CHARGERS ’90 : THE DEFENSE : Lynn’s Aim: Confuse ‘Em, Aggressively
If there was such a thing as a college course in Strategies and Tactics of an NFL Defensive System, no doubt some idiot would take it, thinking, “Now here’s an easy A.”
Finding he was sadly mistaken a few hours into the course, the student would change his thinking drastically. “Why didn’t I take Parapsychology or Aerospace Engineering?”
With that in mind, here is what the course outline might look like. It will concentrate on just one of the 28 NFL defenses--the Chargers’--and in this lesson, emphasis will be on the front seven--the linemen and linebackers.
Ron Lynn, the defensive coordinator, could be the instructor. His qualifications: gentle, easy-going approach; ability to relate subject matter in a positive manner; has built a defense--once the laughingstock of the NFL--into one of the best in the league.
A national publication recently called Lynn “the best assistant coach who’s never been a head coach in the NFL but will be.”
To which Lynn replied: “That’s flattering. It’s nice to hear those things. It’s also embarrassing. But it’s better than reading you’re a dork.”
In the Chargers’ system, everything begins with the front seven, and the first thing to know about it is the basic alignment. The Chargers run what they call a “Base 3-4”--meaning three down linemen and four linebackers.
The first thing to understand about the Base 3-4 is that the Chargers almost never deploy it. Rather, it serves as a focal point, the square one from which all other defensive fronts are built.
Based on a number of factors, alignments, schemes and plays are developed around the Base 3-4 set. Those factors include down and distance, score, time, injuries and the opponent, its blocking schemes and pass routes and the quarterback’s ability and arm strength.
“Our basic approach,” Lynn said, “is to give (the other team) as many different looks as we can and hope to cause an offensive team to reduce its inventory of plays so that they can’t have their whole arsenal at their disposal. As soon as we can ascertain what they’ve eliminated and what they’re trying to emphasize, we hope we can go to whatever we feel has the best opportunity against that.”
Sounds simple enough. Confuse the heck out of them.
“Essentially,” Lynn added, “we want to be an up-the-field team . . . attack, create, make some things happen. Let’s not sit on the line of scrimmage and wait. Let’s, as best we can, initiate what happens. We’re not averse to dogging or blitzing on any down. We want their offensive blockers to think that at any time, any one of our people can be pass-rushers. And I think they (the defenders) like the fact that it’s a go-get-’em type thing. It’s not a matter of sitting and reading and letting this 320-pounder come off and do frontal lobotomies on you all day.”
Confuse the heck out of them, but do it aggressively.
To do so, Lynn wants quick, aggressive, intelligent athletes. Much like the ones he has.
In the Chargers’ Base 3-4, Joe Phillips is the nose tackle, Lee Williams and Burt Grossman the defensive ends, Billy Ray Smith and Leslie O’Neal the outside linebackers and Gary Plummer and Cedric Figaro the inside linebackers. Les Miller subs at nose tackle, George Hinkle at defensive end, Henry Rolling at outside linebacker, and Junior Seau and Richard Brown at inside linebacker. Five of those--Grossman, O’Neal, Seau, Smith and Williams--were No. 1 draft choices.
The key to the arrangement is that rarely, if ever, will all of the Base 3-4 “starters” be playing at their listed position at the same time. Everything changes from game to game, quarter to quarter, series to series and down to down. Along the line, forward or back, up or down . . . hardly ever will the front seven line up the same way two plays in a row.
O’Neal will probably spend as much or more time as a down lineman than as a linebacker. Smith, who normally covers the tight end, will also rush frequently. Grossman and Williams will be used in some zone coverages while a safety or two blitz. Plummer and Figaro will blitz and stunt regularly from a number of different spots.
In other situations, anywhere from zero to three players could be replaced by defensive backs. And any one of those replaced could be any one of the front seven.
“What we’re trying to do is get the best possible matchups, one-on-one, that we can get,” Lynn said. “If our feeling is that Leslie (O’Neal) is more suited to play over this guy than Burt (Grossman), than we might just change the alignments for that week. Their athletic abilities allow us to do that. Their intellect allows us to do that.”
So the possibilities then are endless?
“Let’s put it this way,” said Gunther Cunningham, the Chargers’ defensive line coach. “If you wrote down a script of 50 plays a team might run in a given game, I guarantee you, we could and probably would line up 50 different defenses. Easy.”