Bills to address what was going wrong and to tinker with their offense. But their hearts were never in it, according to Tasker. “After Pittsburgh kicked our butts a few times, we tried some different things, but they didn’t work that well. We started doing shifts and going back to huddles, but our offense sputtered. At the first sign of trouble, our guys would say, ‘Fuck it, it’s not working. Let’s go back to the No-Huddle.’ We didn’t want to lose to beatable teams trying to run new stuff. We were unwilling to take a few steps backward to take a step forward.”
The Bills came into their ‘93 game at 7–1, with a healthy Jim Kelly at quarterback. By the second quarter, Jim was in the care of team doctors. “We hit Kelly so many times—we were dropping people out of the sky on him,” said Merril Hoge. “We’d start by bringing Woodson, then other people from all areas of the field. Then Rod came in from the other side. Then our safeties dropped down, and because Buffalo was worried about the perimeter, we could send guys up the middle. We really beat Kelly up bad. They had to take him to the locker room before halftime. I felt sorry for him.”
The Steelers offensive players had basically been no-shows in the ‘92 playoff loss, but what a difference a year made! From his fullback position, Hoge was part of a ball-control juggernaut that maintained possession for nearly forty-five minutes. When the Bills got it back, they couldn’t do anything against Pittsburgh’s dime secondary packages and corner blitzes. “Normally, when an offense is playing against a 3–4, the best thing to do is spread them out,” noted Woodson. “But it’s harder to spread that defense out when you have a lot of good athletes who can play well in space and win those one-on-one battles. Plus, we were a good tackling team. We eliminated most of the big plays by running to the ball and making the hit right then and there.” Altogether, Buffalo had ten offensive possessions. The team was forced to punt on eight of them, fumbled away another, and ended the half on the tenth. The final score was 23–0, and it easily could have been worse.
I was impressed by how much the Steelers had expanded Carnell Lake’s role from ‘92 to ‘93. In this game, he displayed more versatility than ever as a blitzer, cover guy, and run stuffer. “I started from scratch with Carnell, and he ended up being one of the finest defensive backs ever to play in the NFL,” said LeBeau. “He and I went through a real growing experience that helped make him a great football player.” With the passage of time, Tasker has a better understanding of just how special Lake was. “Carnell was a precursor to players like Troy Polamalu, Ed Reed, Rodney Harrison and Bob Sanders—safeties who were different and could do nontraditional things,” he pointed out. “Today a lot of defenses have a player like Lake, but what was asked of him then, he did before anyone else.”
I also took note of LeBeau’s increased use of “three under–three deep” coverage. That’s a zone concept featuring not only a deep safety as a “center fielder” but also two additional people playing “left field” and “right field.” Three under–three deep eventually became the predominant coverage of the Zone blitz. It facilitated pattern reading, based on the understanding of route combinations and route progressions. In the ‘93 game, defenders like Woodson and Lloyd knew where Bills receivers were going to be and could jump their routes to bat away or even intercept passes.
Although Pittsburgh deployed this coverage throughout the game, Steelers coaches called virtually none of their trademark Zone-blitz schemes. They weren’t necessary, given how the Steelers dominated, both physically and in time of possession. “We were controlling the game and getting off the field quickly, so there wasn’t a real reason to take a lot of chances that night,” explained Capers.
The schedule makers set up a rematch in ‘94, another Monday nighter in Pittsburgh. The Bills lost again, 23–10, and this time elements of the Zone blitz were everywhere. The Steelers started early, with a defensive score in the first quarter. “Whatever alignment the Bills went to, we had a plan for it,” said Cowher. “Two-by-two or three-by-one sets were pretty much all the Bills were ever in. And we knew their routes, which were usually dictated by formation.”
The call was for an outside pass to Buffalo receiver Bill Brooks, but Woodson jumped the throw, moving in that direction before the ball was even out of Kelly’s hand. The play remains one of the signature moments of Woodson’s career. “It was a blitz off the right side,” he recalled. “From what we saw on film, we knew that blitz would come wide open. I told our safety Darren Perry that if they came out in this certain formation, I was going to jump any underneath route I saw. It was exactly the play I thought it would be, I jumped it for an interception, and ran it in for a touchdown.”
Kelly’s agony had only begun. On the next series he was sacked twice, once by Kevin Greene and once by Chad Brown. Brown was especially active as a “joker"—the flexible player coaches move around to rush, blitz, or play coverage from multiple locations. In this game, the Steelers showed a lot more pre-snap movement, creating identification and recognition issues for the Bills. “When we played any other team, they never knew how to defend us,” said Buffalo’s Kent Hull. “Then we’d go into Pittsburgh, and they’re dropping back tackles and blitzing linebackers. Some guy goes by you who wasn’t your guy, and you just froze. The Zone blitz was absolutely the nemesis of the K-Gun offense. That defense just stopped what we were able to do.”
A few minutes later, Kelly suffered through another series with back-to-back sacks, the first coming off corner pressure from Greg Lloyd. LeBeau calls Lloyd “probably the best football player I’ve ever seen or had the privilege of coaching. When you took him on, you buttoned every strap and put on every pad you had. He wasn’t the biggest backer who ever played, but in terms of quickness and closing speed, he had it, with a great attacking personality to go with it.” Lloyd loved LeBeau’s system, because it always put him in position to make plays. “When I put on the Steelers uniform, it’s like I was transformed into this superhero,” he said. “It was like ‘nobody can stop me, nobody can block me.’ ”
Lloyd was all over the field that night, but he lost out in his friendly rivalry with Greene for most sacks. Greene, the 1994 NFL sack leader, piled up three of them, and assisted on others. On one play, Greene recognized a screen pass was coming, so he abandoned his pass rush to cover the intended target. Kelly had nowhere to go with his throw and was a sitting duck for another Steeler to make the sack. “Greene and Lloyd were always on me about what I had
the other guy doing,” laughed LeBeau. “Neither one of them wanted the other fella to do anything any better, and they’d have such great competition in games, keeping track of what the other was doing. Kevin would say, ‘Hey man, you’re dropping me too much, come on!’ But we could only blitz so many times.”
“These breakdowns had nothing to do with physical execution,” Kent Hull admitted. “They were all mental. If the other team was playing defense with six in the box, we could put five hundred yards up on ‘em. But when they’re moving people around, dropping, buzzing, then the odds really tilt in their favor. The Bills had better athletes than anybody—except Pittsburgh. Every one of those guys on that defense matched up well against us. We studied film for hours, trying to figure out their patterns, but it was tough. The Steelers gave no pre-snap indicators to tell us what was coming. All our protection rules we lived by went out the window against Pittsburgh.”
That night, the Steelers picked up seven sacks, the most devastating coming from Woodson. Late in the third quarter, the Bills began an offensive series buried deep in their own territory. Woodson came off the slot, and Lake rushed from the same side—with no tight end in that area to help block. Greene fooled 305-pound Bills tackle Glenn Parker by taking a few steps forward to give the appearance he was rushing. Then Greene dropped off, but Parker was so focused on blocking a defender who was no longer there that he had no chance to react to Woodson’s blitz. Rod blew past him, coming straight for Kelly. This was no blindside shot; it was a full-frontal assault. Kelly saw it all the way but could do nothing to avoid it. Rod hit Jim so hard that the ball went flying out of his hands. Steelers end Gerald Williams fell on it in the end zone, and Pittsburgh had its second defensive touchdown of the night.
Afterward Williams joked, “If I’m smart, I’ll keep following Rod around, because he’s making things happen.” Woodson’s stats for that game were staggering: nine tackles, two passes broken up, and a sack and an interception that each resulted in a touchdown. “Woodson may have been the greatest player I ever coached,” Cowher claimed years later. “He was terrific athletically, very focused, and intellectually brilliant. I don’t know of anyone who had a better feel for the game than Rod.” The ‘94 Steelers went on to lead the league in sacks. “You can mark this down as the point where we really earned our nickname ‘Blitzburgh,’ “ said Capers. “By now, the players were really well versed in our system, and nobody besides the Steelers was doing this back then, so we had opponents on their heels. We got opponents playing to us instead of the other way around. They were forced to play us differently than anyone else.”
Tasker has a unique historical perspective on Pittsburgh’s blitz schemes: “You know the saying ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’ My old coach Jerry Glanville was running some of the same stuff back in the seventies with the [Atlanta] Falcons and their ‘Gritz Blitz.’ The difference with the Steelers was that they had guys who could really play. Those Falcons teams were solid, but they didn’t have people like Lloyd, Woodson, Lake, or Greene.”
At year’s end, the Steelers lost to the Chargers in the ‘94 AFC title game, but they redeemed themselves the following season. Dom Capers left the club to become head coach of the expansion Carolina Panthers, and LeBeau was named Pittsburgh’s new coordinator. The Zone blitz became even more predominant with him in charge. The Steelers were once again AFC Central champions, and their reward was a divisional-round home game against none other than the Buffalo Bills.
Rod Woodson missed the entire ‘95 season with a leg injury. But Carnell Lake switched over to Rod’s spot at corner and filled in brilliantly, earning a Pro Bowl berth at a new position. Lake celebrated with the first playoff interception of his career, but what saved the Steelers that day were two other interceptions made by linebackers Jerry Olsavsky and Levon Kirkland in the fourth quarter, with the game still close. Both picks were also textbook examples of Zone blitz principles working to perfection.
Olsavsky’s came off a five-man overload blitz, originating from a 3–4 front. Lloyd rushed from Kelly’s blind side, as did Kirkland. Nose tackle Joel Steed stunted around right end Brentson Buckner to create more movement and confusion. Buffalo’s tight end moved inside to block Kirkland, but Lloyd got in cleanly and belted Kelly as he threw, never seeing Olsavsky underneath. This was the classic example of an offensive line being outschemed rather than outmanned. Buffalo had six men to block, and the Steelers sent only five. Two Bills linemen needlessly went after Buckner, leaving no one to pick up Lloyd.
Kirkland’s interception also came off of Pittsburgh’s 3-4 defensive alignment. Kelly had planned to hit Brooks on a hitch to the outside, but Lloyd beat Buffalo’s blockers and headed straight for the Bills quarterback. The pressure forced Kelly to come back inside toward Tasker, who was working his way over from the slot. Kelly threw late into the middle—a cardinal sin for a quarterback—and Kirkland appeared out of nowhere to intercept. Four plays later, the Steeler’s offense punched in a final score to ice the 40-21 victory. “What set us apart in Pittsburgh was our ability to cover underneath receivers,” said Marvin Lewis. “We took what people felt was unsound and made it very sound. We locked receivers down in coverage so that even if the quarterback did get the ball away, there weren’t guys running free underneath.”
A week later, the Steelers beat the Colts to earn a trip to Super Bowl XXX. Although LeBeau’s defense played extremely well on Super Sunday, it couldn’t overcome a late Neil O’Donnell interception that allowed Dallas to escape with a 27-17 win.
After another solid season in ‘96, Dick was hired back by Cincinnati and eventually became their head coach in 2000. Unfortunately, by then that struggling team richly deserved the dubious nickname sportswriters had hung on them: the Bungles. “I don’t think Dick had good enough players as a head coach,” stated Cris Collinsworth, who saw the team every day while covering them as a local radio personality. “He’s been so ultrasuccessful in everything he’s ever done, so I don’t think the team’s record had anything to do with his coaching style. In Cincinnati, you are not in charge of personnel if you’re the head coach. That’s someone else’s job. Dick was only there for a brief time, coaching someone else’s players.”
At the end of the 2002 season, the Bengals hired LeBeau’s ex-Steelers colleague Marvin Lewis to be their new head coach, and Dick found a job in Buffalo. He was there for just one season but transformed the Bills into the AFC’s third-ranked defense. Pittsburgh took note, brought Dick back as defensive coordinator, and he’s been there ever since—likely a Steeler for life. He coached the defense in its 21-10 win over Seattle in Super Bowl XL, and was again calling signals when the Steelers beat the Cardinals in the epic battle of Super Bowl XLIII.
“After we beat Arizona, we came back to Pittsburgh for the victory parade, and all of us were in our cafeteria getting a bite to eat,” recalled Steelers linebacker James Farrior. Dick was already explaining to me a new scheme he wanted to try. I was like, ‘Hey, Coach, it’s time to celebrate, man. The season is over. We won the Super Bowl, and you’re already thinking about defenses!’ It was pretty funny, but this guy has so many schemes. He’s probably got stuff that we’ve never even seen before in the back of his mind, and he’s just waiting for the right opportunity to bring it out.
“We are a reflection of all the things that he’s instilled in us,” Farrior continued. “We believe in whatever he tells us; his word is gold. Whenever he talks, we keep our mouths shut, just waiting to hear him give us his knowledge. We all love him to death, and I think he feels the same way about us. There’s a special bond here that a lot of other players and coaches don’t have.”
n today’s NFL, every team features elements of the Zone blitz. The ultimate irony is that, off the top of my head, I can think of at least three games during the 2009 season when the Steelers lost to teams who beat them using Zone-blitz principles against Pittsburgh’s offense. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I can’t imagine Dick
was pleased when he saw his own team being victimized by ideas he’d created twenty years earlier.
But that is to be expected. When something works in our league, other coaches take notice. “Bill Belichick went full-go with 3-4 Zoneblitz concepts after he got to New England,” insisted Solomon Wilcots. “He clearly copycatted this defense and won three Super Bowls with it.” To me, that is a coach’s ultimate sign of respect. “Look, we’ve played against it through the years, and it’s still hard to beat,” Belichick admitted. “When you play basically the same defense—and I’m telling you it’s the same defense from 1992 through 2009—that, to me, is off the charts.”
While LeBeau has kept his own basics in place, others have used his system as a jumping-off point for even more exotic blitzes. My Monday Night Football broadcast booth partner Jon Gruden has made note of these new wrinkles: “When college coaches ask how to beat the Zone blitz, I say, ‘Which one are you talking about?’ Because now there are so many. You’ll see perimeter-Zone blitzes, Zone blitzes from a 3-4, 4-3, nickel, or dime. Seventy percent of your practice preparation had better be on picking up blitzes and recognition. Sometimes even that isn’t enough. Your backs have to block the guy coming in clean, but there are some backs in this league who can’t pick up a blitz to save their ass. That’s when the Zone blitz can go wild.”
Rod Woodson is now an analyst with NFL Network, and he’s seen teams attempt to copy LeBeau’s strategies, with mixed results. “When I look at different defenses around the league today, I always start from the secondary,” he said, adding, “I learned that from Dick. When I see teams like the Eagles or Ravens—although both are great in their own right—they are sometimes fundamentally unsound on the back end. They’ll blitz four or even five from a side, and one of their guys has to rotate over from the other part of the field. You don’t usually see that in a Zone blitz; you see people in position to make plays.” Carnell Lake agreed. “Other teams use the Zone blitz but don’t involve the secondary as well as Dick does,” he contended. “He is the master. They don’t know how to tie the coverages in with the blitzes as efficiently. That’s why it works so well in Pittsburgh.”