Here’s How to Prevent a Victory

Football is a sport that changes rules like a chorus girl changes her hair color. Go away for a year and you can’t recognize either one.

The offensive line gets down under a punt too fast? OK, make them stay at home. Penalize them for advancing beyond the line of scrimmage.

Too few field goals? Move the goal posts to the goal line. Too many field goals? Move them back to the back of the end zone.

The pass interference rule too strict? OK, let the defender do everything short of bringing piano wire.

It’s not a game, it’s an experiment. Do you realize it wasn’t too many years ago that it was illegal to pass anywhere except five yards behind the line of scrimmage? That two incomplete passes in a row resulted in a five-yard penalty and an incomplete pass in the end zone was ruled a touchback with the ball brought out to the 20 and given to the defending team?

Football’s laws are not graven in stone by a bolt of lightning on a mountain top. They are written in sand with a finger near the tide.

Accordingly, I have a rule change I would like to propose for serious consideration at the next committee meeting.

I would like the prevent defense outlawed. I propose this in the spirit of outlawing every innovation that doesn’t work, never has worked and never will work.

It’s the football equivalent of the Maginot Line mentality. It’s a strategic abomination that makes paupers out of line-players, makes head-cases out of defensive linemen, and rich men out of quarterbacks and wide receivers. Of course, none of those are all bad.

Here is the proposition: For nearly four quarters, or some 57 minutes of football, a team will play aggressive, get-the-passer, key-on-the-runner football. But, with a lead to protect in the final minutes, it will change its philosophy altogether. It will remove its certified all-purpose linebackers and sometimes even linemen from the game and put in a passel of pony-sized defenders who are expected to guard against an onslaught of passes.

It is like putting buckets around the house instead of fixing the roof. It is ceremonial, like hara-kiri. It never works. But this makes no impression at all on football coaches. It looks nice on the blackboard.

It was the invention of George Allen when he was defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears. It was called the “nickel” defense originally because it called for the deployment of five instead of four defensive backs in obvious passing situations. Allen’s nickel held the opposition to only 13 touchdown passes one season and intercepted a record 36 passes the next.

The nickel went to a “dime,” or the introduction of six defensive backs, and then to the “two bits” or eight defensive backs. Coaches subscribe to the more-is-better theory of life. Some day soon, we may see the “dollar” defense--10 defensive backs, one rusher.

This is Christmas morning to a savvy, skilled quarterback, such as, say, Dan Fouts of San Diego. He is rushed by only three men and he has five to block them. These three men are rushing him and only him. The other team has given up on the run. Because the eight defensive backs have peeled back in a desperate scramble to guard against the long pass.

It’s a little as if all the infielders in baseball repaired to the outfield in the ninth inning to guard against the home run or the three-base hit. The prevent defense gets bunted and run to death.

Perhaps you saw the payoff on the prevent defenses in a few games over the weekend. It wasn’t the “two-minute drill” by the offense that won all those games in the final seconds. It was the two-minute drill by the defense.

The Rams didn’t lose their game

to fourth-quarter calls by the officials, they lost it to a second-quarter touchdown drive by the New York Giants in the waning seconds of the first half. The Rams had a 13-0 lead and even the Giant coach, Bill Parcells, wanted to run the clock out. Coaches have great respect for the prevent defense. Fortunately, his quarterback, Phil Simms, didn’t. There was 1:13 left, and he only needed 57 seconds to sweep the two-bit defense for what was really the winning touchdown, the one that turned the game around.

In the overtime of the Raider-Charger game, Fouts beat the prevent with the run, which is easy, too. The pass rush, what there is of it, converges on the quarterback. The rest of the defense is rushing madly back toward the goal line. Fouts didn’t even bother to pass. He just handed the ball twice to his running backs, once for 23 yards to Gary Anderson, and the other time to Lionel James for the winning touchdown.

Coaches will not give up their prevent defense. It’s a magnificent obsession. They love the odds: eight defenders against five receivers. But I lean toward the late Red Sanders’ theory: “No one can throw a touchdown pass flat on his back.” Sanders’ idea of a prevent defense was eight pass-rushers and three defensive backs and not vice versa.

Since it’s not likely coaches will change, football has to do it for them. Basketball outlaws the zone defense. Football can outlaw the prevent.

Of course, football wants to open up the game, provide more scoring. Well, we have a solution for that, too: Make them play the prevent defense the whole 60 minutes. The scoreboard won’t be able to keep up.