Speaker 1: He is going to be talking about obviously today's NFL,
Speaker 1: but then Sean will get with him on some of
Speaker 1: the legendary seasons he had as a coach for the blitzberg.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Remember, he's the architect, the guy I mean when you
Speaker 3: talk about building your house and he's from top to
Speaker 3: bottom of the Zone Blitz. To describe that before coach
Speaker 3: gets back on, it's when you see a defensive lineman,
Speaker 3: just give you who are a defensive end who's all
Speaker 3: of a sudden they show Blitz, the defensive guy drops
Speaker 3: back into the area and they're bringing somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he is the architect for the Zone Blitz and one
Speaker 3: of the very very best of all. Well, he's the
Speaker 3: architect in the as good as we've ever had it
Speaker 3: coaching it.
Speaker 1: He was enshrined to the Hall of Pro Football Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame in twenty ten after his playing career. He's
Speaker 1: going to be talking about his book Legendary.
Speaker 3: If we had his coach Lebo there, if we had
Speaker 3: if we had Hall of Famers coach, did you hear
Speaker 3: my question?
Speaker 4: It's Sean Salisburg. How you doing, sir, I'm doing well, Sean.
Speaker 2: I did not hear.
Speaker 4: Oh, Okay, yeah, it's good. Good to have you on.
Speaker 3: I said that, you know, as a guy who grew
Speaker 3: up watching you play as a quarterback in the NFL,
Speaker 3: playing against you in a broadcast career, then as a
Speaker 3: player who's in the Hall of Fame, and as a
Speaker 3: coordinator defensive coach, all the great things you've done, we
Speaker 3: may not have had a better guy that belongs in
Speaker 3: the Hall of Fame in both. And so my question was,
Speaker 3: why don't we, with all the work you put in coach,
Speaker 3: why don't we have assistant coaches in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: Do you guys ever talk about that?
Speaker 2: No? No, I went in in two.
Speaker 4: Thousand and ten, right as a player.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and everything that I did was the statistics,
Speaker 2: and everything was compiled in a fourteen year career from
Speaker 2: fifty nine to seventy two. So I can remember going
Speaker 2: through my life every now and then saying, well, my
Speaker 2: statistics were as good as some of the guys that
Speaker 2: are in there. But there's so many people that they
Speaker 2: have great careers, and each year there's more of them
Speaker 2: to retire who have great career with great statistics, and
Speaker 2: they can only put so many in there. And I
Speaker 2: never felt like I was the type of guy that
Speaker 2: would be walking around saying, hey, man, I should be
Speaker 2: in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: You don't have to, We'll say that for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see a pretty large half side to be
Speaker 2: talking like that. So I've benefited from that. Actually, there
Speaker 2: is an avenue now for everyone connected with the game
Speaker 2: to get in there, as you've got owners coming in
Speaker 2: now and general managers are making it and the Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame has really rectified that dead end that they
Speaker 2: had for assistant coaches, and there will be some get
Speaker 2: in there, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And if you weren't already in as a player,
Speaker 3: you would be at the top of the list with
Speaker 3: a lot of the Tom mooreries of the world and
Speaker 3: the great assistant coach. I've been for this for two
Speaker 3: decades because all the work you do, and the head
Speaker 3: coach gets the credit and I get it, but all
Speaker 3: the work you put in and we're going to get
Speaker 3: to the zone blitz here and your book in a second. Coach,
Speaker 3: you obviously have been following football and covering it and
Speaker 3: talking about it and teaching it and playing it for
Speaker 3: so many decades.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about today's game?
Speaker 3: Well, what do you give me one thing you like
Speaker 3: and one thing you don't about the current state of football.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the old guys, they always say they
Speaker 2: are back in my day. You know, I'm not one
Speaker 2: of those kind of peopful. I played in my era,
Speaker 2: and I coached in that era, and now it's somebody
Speaker 2: else's turn. I enjoy today's game. I look forward to
Speaker 2: each season. I watch as much football as I possibly can.
Speaker 2: It's in my blood, of course, as I had fifty
Speaker 2: nine consecutive seasons in the National Football League fourteen player
Speaker 2: in forty five as a coach. So you're not going
Speaker 2: to retire and say I'm done with that. It's going
Speaker 2: to be with you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: I think the game has ever bit as exciting and
Speaker 2: entertaining as it was. But it's a very very different game.
Speaker 2: And do I care for it as much as the
Speaker 2: one that I played? Probably not all the guys that
Speaker 2: I played with the same thing. But I think that's
Speaker 2: just a normal situation of all of us who lived
Speaker 2: in our era and now somebody else has turned. They
Speaker 2: certainly are financially a success with the salaries that the
Speaker 2: players are making, and I don't be grudge them at all,
Speaker 2: and everything is going all the word en up with
Speaker 2: trend as I say, if I were a king, as
Speaker 2: they say, I would change a few way the games played.
Speaker 2: But I was a defensive guy all the way.
Speaker 3: That's the voice of Dick lebou Hall of Famer Dick
Speaker 3: lebow and in my mind, one of the great defensive
Speaker 3: coordinators and coaches and teachers we've ever had in the
Speaker 3: National Football League. As he joins us, sorry, coach, your
Speaker 3: book legendary, which is going to be a phenomenal read.
Speaker 3: And I was trying to explain before you came on
Speaker 3: the you know some of the just the nuances of
Speaker 3: his own blitz and nobody you are the architect. Nobody
Speaker 3: taught it better and now it's used all over the league.
Speaker 3: And as a quarterback, we didn't read defensive lineman drop
Speaker 3: it into our coverage and we're trying to throw a
Speaker 3: hotter a side adjustment. So how did this, well the
Speaker 3: book come about? But how did your your thoughts on
Speaker 3: the zone blitz that became Blitzberg and so special?
Speaker 4: How did that originate with you? Where did that start?
Speaker 2: Well? Because you know the able saying necessity is the
Speaker 2: mother of invention, uh Bill Walsh and the West Coast
Speaker 2: passing offense as quick release and Don Corriel who's throwing
Speaker 2: all over Jim Jones with a run and shoot, and
Speaker 2: these new concepts are throwing the ball all over the field,
Speaker 2: not huddling half the time. They were blitzing the league,
Speaker 2: and they were just a step ahead of the defense
Speaker 2: and really of the history of the game as it
Speaker 2: has evolved. In the system where the offense who gets
Speaker 2: to call the play, they know who's carrying that, and
Speaker 2: they know who's throwing it, who they're going to be
Speaker 2: throwing it at, they know the snap count. The offense
Speaker 2: has that Advantag's just just the way the game is
Speaker 2: played and the defense have to figure out it's a
Speaker 2: stimulus response game. So I think if you trace the
Speaker 2: history of the league, you can see where the game
Speaker 2: has evolved into more wide open, higher scoring, bigger yardage plays.
Speaker 2: And they had the balls. I think was probably the
Speaker 2: first guy to come up with the reads, and they
Speaker 2: had come up with a way to keep the pressure
Speaker 2: off the quarterback by breaking off routes and throwing to
Speaker 2: empty space and leading the guy into the area that
Speaker 2: created big plates for the offense. And in looking at
Speaker 2: it and studying it and figuring out I was in
Speaker 2: charge with the job of restricting the game of those
Speaker 2: plays and really stopping that system. And it was an evolution.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, what if when they broke off from
Speaker 2: who was blitzing from us into an area that they
Speaker 2: could lead the ball as far as they wanted to
Speaker 2: and run away from the coverage, they were going to
Speaker 2: be successful. So I looked at areas where I could
Speaker 2: still blitz and overload the protection and have success with
Speaker 2: pressure on the quarterback, but still not exposed. One guy
Speaker 2: hap to be covering their best receiver all over the
Speaker 2: field with no help. So it was an area of
Speaker 2: defensing behind the pressure up on front. See Bobby Knight
Speaker 2: and I were good friends, and Bobby Knight was great
Speaker 2: basketball coach. He won a fantastic amount of basketball games.
Speaker 2: We believed in pressure on the ball, and once you
Speaker 2: believed that, you had to try to figure out the
Speaker 2: best way to do it. And that's all that I
Speaker 2: was doing, was looking for the safest, best way to
Speaker 2: put pressure on the quarterback where he just doesn't go
Speaker 2: out there and throw the ball all over the field
Speaker 2: and score fifty points on you so that was the problem,
Speaker 2: and I would say that sometimes we went down the
Speaker 2: wrong road and searching for the solution. I can't tell
Speaker 2: you how many diamond boards I went off into an
Speaker 2: empty pool, my friend. But I did it on the
Speaker 2: practice field, and by the time that I tried it
Speaker 2: in the game, it was ready to go, and we
Speaker 2: had the advantage to be in the first ones. And
Speaker 2: so it was really dramatically successful in the early years
Speaker 2: because the offenses hadn't seen it, and in much the
Speaker 2: same as us with the new stuff that the offense
Speaker 2: does with the motion in the ship and then sign
Speaker 2: it counsel and whatever they do to confuse us. I
Speaker 2: was just trying to level the playing field up a
Speaker 2: little bit and let my guys attack and confuse the
Speaker 2: offensive players.
Speaker 3: Well, nobody has done it better as a defensive coordinator
Speaker 3: in the history of this game. The book is legendary.
Speaker 3: It's Dick Lebow, Hall of Fame player and in my mind,
Speaker 3: hall of fame coach. If we had him in there
Speaker 3: as assistants. Nobody's done a better.
Speaker 4: Coach.
Speaker 3: I know you've got a busy schedule talking to a
Speaker 3: lot of people. I can't thank you enough, and i'd
Speaker 3: love to have you on again. Spend an hour talking
Speaker 3: x's and o's. It's intriguing and if you want to
Speaker 3: know about zone blitz and how it was applied, this
Speaker 3: is the man architect, Dick Lebow, Hall of Famer coach.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sean, it's been a blast.
Speaker 4: It's always honored to talk to you too, sir. Thank
Speaker 4: you very much.
Speaker 3: Brian, he is uh that's his own blitz and when
Speaker 3: you when you hear it all the time, that's where
Speaker 3: it started. And it also helps that coach Lebou had
Speaker 3: good players, but he put him in position to be success.
Speaker 3: That's bad stuff. Yes, awesome to see in Pittsburgh's winning again.