12th Man Magazine

Editor
Homer Jacobs

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Rusty Burson
Jim Molony

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Kevin Bartram
Glen Johnson

Zoned Out | No Backing Down | Living the Dream

Zoned Out

By Homer Jacobs

R.C. Slocum, ever the defensive guru, once sat in a parking lot in Dallas explaining pressure defense to Joe Gibbs, who wanted to employ a Wrecking Crew of his own with the Washington Redskins.

And more college coaches than you can count have strolled through the Texas A&M football offices during the springtime to pick Slocum's brain about man-to-man pressure, the 3-4 and the all-out blitz.

But perhaps Slocum's biggest challenge as a teacher of the game came this summer at the 12th Man Foundation's Board of Director meetings in Austin.

It was in the hotel bar where Slocum had to explain the intricacies of the latest football craze - the zone blitz - to a gathering crowd of laymen in maroon blazers. Using cocktail napkins as his chalkboard, Slocum went through the X's and O's of one of A&M's new defensive packages that likely will be unveiled in force Saturday against Colorado.

A&M has long been on the edge in terms of attacking defensive football. Miami has been credited with bringing the blitz and cover corners into the spotlight with the college game, but A&M was packing the sack long before Miami began to win its string of national championships.

But with any aspect of football, schemes and times have changed. And as offenses began to figure out how to counteract the aggressive style of defense that has defined the Wrecking Crew, defensive coordinators began to tinker with new counter measures as well.

It's not quite on the level of finding a cure for polio, but three years ago, the defensive staff of the Pittsburgh Steelers led by Dom Capers (now the head coach of the Carolina Panthers) found the antidote to the passing poison of today: the zone blitz.

And the Aggies have found it, too, as defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz has employed the blitz package that he used effectively at Kansas.

"We had done it at Kansas and had a lot of success with it," Hankwitz said. "We felt it was another dimension we could add to our defense that would not put you at undue risk."

The basic principles of the zone blitz as described to this layman on a cocktail napkin is that a defense tries to hurry a quarterback into a bad pass with blitzing linebackers, while defensive linemen drop into a certain zone where quarterbacks usually hope to find an open receiver on a quick slant.

Deception and overloading one side of the offensive line with pass rushers are key components of the zone blitz. It doesn't hurt to have speedy linebackers like the Aggies have, either.

"It just makes it more effective (with good linebackers)," Hankwitz added. "Here, we want to take advantage of our outside linebackers' and inside linebackers' speed. The zone blitz effectively does that."

A zone blitz from the Aggies could include sending all four linebackers - Dat Nguyen and Trent Driver on the inside and Warrick Holdman and Roylin Bradley on the outside - while quick defensive ends like Brad Crowley and Zerick Rollins roll back into zone coverage, hoping to confuse the quarterback by the mere presence of a maroon jersey in the area.

Pro football fans might remember the Super Bowl two years ago when the Cowboys' Leon Lett intercepted a Steeler pass in the first quarter and ran it back for a touchdown. Lett was lurking in the no passing zone the zone blitz had created.

Slocum said the Aggies have used some form of the zone blitz for years, but not to the extent they will use it this fall.

"It's another step in the evolution of football," Slocum said. "It goes back and forth: The offense does one thing, and the defense does something else. It's a cat-and-mouse kind of deal. This is the latest thing."

Offenses counter the zone blitz by hopefully reading the blitz and having the proper pass protection in place. A pass to the flat to a running back then could give a 275-pound defensive end major problems in a foot race.

A&M defensive line coach Bill Johnson said the Aggies practice the technique of the zone blitz, but he doesn't tutor his linemen in pass coverage. Some things you just can't teach.

"We don't spend a lot of time coaching guys to cover a guy," Johnson said. "Hopefully, we're overloading them to the point where they have to throw the ball fast. And if they're getting rid of the ball, (the linemen) are just in a position on the field where they can break up the play or make the tackle.

"We're not going to have a nose guard running vertically up the field with a receiver. They get back to the hole in the middle of the field, and if you see somebody with an opposite color on their jersey, you try and tackle them."

As for the players, the linebackers love the zone blitz because it means one things: Get to the quarterback and fast.

And for the defensive linemen, they get to dream of knocking down a pass or - if the football gods are with them - of intercepting a hurried throw.

Crowley understands his role is to fill space, yet the limited assignment hasn't kept him from dreaming big.

"It's a lot of fun," he said. "When I came here, I was a linebacker, so I (dropped into coverage) a lot. It brings back some memories. But the zone blitz, whenever we drop back in coverage, is more just to fill up a spot than it actually is to be a threat."

Indeed, the goal here is to cause panic with the quarterback. If he sees what he thinks is a blitz backed up by man-to-man coverage, he may check off at the line of scrimmage into the wrong play. That alone spells success for the defensive scheme.

The Aggies have used the zone blitz sparingly in its first three games, and the start of Big 12 play against a passing team like Colorado appears to be the perfect time to utilize it more.

"I can't tell you how many snaps we've run it, but it's been effective when we have," Hankwitz said. "We're still developing, and it's been good for us. But we're not doing it to the extent we would like to ultimately do it or as effectively as we would like to do it. But I think we're getting better at it."

If a school can make a blitz package work, it's probably Texas A&M. The Aggies' avalanche of blitzes in the late 1980s and early 1990s helped bring John Jenkins' run-and-shoot freak show to an end at Houston, and carbon copies of the Wrecking Crew can be seen each Saturday afternoon from Syracuse to Seattle.

The question is, when and how often will the Aggies show the new craze of the '90s?

"We're getting into it more and more," Crowley added. "We didn't want to show all of our bullets before the Big 12 starts. We have it hidden in our package. It will be a lot of fun."

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