Dick LeBeau, Dom Capers and the evolution of defense

While the media storyline for the Super Bowl is Aaron Rogers versus Ben Roethlisberger, or even Packers head coach Mike McCarthy versus Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, the cognoscenti understand that the most interesting pairing involves the defensive coordinators, Steelers’ defensive guru, Dick LeBeau and his former protégé (and boss) Dom Capers. Capers, as defensive coordinator for the Steelers, coached with LeBeau back in the early 1990s, where Capers and LeBeau conspired to implement their madcap 3-4 zone blitz schemes that would help LeBeau land in the NFL Hall of Fame. (LeBeau, too, is not without his Green Bay connections, as he was an assistant for the Pack in the late ’70s under Bart Starr.) LeBeau took over as defensive coordinator in 1995 once Capers left to become head coach of the Carolina Panthers.

As is true today, change on defense was spurred on by change on offense. (Credit for much of this discussion must go to Tim Layden and his book, Sports Illustrated Blood, Sweat & Chalk.) By 1983, Bill Walsh already had his first Super Bowl and even won it against Cincinnati, where LeBeau was an assistant under Forrest Gregg and then Sam Wyche. LeBeau knew his defenses needed to evolve: Walsh’s precision offense could methodically slice apart zones, yet was dangerous enough to hit the big ones against a man-to-man blitz. Before the 1980s, the general but imperfect rule was that a four man rush meant zone, while a blitz meant man-to-man. According to Tim Layden:

“The one thing you knew,” says Steve Spurrier, who played quarterback in the NFL from 1967 through ’76, “was that if you saw a blitz, you were getting man-to-man defense behind it. That didn’t mean it was easy to deal with the blitz, but at least you knew what coverage you were going to get.”

So LeBeau began experimenting with schemes that showed blitz looks — and did in fact rush defenders from unexpected places — but nevertheless dropped a minimum of six defenders into zone coverage. To LeBeau, this was the perfect remedy: depending on the coverage you put behind the blitz, you actually were playing a very conservative defense, but the offense thought you were being aggressive, and, depending how intelligently you deployed your five rushers, you were being aggressive, albeit in a very controlled sense. Controlled chaos, indeed.

But these were still the dabblings of a scribbler. The next evolution came not from the wellspring of an NFL mind, but by a visit to Baton Rouge and Louisiana State University, where former Don Shula assistant and walking repository of football knowledge Bill Arnsparger coached. Arnsparger, who literally wrote the book on defense with his tome, Arnsparger’s Coaching Defensive Football, had experimented with zone blitz schemes for much of the prior fifteen years, including during the Miami Dolphins’ undefeated season. According to Layden and LeBeau, Arnsparger kept using the term “safe pressure” to describe the zone blitz, words that stuck with LeBeau: the zone blitz isn’t a kamikaze defense, it’s sound football, with an element of disruption. LeBeau would go on to develop these ideas for the next couple of decades, aided by an assistant in Pittsburgh named Dom Capers, and later to be (in my view at least) the biggest reason that Pittsburgh could win its third Super Bowl in six years.

(As an aside, an NFL coach once told me that anyone who understood every word in Arnsparger’s book would undoubtedly know more defense than every coach in the NFL. I immediately thought of LeBeau when he said this, but the point remains; indeed, Arnsparger’s name is aptly in the title of his tome, much in the way that Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the settled name for his masterpiece.)

With this background, it’s worth spending a bit more time on what the zone blitz is and how LeBeau and Capers use it.

As I said, the basic concept is not new at all: confusing the offense with respect to which defenders are dropping and which are blitzing (this goes back at least fifty years), while playing relatively safe coverage behind it. It’s also not true that a defensive lineman must drop into coverage for it to be a zone blitz; plenty of effective zone blitzes don’t use that tactic. Indeed, it’s one reason why the 3-4 and the 3-3 and other multiple defensive back and linebacker formations are great with the zone blitz — you don’t have to drop the 300 pounder into space where, beyond the initial surprise, he’s a liability.

As an example, here is a basic zone blitz I have previously described:

The diagram above shows the basic setup. This soft, relatively passive coverage with three deep defenders is how the defense, despite being labeled a blitz, is actually quite conservative — the offense should not be able to get big-pass play down the field. This is not a gambling, go-for-broke scheme in which you dare the other team to make a big play. Note too that one of the advantages of zone blitzing from a 3-4 front (three defensive linemen, four linebackers) is that you do not need to drop a defensive lineman who might not be very good at pass coverage; teams that run a 4-3 (four defensive linemen, three linebackers) generally must.

Teams like the Ravens [and the Steelers and Green Bay] instead are confident that they can both play zone and also get pressure with only five rushers, because they will use those five rushers intelligently. This is where fire zones become multifarious and also where the action is in confusing quarterbacks. Although the basic framework of rushing five guys and dropping six almost never changes (and neither does the three-deep three-intermediate arrangement), the best defensive coordinators surgically diagnosis the other team’s protection schemes and design ways for their five guys to confuse and break free an extra rusher against six or even seven pass protectors.

Regarding the coverage, in the above diagram the secondary makes a simple invert rotation, meaning that one safety simply rotates down to be an intermediate defender. He is joined by two more underneath pass defenders. Collectively, each is responsible for a zone but they will play essentially a man-to-man technique on guys entering their zones; they try to anticipate not just the route, but the combination of routes the offense is using. Note too that the defense can use different combinations in coverage. They can blitz cornerbacks or safeties; it is just a matter of filling the blanks in terms of who is deep, who is intermediate, and who is rushing the quarterback.

Finally, when defensive coordinators call blitzes, they do not simply tell the pass rushers to get to the quarterback. Instead they designate the gap the defender is to attack. This is so they can coordinate the blitz as a whole — so they can attack schematic weaknesses they see on the defensive line — and also coordinate the blitz in a way that accounts for all the gaps, or holes between linemen, in case the offense runs the ball.

So how might this play out on Sunday, against two pro-bowl quarterbacks? For this I turn to the excellent Blitzology blog, which has spent considerable time on both LeBeau and Capers (as any blitz-oriented site should do). One of LeBeau’s favorite blitzes is below:

The coverage structure is essentially the same as the one described above: three-deep, three under. The wrinkle comes from the “weak” or “open” side of the formation. As evidenced by the diagram, each gap to the open side (the A, B, and C gaps) are each filled by a blitzer, with a particularly nasty looping scheme. If the safety drops down, this blitz can easily adapt to a one-back three wide set. Blitzology explains further:

• Open DE – Loop to A gap. Go 2nd.
• DT – B gap penetration. Must get a great take off
• Nose – A gap
• Closed End – C gap vs. Run, Contain vs. Pass
• Will – Adjust alignment pre-snap. Edge Blitz
• Mike – 3RH
• FS -Seam
• Sam -Seam
• SS – Fire Zone Middle
• Corners – Fire Zone 1/3

This blitz allows for weak side pressure and can create problems for the OL to exchange the twist by the DE and DT. Against a BOB scheme if the Will LB has been declared the “Mike” by the offense the pressure falls on the Center to give initial help on the Nose and come off late on the Open DE that is looping to the A gap. If the Mike LB or Sam LB was declared the “Mike” by offense the pressure is on the open OT and open OG to exchange the twist with the OT taking the hard charging DT and the OG taking the inside looping DE. The edge blitzer must be ignored by the OT and left for the RB to pick up.

Another feature of zone blitzes — and this blitz in particular — is even if the offense picks up the blitz you can ensure you get a matchup you like, such as a linebacker or defensive lineman against a runningback, while offensive linemen (the better pass rushers) stand around blocking no one.) Below is not the exact same blitz, but the net result is exactly what you want from a zone blitz: a free rusher, six guys in coverage, the runningback blocking (and thus not in the pass route), while the linemen stand around blocking air. LeBeau is the master at this.

But while LeBeau will throw all kinds of crazy schemes at opponents, Capers is somewhat more willing to go to the extremes in his personnel. As Blitzology explains, he has had a lot of success with his “Nickel” and “Psycho” pass rush packages, with as few as one or two defensive linemen on the field. Below is an example of an overload blitz Green Bay used this past year:

You can see a video of this blitz on the NFL’s site here. Unsurprisingly, with Charles Woodson, Capers loves blitzes involving defensive backs.

Lastly, it simply must be mentioned that yes, defensive linemen dropping into coverage is a key technique with zone blitzes, even if I do think it gets overhyped. Below is a page from LeBeau’s playbook showing a particularly nasty blitz and the technique. Note that the defensive linemen typically must step up before he retreats — the point is to “eat” a potential pass rusher by making him hesitate while some other player rushes from elsewhere. The idea, again, is to make offensive linemen block air by forcing them to account for him as a potential blitzer; this is why the zone blitz, which often only blitzes five or so, can look like an all-out armageddon, even (or especially!) to the offense and the quarterback.

And for an example of this, Green Bay’s clinching touchdown against Chicago is about as good as it gets:

This weekend’s Super Bowl will likely turn on how well the quarterbacks (and offensive lines) handle these pressures. Both Aaron Rogers and Ben Roethlisberger are very dangerous, not least because they are both surprisingly nimble on their feet. Indeed, while the NFL has become a league of the exotic blitzes, it is the quarterbacks who can move that can destroy and make silly some obscure blitz that overloads one side or the other — the tactic works best against a stationary target. Both Capers and LeBeau are old hats and no doubt have spent the last two weeks doodling up some great stuff. Then again, the offensive staffs for Pittsburgh and Green Bay have the ultimate resources when it comes to preparing for LeBeau and Capers: the advice and counsel of the other’s soul (or blitz) mates. How that plays out is anyone’s guess. My prediction is that Green Bay squeaks it out, largely because I think their offensive line is just a bit better than Pittsburgh’s, and that will be enough.

But if you want to know what the matchup will look like, you can’t do much better than seeing what the past looked like. Below is lots of additional reading and some coaches’ film of last year’s meeting between the Steelers and the Pack, courtesy of Brophy.

Regardless of the game’s output, however, the zone blitz will be here to stay, and offenses and defenses are still evolving, in symbiotic response to the other. Happy blitzing.

Green Bay offense vs. Pittsburgh defense

Pittsburgh offense vs. Green Bay defense

Additional reading and viewing:

- Bob Davie on the zone blitz
- Fire zone blitzes
- Pass protection and the zone blitz
- Nick Saban’s defense, including the zone blitz
- Blitzology on the “seam drop,” a key zone blitz coverage technique
- Brophy on zone blitzes here and here
- Dick LeBeau’s 2002 Cincy Bengals playbook
- Dom Capers 1997 Carolina Panthers playbook

Related Posts:

• The Monster Defense, Overload Blitzes and Angle Stunts
• The Most Important Game in the History of the Spread Offense, and its Legacy
• Smart Links – Strategery Round-Up: two-tight ends, the 3-4 defense, rocket toss and “Iso” – 12/8/2011
• Attacking “Psycho” fronts and other blitz heavy defensive looks
• Bobby Petrino’s shallow cross concept – concepts, routes, and protection