He is going to be talking about obviously today's NFL, but then Sean will get with him on some of the legendary seasons he had as a coach for the blitzberg.
Yeah.
Remember, he's the architect, the guy I mean when you talk about building your house and he's from top to bottom of the Zone Blitz. To describe that before coach gets back on, it's when you see a defensive lineman, just give you who are a defensive end who's all of a sudden they show Blitz, the defensive guy drops back into the area and they're bringing somebody else. Yeah, he is the architect for the Zone Blitz and one
of the very very best of all. Well, he's the architect in the as good as we've ever had it coaching it.
He was enshrined to the Hall of Pro Football Hall of Fame in twenty ten after his playing career. He's going to be talking about his book Legendary.
If we had his coach Lebo there, if we had if we had Hall of Famers coach, did you hear my question?
It's Sean Salisburg. How you doing, sir, I'm doing well, Sean.
I did not hear.
Oh, Okay, yeah, it's good. Good to have you on.
I said that, you know, as a guy who grew up watching you play as a quarterback in the NFL, playing against you in a broadcast career, then as a player who's in the Hall of Fame, and as a coordinator defensive coach, all the great things you've done, we may not have had a better guy that belongs in the Hall of Fame in both. And so my question was, why don't we, with all the work you put in coach, why don't we have assistant coaches in the Hall of Fame.
Do you guys ever talk about that?
No? No, I went in in two.
Thousand and ten, right as a player.
And yeah, and everything that I did was the statistics, and everything was compiled in a fourteen year career from fifty nine to seventy two. So I can remember going through my life every now and then saying, well, my statistics were as good as some of the guys that are in there. But there's so many people that they have great careers, and each year there's more of them to retire who have great career with great statistics, and
they can only put so many in there. And I never felt like I was the type of guy that would be walking around saying, hey, man, I should be in the Hall of Fame.
You don't have to, We'll say that for it.
Yeah, we'll see a pretty large half side to be talking like that. So I've benefited from that. Actually, there is an avenue now for everyone connected with the game to get in there, as you've got owners coming in now and general managers are making it and the Hall of Fame has really rectified that dead end that they had for assistant coaches, and there will be some get in there, I'm sure.
Yeah, absolutely, And if you weren't already in as a player, you would be at the top of the list with a lot of the Tom mooreries of the world and the great assistant coach. I've been for this for two decades because all the work you do, and the head coach gets the credit and I get it, but all the work you put in and we're going to get
to the zone blitz here and your book in a second. Coach, you obviously have been following football and covering it and talking about it and teaching it and playing it for so many decades.
How do you feel about today's game?
Well, what do you give me one thing you like and one thing you don't about the current state of football.
Well, you know the old guys, they always say they are back in my day. You know, I'm not one of those kind of peopful. I played in my era, and I coached in that era, and now it's somebody else's turn. I enjoy today's game. I look forward to each season. I watch as much football as I possibly can. It's in my blood, of course, as I had fifty nine consecutive seasons in the National Football League fourteen player in forty five as a coach. So you're not going
to retire and say I'm done with that. It's going to be with you for the rest of your life. I think the game has ever bit as exciting and entertaining as it was. But it's a very very different game. And do I care for it as much as the one that I played? Probably not all the guys that I played with the same thing. But I think that's just a normal situation of all of us who lived
in our era and now somebody else has turned. They certainly are financially a success with the salaries that the players are making, and I don't be grudge them at all, and everything is going all the word en up with trend as I say, if I were a king, as they say, I would change a few way the games played. But I was a defensive guy all the way.
That's the voice of Dick lebou Hall of Famer Dick lebow and in my mind, one of the great defensive coordinators and coaches and teachers we've ever had in the National Football League. As he joins us, sorry, coach, your book legendary, which is going to be a phenomenal read. And I was trying to explain before you came on the you know some of the just the nuances of his own blitz and nobody you are the architect. Nobody taught it better and now it's used all over the league.
And as a quarterback, we didn't read defensive lineman drop it into our coverage and we're trying to throw a hotter a side adjustment. So how did this, well the book come about? But how did your your thoughts on the zone blitz that became Blitzberg and so special?
How did that originate with you? Where did that start?
Well? Because you know the able saying necessity is the mother of invention, uh Bill Walsh and the West Coast passing offense as quick release and Don Corriel who's throwing all over Jim Jones with a run and shoot, and these new concepts are throwing the ball all over the field, not huddling half the time. They were blitzing the league, and they were just a step ahead of the defense and really of the history of the game as it
has evolved. In the system where the offense who gets to call the play, they know who's carrying that, and they know who's throwing it, who they're going to be throwing it at, they know the snap count. The offense has that Advantag's just just the way the game is played and the defense have to figure out it's a stimulus response game. So I think if you trace the history of the league, you can see where the game has evolved into more wide open, higher scoring, bigger yardage plays.
And they had the balls. I think was probably the first guy to come up with the reads, and they had come up with a way to keep the pressure off the quarterback by breaking off routes and throwing to empty space and leading the guy into the area that created big plates for the offense. And in looking at it and studying it and figuring out I was in charge with the job of restricting the game of those plays and really stopping that system. And it was an evolution.
I thought, well, what if when they broke off from who was blitzing from us into an area that they could lead the ball as far as they wanted to and run away from the coverage, they were going to be successful. So I looked at areas where I could still blitz and overload the protection and have success with pressure on the quarterback, but still not exposed. One guy hap to be covering their best receiver all over the field with no help. So it was an area of
defensing behind the pressure up on front. See Bobby Knight and I were good friends, and Bobby Knight was great basketball coach. He won a fantastic amount of basketball games. We believed in pressure on the ball, and once you believed that, you had to try to figure out the
best way to do it. And that's all that I was doing, was looking for the safest, best way to put pressure on the quarterback where he just doesn't go out there and throw the ball all over the field and score fifty points on you so that was the problem, and I would say that sometimes we went down the wrong road and searching for the solution. I can't tell you how many diamond boards I went off into an
empty pool, my friend. But I did it on the practice field, and by the time that I tried it in the game, it was ready to go, and we had the advantage to be in the first ones. And so it was really dramatically successful in the early years because the offenses hadn't seen it, and in much the same as us with the new stuff that the offense does with the motion in the ship and then sign
it counsel and whatever they do to confuse us. I was just trying to level the playing field up a little bit and let my guys attack and confuse the offensive players.
Well, nobody has done it better as a defensive coordinator in the history of this game. The book is legendary. It's Dick Lebow, Hall of Fame player and in my mind, hall of fame coach. If we had him in there as assistants. Nobody's done a better.
Coach.
I know you've got a busy schedule talking to a lot of people. I can't thank you enough, and i'd love to have you on again. Spend an hour talking x's and o's. It's intriguing and if you want to know about zone blitz and how it was applied, this is the man architect, Dick Lebow, Hall of Famer coach.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Sean, it's been a blast.
It's always honored to talk to you too, sir. Thank you very much.
Brian, he is uh that's his own blitz and when you when you hear it all the time, that's where it started. And it also helps that coach Lebou had good players, but he put him in position to be success. That's bad stuff. Yes, awesome to see in Pittsburgh's winning again.