Punching Holes in No-Zone

Open letter to NFL coaches:

Dear Sirs,

Stop me if you’ve heard this. Don’t say, “Uh-oh, here he comes again with his dumb recommendations.” But will you do me a favor? Will you take that nickel or dime defense you put so much faith in, bag it, and drop it in the Los Angeles River? And hold it under till it’s gone?

Oh, I know. I can hear you sighing right now and see you looking at me pityingly. I’ve seen that look, the one that says, “Look, creep, why don’t you stick to adverbs and adjectives? You just don’t understand football.”

What’s to understand? You don’t have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to add up touchdowns. That “soft zone” is going to put Joe Montana in the Hall of Fame. Also, probably, John Elway and Phil Simms. Oh, I know. Coaches from George Allen to John Robinson have been enamored of that five-and-10-cent store defense. You know, the one where you peel back as many as seven or nine defenders on pass plays, the theory being that no one can complete a pass through that forest of defenders. The Maginot Line theory.

I know you say the public doesn’t get the whole picture.

But I see, game after game, where your method doesn’t work. It kind of reminds me of some years ago when a colleague of mine was covering the missile beat for a national magazine. It was before Star Wars but it was when the government was trying to perfect an antiballistic-missile system.

“What are its chances?” I asked my co-worker.

He sighed. “Well,” he said, “think of it as you in a pitch-dark hallway and someone is throwing needles at you and you have to throw needles back at them that will meet those needles head-on in midair and knock them down.”

Forgive me, but I have to think that’s what you guys are trying to do.

Take the Ram game Sunday. Before the game, the coach said he was going to try to neutralize the Philadelphia quarterback, Randall Cunningham, with a soft zone. English translation: no rush.

Well, personally, I couldn’t look. I happen to think the soft zone should be called the twilight zone. You remember what happened. With 1:50 to play in the first half, the Philadelphia quarterback got the ball on his own 32 and went through the Ram soft zone like a knife through hot butter. In fact, there were still 34 seconds to play after the Eagles had scored.

It happens all the time. It happens too often to be coincidence. It is an absolute indictment of the “prevent” or “nickel” defense. The so-called “two-minute offense” is really the two-minute defense. It requires the absolute cooperation of the defense.

Recall with me the night the New Orleans Saints had rushed the pants off the 49ers’ Joe Montana for 58 minutes 10 seconds. Suddenly, with 1:50 to go and Montana with the ball in his own territory, they changed strategy. I remember thinking at the time, “Oh, my God, they’ve peeled back! Montana will kill them!”

He did. All Montana needed was a field goal. Duck soup for him. He just stood there, licking his lips. In about three plays he was in field goal range, and the 49ers won.

I get cynical watching two teams struggle manfully all night to put nine points or so on the board and then, all of a sudden, scores are flying around like popcorn in the final two minutes. There has to be a reason. The quarterback didn’t suddenly get better with two minutes to go. The defense just got worse.

In addition to everything else, the nickel-dime defense makes it easier to run on. Recall Cunningham in that drive before the half Sunday, looking over the line of scrimmage, seeing no one open but nobody but the pathetic pass rush in front of him. And he took off and ran 27 yards before backpedaling defenders could put on the brakes and come up and get him.

Murray’s Law is, a quarterback without a limp can help himself to 10 or 15 yards in an obvious passing situation any time he wants.

I can recall the late Red Sanders, as good a coach as I have ever known, on the subject of pass defense. “No quarterback can throw the ball successfully flat on his back,” he said.

Sanders’ tactic was no soft zone but rather a hard rush he used to call Omaha--a whole line coming in like cops raiding a crap game. It worked. Ask John Brodie, who was with Stanford at the time. John still has grass stains on his backside from that one.

I remember John Unitas once telling me he figured he had 3.5 seconds to get rid of the ball on a pass play. That was in those days. They had a pass rush in those days. I recall Dutch Van Brocklin when he was coach of the Vikings, after a trying afternoon trying to cope with the Rams’ front four. Dutch came into the locker room, muttering darkly, “They better never lose that pass rush.”

They don’t have pass rushes today. They just kind of send a token force. No more Fearsome Foursomes. They’re Tentative Threesomes today. Quarterbacks get five, 10, 15 seconds to throw today. You give John Elway or Joe Montana--or even Randall Cunningham--10 seconds and he’ll throw it through a keyhole for you.

As I say, I don’t know whether I should bother to wise you guys up. Football games are a lot more fun and excitement this way. A touchdown lead with a minute to play doesn’t mean a thing.

I realize I have a lot of chutzpah trying to tell professionals how to run their business. I just feel it’s my civic duty. You’re right, I don’t know how a zone defense works. All I know is, it doesn’t.