If there was a blitz, Dick LeBeau had it on his call sheet. The mad scientist he was revealed exactly how many different rushes he had on standby each time the Pittsburgh Steelers stepped inside a stadium.
“They had a crazy coach,” LeBeau joked during a recent panel discussion at the Heinz History Center promoting his new book. “I was going to carry 50 blitzes. That’s crazy. But they knew it was crazy. And they knew their coach was crazy. We couldn’t run 50 blitzes in a week’s practice. But we had time in between periods, and we would walk through anything that I thought we might need that Sunday.”
One of the Fire Zone’s pioneers, LeBeau had an aggressive mindset to send anyone and everyone. All 11 players were a potential threat to rush in some combination. But his “safe” pressure of creatively bringing five instead of sending the house is what made his defenses so effective. For offenses, it was chaos. For the defense, it was art.
Having a veteran and cohesive defense gave LeBeau the freedom to have such a blitz-heavy playbook. And a group that could roll with the surprises, even when that wasn’t his intent.
“I promised them that I would never call something that we hadn’t walked through or practiced,” LeBeau said. “I’m not going to ask you to do something that we hadn’t practiced that week. And I must be totally honest with you, I fudged on that one a couple of times. But I knew at halftime they were so smart. That was the strength of the defense.”
Pittsburgh had great athletes. Fast, strong, agile. But they were a heady group with experience and top-end football IQs. Troy Polamalu is one of the smartest players in NFL history, and he was hardly alone along that Steelers front. Ryan Clark had the IQ to cover for Polamalu bouncing around the defense, James Farrior was the leader in the middle, while the d-line led by Aaron Smith and Brett Keisel smartly and soundly did its job to free up everyone else.
LeBeau’s blitzes paid off. Their ability to stop the run routinely put opposing offenses in third and long, allowing the defense to dip into its bag of tricks. During LeBeau’s tenure as defensive coordinator (2004-2014), Pittsburgh tied for third in sacks with 448. Only the Miami Dolphins (449) and the Philadelphia Eagles (450) had more over that span. And during the Steelers’ Super Bowl runs, 2005-2010, no team had more sacks than Pittsburgh’s 268.
The pairing of LeBeau and the talent of the Steelers’ defense was perfect and frankly will be difficult to again replicate in the NFL. The “crazy” coach with a defense able to carry out all his calls.
Check out the whole panel below, which our Scott Brown and co-author of LeBeau’s book was a part of.
