Who Are the Most Innovative Defensive Coaches in NFL History?
Who would be on the Mount Rushmore of NFL Defensive Coaches? Joining Kaitlin O'Toole is All49ers Grant Cohn to break down his picks for the NFL's All-Time greatest defensive strategists.
Video Transcript:
Kaitlin O'Toole: Sports Illustrated is taking a look at the Mount Rushmore of defensive coaches. These are the most innovative and influential coaches in NFL history. Joining me now from All49ers is Grant Cohn. Grant, everyone knows that defense wins championships - Who are some of the best in all-time defensive coaches in the National Football League?
Grant Cohn: Well, these aren't necessarily the greatest defensive coaches. But like you said, these are the innovators, the ones who have the most influence on the NFL today. So you would start with who created the 4-3 defense, who created the 3-4 defense? Those are the two basic templates for the base defense in the NFL. But the way that the league has evolved the last 10, 15 years, the nickel defense has become the base defense in the NFL. So modern defense really started when the nickel was it was invented. And that's five defensive backs instead of four. It's simple.
But a guy named Jerry Williams invented this in the 60s. In 1960, they were playing the Packers and Vince Lombardi in the NFL championship. They used the nickel defense and held the Packers to 13 points and beat them. The next year they faced superstar Mike Ditka and held him to only one catch because of the nickel defense. Now, every team used the nickel defense like 70 percent of the time. So Jerry Williams modernized the template of defense.
Then in the 70s, defensive coordinator Bud Carson for the Steelers modernized coverages. Before him, people used man-coverage, strong zone, weak zone, and blitz for things. He introduced cover two, cover four. He introduced that you could use a specific coverage on any play to beat the defense. And now teams use all kinds of coverages. And it all comes from Bud Carson.
Three, Dick LeBeau, also a defensive coordinator for the Steelers. He was a coordinator for them in the 90s and in the 2000s as well. And he modernized blitzes. Pressures. He wasn't about covering people. He wanted to bring pressure. And what he did was he invented something called the Zone Blitz, which really modernized defense and really put a monkey wrench in the West Coast offense. I'm not going to get into the specifics of it, but it's it was lightyears ahead of anything else that had been done in the NFL this time. And coordinators use it all the time, including the 49ers defensive coordinator, Robert Saleh.
And then finally, Bill Belichick. He's been around since the 80s. He's not concerned with finding the perfect coverage or the perfect blitz. He seems to think that doesn't exist. What he wants to do is to find the perfect way to stop each particular opponent. So he modernized scouting and game planning. He builds a new scheme every week to take away the opponent's best player. And he's been showing the league how to do that for three decades. So those are the four.
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