The Essential Smart Football, a critique

Chris Brown, of Smart Football, has written a book.

I caught wind of it in a blurb by Doug Farrar, and bought it. I, for the most part, recommend the book. It’s an easy long afternoon read, and there is plenty to digest. Chris has forgotten more offensive football than I’ll ever know, but on the other side of the ledger, defense, his acumen isn’t quite as sharp. The essay I have issues with is also posted on Grantland, and the central passages that bother me are as follows. The first is an explanation of the defensive reaction to the T formation.

Defenses needed an answer. The response was the “5-2 Monster” defense, which essentially dominated football for the next two decades. The 5-2 Monster involved five defensive linemen, each playing a 2-gap technique over a specific offensive lineman. This allowed linebackers to roam free and match the offense’s ball carriers. The “Monster” referred to the safety who came down and created one of the first true eight-man front defenses. The combination of five two-gapping defensive linemen with three second-level defenders, each attacking the ball and following the potential runners, helped counteract the T formation offenses’ misdirection.

In the NFL, defenses varied more owing to the need to stop passing teams, but even those variations typically relied on Monster-based principles.

This whole quote is misleading in the extreme. Bud Wilkinson is the father of the 5-4, as he called it, also known as the Oklahoma. As he wasn’t coaching at Oklahoma until 1947, the T had been around for at least 7 years before any sign of the 5-4 ever appeared (there is, for example, no mention of the 5-4 in Dana Bible’s book, copyright 1947, but plenty of mention of the ‘T’). Further, the 5-4 was essentially a college defense, favored in particular by the Big Eight conference.

In the pros, the first move was to Clark Shaughnessy’s 5-3 or perhaps to Earle Neale’s 5-2-4 double eagle. Steve Owen then started experimenting with the 6-1 “Umbrella”, because his team received a windfall of good defensive backs (including one Tom Landry) when the AAFC collapsed (Dr Z, New Thinking Man’s, Chapter 6). This then evolved into the 4-3 defenses that dominated pro football from the middle 1950s into the early 1980s, when the 3-4 became fashionable.

The most common pro 4-3 defenses from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s were the 4-3 Inside and the 4-3 Outside. Exhaustive coverage of the line positions and linemen responsibilities of these two defenses are a part of the set “Vince Lombardi on Football“, and it doesn’t take good eyesight or the brain of a rocket scientist to note that these are one gap defenses.

The classic Tom Landry 4-3 defenses, which Vince Lombardi used his whole career, were one gap defenses. You either took the solid line or the dotted line gaps.

Therefore, the whole premise of the above quote is flawed. The 4-3 of the 1960s isn’t a 5-2, and doesn’t partake of the two gap tendencies of Bud Wilkinson’s creation.

As we pointed out here, the 4-3 Flex is derived from the Inside and the Outside, and thus is also a one gap defense. The flex can be described as a 4-3 inside on the weak side of the formation, and a 4-3 outside on the strong side of the (offensive) formation.

So, now that Chris has “proven” that professional 4-3 defenses are two gap defenses, he then goes on to claim:

Johnson’s response was to reinvent the 4-3 defense with an almost entirely new underlying framework. And although this new 4-3 began at Oklahoma State, it is now known for the school Johnson brought it to next: the University of Miami. The 4-3 had been around for a long time. Legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry even had his own variant named after him, the “Landry 4-3 Flex”; but Johnson concocted his version as anti-wishbone medicine. Instead of telling defensive linemen to 2-gap and watching them get fooled by the option on every play, he switched entirely to a 1-gap system.

The premise, is, more or less, that 2 gap football is all that existed until Jimmy Johnson invented the 1 gap defense out of the blue. Except, of course, no one else says that, and they don’t say it because 1 gap 4 man line defenses were both popular and in common use since the middle 1950s, as the New York Giants won a championship with one in 1956.

Now, if the context is narrowed to Big Eight football, then all the discussions begin to make sense. The Big Eight was the hotbed of the 5-2, and it was Big Eight coaches that brought the 5-2, in the form of the 3-4, into professional ball. In the Big Eight, two gap approaches were popular, and Jimmy Johnson coming up with a penetrating one gap scheme must have been quite a shock to his opponents.

And that’s the flaw of the essay. It starts with a Big Eight centric view and expands it to cover the whole of football. But the whole of defensive football from the 1940s to Jimmy Johnson’s innovative 4-3 is more than Bud Wilkinson’s 5-4, and this essay doesn’t present it in that way.

Consequently, this whole non-discussion could have been better. It could have dug deep into the specific assignments of the Miami 4-3 on a per position basis and shown us just how it differed from previous 4-3s. But the article ducks all that by a sleight of hand, by pretending that if you know the Monster 5-2, you know all you need to know about NFL style 43 defenses.

Just to make it clear, 4 man ‘odd fronts’ predated JJ and Belichick. What kind of scheme did Hank Stram’s Kansas City Chiefs run? Was Buck Buchanon a 1 gap or 2 gap tackle?

Now, back to Belichick’s front: Is it as innovative as Chris claims? I’ll note that odd front 4-3s were often seen in the 1960s, particularly by AFL teams, the Kansas City Chiefs being one of them. How do we know, in the absence of good video study, just what kind of scheme Buck Buchanon was playing? The answer is, we don’t. And I’ll save that thought, as money is tight, and I’m not quite sure where to get a copy of Kansas City Chief highlights just yet.

Further, by the early 2000s, the kind of Tampa 2 style defenses that teams like Dallas, under defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer were running had a odd front. The nose tackle was a 2 gapper, a strong side 3 technique tackle was covering one gap. And whether the ends were 1 gap ends or 2, they’re just one assignment away from the alignment Chris talks about as so brilliant.

And this isn’t to take anything away from Chris’s final diagram of Belichick’s 4-3, which is pretty cool. The symmetry is dynamically pleasing. But the history of football defense he concocts is so mangled as to deserve not only comment, it deserves to be condemned.

Update: Chris’s book is availahle now as a Kindle ebook.

 

The 43 Flex, from Tom Landry to Rob Ryan

The Dallas Morning News has a cute article, about how the first defensive call by Rob Ryan on the first defensive play of the first preseason game of Dallas in 2011 was the 43 Flex. I recall watching that play and thinking “psycho front”. And yes, Ryan has 4 players along the line of scrimmage and 3 players at linebacker depth, but what we’re going to do in this article is talk about about Tom Landry’s first two defenses, the 43 inside and 43 outside, and how they then morphed into the flex, to better use the talents of their All-Pro defensive tackle, Bob Lilly.

Dallas-Miami, SB VI, 4-3 inside line setup.

43 inside/outside. Inside, DTs rush "A" gap. Outside, "B" gap.

If you have the set “Vince Lombardi on Football“, then you have perhaps the best resource I can locate on the 4-3 inside and the 4-3 outside. Pages 174 through 185 cover these two defenses. The physical setup of the defensive line is the same in both cases. In the 4-3 inside, the defensive tackles rush into the “A” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “B” gaps. In the 4-3 outside, the defensive tackles rush into the “B” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “A” gaps. The front, from the offenses left to right, is a “5-2-2-5″ alignment, with the tackles head up on the offensive guards, and the ends on the outside shoulders of the tackles. The middle linebacker is 1.5 yards deep, the strong side linebacker is nose onto the tight end if the tight end is separated, suggesting strong side sweep.

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 inside

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 outside

The ideas for the Flex came about after Bob Lilly’s move from left defensive end to right tackle. Dick Nolan describes it as one half of  the line playing a 43 inside, one half playing a 43 outside. To note, the  tackles in the inside/outside are flexed. In Tom Landry’s Flex, however, it depended on which side of the offense was “strong”, or likely to be  the side players would run to. Bob, in Peter Golenbock’s book, describes it as follows:

If I were on the weak side, I’d be head-up with the guard, right on the line of scrimmage, whereas the tackle on the other side would be three feet back. George Andrie would be right over the tackle and instead of being on his outside shoulder, he’d be head-up, three feet back. He would be keying my guard. I also keyed my guard.

Dallas flexed. DLT on the LOS because offense is strong left.

43 flex. Left to right, front is "4-2-2-5".

As Dick Nolan explains

Let’s say the other team tries the old Lombardi sweep. When that guard pulls and that center tries to choke back to get Lilly, he can’t get to him quick enough because Lilly can just go around him, and the center will fall down on his nose trying to block him. Lilly will be running right behind their guard, and Paul Hornung will be running the ball, and Paul Horning can’t come back, because  if he does, he’ll be running right back into Lilly…

To guard against the counter, the off side defensive end now plays a 4 technique as opposed to a 5. That end is responsible for the weak side gap that the off side defensive tackle has left behind.

When introduced, it caused a lot of confusion,  because Dallas soon came to  be able to play the  43 inside/outside from the Flex set. That was the upside, as no one knew what they were actually playing. The downside is the weak side defensive end’s pass rush was effectively stuffed whenever the Flex was played. By the late 1970s early 1980s, it became almost automatic for teams to pass when they saw the Flex. Consequently,  as Charlie Waters explains in Golenbock’s book, the Flex was played less and less.

In the 1990s, Dallas switched to the Miami 43, versions of which are still played today. A derivative of the Miami 43 is Ron Vanderlinden’s Stack defense, discussed briefly here.

And now we have Rob Ryan’s 43 Flex. No, it doesn’t look a bit like the Tom Landry defense, but does resemble, somewhat, the double eagle flex defenses that were popularized by Dick Tomey and Rich Ellerson. A screen shot and a diagram of Rob’s defense follows.

Rob's 43 flex, first play of preseason. Denver appears to have an 8 man line.

Rob Ryan's 43 Flex

Notes: updated due to typos, and a very nice article on Blogging the Boys that identified each player along this front. Further, the blog Compete in All Things has some Xs and Os on the modern 43 Flex.

 

The essential Cowboys bookshelf – “Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes”, by Peter Golenbock, and more

If you own exactly one book on the Dallas Cowboys, I’d strongly suggest this one be your book.

The essential oral narrative of the Dallas Cowboys.

Peter’s book is an oral narrative, composed of dozen of interviews of the “critical players”, and thus similar to, say, Studs Terkel’s “The Good War“. The book is organized in chronological order, from the foundation of the franchise to the middle 1990s. It’s not really a tell all book, though it interviews people who were very pro franchise and others who didn’t care much for their treatment (the linebacker Rodrigo Barnes, for example). It is rich in detail, exhaustive, but an easier read than its 838 pages would suggest. For the historian, comments about the way Tom Landry was blocking when the franchise began would be useful to those tracing the origins of the zone blocking scheme. We’ve talked about the specific quotes involved in our review of Pat Kirwan’s book.

Along with Pete’s book, I would also recommend this set of DVDs

along with this set of 10 Cowboys games.

These videos, along with the book, would aid any fan in tracing the nature and character of the franchise over the years. The one place where the book appears to be lacking is in any coverage of the Miami 4-3. While a ton of interviews touch on Tom Landry’s contribution to the 4-3 defense, such as the flex defense, coverage of Jimmy Johnson’s Miami 4-3 just isn’t there at all. That, I’d suggest, is the largest open hole in the Golenbock book.

 

NFL books – “The Glory Game”, by Frank Gifford

There is a sense of embarrassment that pervades Frank’s book, one that could perhaps be explained by the fact  that David Halberstam was planning on writing a book about the 1958 NFL championship game. But it seems deeper than that. He talks about the salaries the pros made in the 1950s, the failures on the field, the sense of embarrassment that he couldn’t win for his dad, his peripatetic childhood. As a focused study of the game, well, it isn’t. It’s an older man’s book, broad in scope, a little rambling and talkative.

And in that is the strength of the story, which captures a snapshot in time that doesn’t exist anymore. No, I haven’t read extensively about 1950s football, and for someone who hasn’t, it can be a fascinating glimpse at their lives, the character of 1950s New York City. Further, Frank talks candidly about the failures in leadership of the period, strips away common myths about the way the champion Giants worked, and in doing so, exposes the growing character of two towering football figures, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

Cowboys fans might find this bit of text fascinating:

For my first two years , I played defense more than offense, which meant I was playing with Landry, who was even then a player-coach. So I knew how rigid, strict, and unyielding he was as a coach.

Actually,  in  one game against the Redskins, I made an interception and lateraled the ball to Tom, who ran it in for a touchdown. On the following Tuesday, we watched the film.

“Gifford, was that the coverage?”

“I know, Tom, but they were in a Brown right, L-split,” I started to explain, “and-”

“There are no ‘buts’”

“But what if –”

“There are no what-ifs”

If you didn’t play the defense Tom’s way, end of conversation.

“He had a computer mind”, is how Huff remembers Landry. “He studied the opposition’s offensive frequencies in various situations, and he taught them, and you studied them. He’d always say, ‘You have to believe, You  gotta believe. I’ll put you in position to make the play, trust me.’ If you weren’t in position, and making the moves he’d given you, he’d give you ‘The Look’. He didn’t have to say anything: you could read his mind, and what he was saying was ‘You dumb-ass.’”

Vince Lombardi? Gifford expresses a great deal of skepticism about Lombardi’s portrayal in Maraniss’s book, because Frank never saw Lombardi as dictator.  Lombardi was, Gifford claimed, a much more approachable man when Vince was their offensive coach.

And so it goes. The book is peppered with those kinds of details. As an example, Lenny Moore always kept a miniature bible in his thigh pad. Perhaps the most evocative writing is a description of the 1950s New York City night life, dominated by saloons, and the search for places where someone could pick up some or all of the player’s tab. After such a fine bit of work on the times, the setting, the game itself tends to fade into the background. Perhaps, this game has been so intensely covered that most of us in the hard core fan category could recite the ebb and flow of the game by heart.

Please note there is a coauthor, Peter Richmond. It’s a tribute to Peter that the book sounds as if Frank is narrating the text.

 

Preston Pearson: a retrospective

One of the nice things about Madden’s book, “One Knee Equals Two Feet”, is that it does understand the importance of Preston Pearson, and the notion of the third down back in general. A lot of this influence is a consequence of a single game. In 1975, the Dallas Cowboys were a wild-card team, a 10-4 team advancing into the second round of the playoffs against a very good and well coached Chuck Knox team, the Los Angeles Rams, with a record of 12-2. They were led by the excellent Lawrence McCutcheon at running back and featured one of the best defensive lines ever in professional football, featuring Fred Dean and Jack Youngblood at defensive ends, Merlin Olson at defensive tackle, and Jack Reynolds and Isiah Robertson at linebacker. The Rams were the #1 defense in football, allowing less than 10 points a game.

By the end of this game, Dallas had won 37-7. Roger Staubach called it “the most perfect football game we ever had as Cowboys.”  Preston Pearson had gained 20 yards rushing, but 123 yards passing, including three touchdowns.

It wasn’t as if he was given easy passes to catch, either.

second touchdown

reaching for the ball.

The most famous catch was his third touchdown, the shovel pass.

Video of this game is here.

 

Building teams from the inside out.

I’ve been reading a coach’s blog recently, since Blitzology has clued me into this resource, and on Coach Hoover’s blog are clinic notes for a Bill Belichick clinic. Not often guys like me get to hear  the words of a football genius, even in truncated form. To quote the article:

Football – all starts up the middle. Is played from the inside-out (Off, Def, Special Teams).

I’d  argue that’s true when you put a team together too. You put it together from the inside out. You need the right kind of defensive tackles, or in 3-4 setups, nose tackles. Miami thought so much of their up and coming nose tackle Paul Soliai that they franchised him.

When looking at the history of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Landry always had a superb defensive tackle to anchor the defense, whether it was Bob Lilly or Randy White. The decline of the Cowboys defensively in the late 1990s can be tracked by the loss of decent tackles; they really had no answer for the loss of Chad Hennings. Dallas struggled until Bill Parcells acquired Jason Ferguson. 1980s Chicago had Dan Hampton. The New York Jets have a tackle I’m a huge fan of, Kris Jenkins. Pittsburgh? The Texas ex, Casey Hampton. The Green Bay Packers? B. J. Raji. Pittsburgh thought so much of Hampton they drafted him a full round above where the draft pundits placed him that year.

You need your anchor in the middle, whether he be supernaturally quick and penetrating (Lilly) or the rock of Gibralter (Hampton).

Can you name the defensive tackles of  the Atlanta Falcons? Their offense seems good enough to me to win it all. I don’t get the same warm fuzzies from the Atlanta defense. Atlanta head coach Mike Smith has a defensive pedigree and I wonder if he’s just getting it all accomplished with coaching mirrors. Some defensive studs would make me feel that they have the foundation to be more than a playoff Cinderella. Question is, while poised on the last third of the first round, how do they dig out, say, the next Ed Reed or even the next Patrick Kerney.

 

Fifth Down Blog’s “A Guide to NFL Defenses” : an appraisal

It’s a seven part guide to defenses in the NFL, and unfortunately, the articles aren’t tied together in sequence. You can get to all of them through the link provided for the author,  Jene Bramel, but there is no other one stop source for links 1 through 7. So we will provide one here.

• Introduction: Part 1
• Evolution of the 4-3 Front
• The 4-3 Front Continued
• The 3-4 Front
• The Zone Blitz
• The 46 Defense
• Nickel Subpackages

Overall, it’s a really fine collection of articles, and as of early 2011, pretty much a must read. I do have minor complaints in two areas.

When discussing Tom Landry’s flex defense, the shift isn’t the usual one for a strong side offense. In this discussion, we’re assuming a mid 1960s offense, where teams tended to run to the strong side of the formation. In that case, the weak side guard pulls and the defensive tackle versus the guard who pulls should be up on the line of scrimmage. That defensive lineman, Bob Lilly in the middle 1960s, would simply follow the guard to the running back.

Now, it’s a perfectly fine shift if the MLB has read his keys correctly and expects a running play to the weak side of the formation, where the strong side guard pulls and the offensive  team runs to its left.

In discussing the 46, Jene leads with a garbled mishmash of information that’s simply incorrect.

The 46 is a variation of the 4-3, with eight in the box and six men on the line.

While a 46 is an 8 man front with a 6 man line, the 46 is no more a 4-3 than is the prevent defense. What’s confusing, of course, is that Buddy Ryan used the same personnel in multiple defensive formations and multiple fronts. So yes, the Chicago Bears would shift from any number of fronts: 3 man fronts, 4 man fronts, 6 man fronts of various kinds, including the 46. Same players, different roles.  That doesn’t mean they’re in the same defense.

Particularly for  the novice, the first article is the best. It discusses the naming conventions for defensive line play, and therefore takes the mystery out of stuff such as the “3 technique” and the “5 technique”. It gives the student the language to handle modern defensive jargon. It traces the development of defenses, and to a clever eye, shows honestly, in some ways, how the past can come back and bite you. Compare, for example, Alfred Earle Neale’s “Eagle” defense with the 3-4 shown in part 4, or for that matter, with Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma defense (see here, or here). In large part it isn’t where people line up, but what those players in those positions are capable of doing.

The last article is one that discusses the latest defensive wrinkle, what I’ve  been calling a “Cloud” defense and what Jene calls the “Creep”, or “Prowl”, or “Psycho”.  It’s where there are 1 or 2 down lineman and then 5 or 6 other players simply mill about. Anywhere from 3 to 8 will end up rushing from this formation, depending. It’s the latest in confusing blocking assignments, and was featured often enough in the 2010 Cleveland Browns and New York Jets repetoire. I suspect Rob Ryan will be taking the “Creep” with him to Dallas in the upcoming 2011 season.