EL CAMINO : No Calm in This Defense’s Swarm

El Camino linebacker Abdul McCullough watches other teams play defense and wonders how they can be so passive.

“A lot of other defenses sit there and wait for guys to run over them,” he said. “Our scheme is to attack people, lock on (receivers) man-to-man and send as many people after the back as we can.”

Sometimes, the Wildcats (12-1) send as many as seven people after the back. More often than not, they get their man. After all, they didn’t get to Saturday’s San Diego Section 2-A championship game against La Jolla by missing.

There is nothing complex or tricky about El Camino’s defensive scheme, but for teams that have never seen it, that first encounter can be frightening.

“I don’t think teams understand the pressure that they bring on you,” said San Pasqual Coach Mike Dolan, who has been coaching against El Camino’s defense for 16 years. “You can’t play X’s and O’s on paper against their defense. It just doesn’t work. It sounds simple to solve, but it’s not.”

It hasn’t been too simple for any of El Camino’s opponents this season. In 13 games, the Wildcats’ defense has recorded six shutouts and has allowed an average of 7.4 a game.

In three playoff games, El Camino’s defense has been more potent than many teams’ offense--scoring seven touchdowns.

The defensive bent is no accident.

El Camino Coach Herb Meyer, in his 33rd season as a head coach, always thought defense before offense. Before each season begins, Meyer and his defensive coaches have a draft of all the players. Meyer gets four picks for his offense: a center, quarterback, tailback and wide receiver. The defensive coaches pick the 11 best athletes after that. The offensive coaches get the leftovers.

So it’s no coincidence that El Camino’s fastest players, McCullough, Bryant Westbrook and Mike Booker, play defense.

Meyer realized early in his 16-year career at El Camino that his district didn’t breed large football players. Most of his players were small and quick.

So Meyer and Ed Downey, his first defensive coordinator at El Camino, built a scheme to fit his players.

“We felt we had to do some stunting to protect our lineman who weren’t very big,” said Meyer, who has two starting lineman this season who weigh only 170 pounds. “A lot of teams stunt to put pressure on the passer, but we do it to stop the run.”

By the early 1980s Meyer and Tom Hammond, then his defensive coordinator, added bump-and-run pass coverage to the stunting. Bill Kovacevich took over the defense in 1987 and made some minor changes in the stunting. He also began to almost exclusively employ the bump and run.

The Wildcats have yet to play zone defense this season.

It would appear logical that the way to beat El Camino is by throwing the ball. With six or seven people on the line of scrimmage, the odds of finding a receiver open would appear to be pretty good, especially since receivers are single covered.

But the speed of cornerbacks Bryant Westbrook and Mike Booker discourages that. Westbrook and Booker, both juniors, run 4.5-second 40-yard dashes. Opponents have completed only 33% of their passes against El Camino.

“Obviously, we can’t do what we do without great athletes at the corners,” Meyer said.

Kearny’s Darnay Scott, who starts as a freshman at San Diego State now, learned about El Camino’s athletes last year in the 2-A Section title game. Westbrook knocked Scott off the line of scrimmage and off his game, holding him to two catches and three carries for minus two yards.

McCullough said the scheme works because every player believes in it.

“It’s been bred into us,” he said. “You have to start with it your freshman year, or it just won’t work. We didn’t really know any other defense when we first came here. We didn’t run zone until our sophomore year.”

Westbrook acknowledged that he was somewhat hesitant last year about being left alone with speedy receivers such as Scott.

“First, I was a little scared,” he said “If you miss your bump, then that’s a big play, probably a touchdown.”

But this season, Westbrook said he’s more relaxed.

“We’re a family out there,” he said. “We know what everybody’s doing. If somebody messes up, then somebody’s going to be right there to help them out.”

McCullough said the bump and run catches receivers by surprise.

“Most receivers aren’t used to having someone bump them off the line,” he said. “A lot of times, the offensive line will give the quarterback three or four seconds to throw. A lot of teams run timing patterns, so if you get a good bump, it will throw them off.”

McCullough, 6-feet-1 and 198 pounds, can do a pretty fair job of throwing people’s timing off with his 4.5 speed in the 40. He has nine sacks and eight tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

Daniel Esposito, 5-7, 185 pounds, is on the other side of McCullough and Elias Noah, a 5-11, 210-pound rock is in the middle.

McCullough said there is no escaping them.

“When teams start showing a tendency to run one way during the game, the coaches will start flipping Daniel and me to keep them guessing,” he said. “Some teams try to run up the middle to stay away from the outside, but Elias is there and he’s a ton of bricks.”

Dolan said the blitzing outside linebackers force teams to run up the middle.

“They dare you to run inside, and then there’s Noah waiting for you,” he said. “We had to run outside, because we didn’t have anybody that could block Noa.”

Dolan has been painfully watching El Camino’s defenses for the past 16 years, and he says this year’s version is by far the best.

“They have better athletes and they communicate better than they ever have,” he said. “They have no worries about the other part of the playing field. They know someone else will be there for them.

“In some years, you could confuse them a little bit. But this year, you’ll see them talking to themselves. As soon as you break the huddle, you’ll hear them making adjustments.”

Does Meyer think it’s his best defense?

“As far as playing together and playing consistently well, it may be,” he said.

Then again, there’s always next year’s defense. Six of the 11 defensive starters return.