Even casual Pittsburgh Steelers fans know about legendary defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau and the role he played in the organization playing in three Super Bowls from 2005-10 and winning two of them, including in 2008 with a generational defense.
But how about this for an alternate universe: What if instead of bringing his signature zone blitz to the Steelers when he joined first-year head Bill Cowher’s staff in 1992, he unveiled it almost a decade earlier in Pittsburgh.
And in the USFL.
It could have happened. When the USFL expanded in the early 1980s, Pittsburgh was awarded a franchise for the 1984 season and the Maulers eventually offered their head-coaching job to LeBeau.
LeBeau had just been promoted to defensive coordinator in Cincinnati following the arrival of new head coach Sam Wyche.
“I was always taught when someone wanted to talk to you, you listened,” said LeBeau, who met with Maulers general manager Paul Martha about the head coaching job. “I was getting along in years a little bit because I had played fourteen years and at that time I had been coaching around fifteen years. Every coach wants to be a head coach and so I thought, ‘I better think about this a little bit.’ ”
LeBeau indeed gave it some thought before ultimately that he had a better job as a defensive coordinator in the NFL and would not have to uproot his family by moving to Pittsburgh. History shows that he made the right choice. That iteration of the Maulers played just one season before folding after the USFL voted to start playing in the fall instead of the spring, which would have put them in direct competition with the Steelers.
What is fascinating about the Maulers offering their head job to LeBeau is when it happened.
LeBeau had for years been studying ways to put pressure on the quarterback but finding safer ways to blitz. Dropping down linemen into coverage was not something a lot of head coaches would have even entertained.
But Wyche was an innovative coach and when LeBeau told him about this unorthodox way of blitzing he had been devising Wyche said they would give it a look.
The zone blitz was still a couple of years (and plenty of tinkering) in the making, but it was on its way. The funny thing is had LeBeau taken the Maulers job for their 1984 season he would not have needed a coach to sign off on the zone blitz because he would have been the head coach.
“We definitely would have tried it,” he said.
