Sam Wyche and the zone blitz

[fredtoast]

I was listening to Soloman Wilcott's interviewing Dick Lebeau of Sirius Radio yesterday.  Dick was talking about coming up with his original idea for the "zone blitz".  He said that he was lucky that Sam Wyche was his head coach with the Bengals at the time.  He figured a lot of head coaches would have laughed at him for suggesting they drop a nose tackle or defensive end into zone coverage, but Sam was willing to try anything.

We always give Sam a lot of credit for his offensive innovations.  Now it looks like he might deserve a little credit for one of the biggest defensive innovations of the last half century.

LeBeau also said that the first time they used it in preseason it resulted in a pick six.  So that also made Wyche much more excited about it.

[fredtoast]

BTW LeBeau also said that the zone blitz was an adjustment to the "West Coast Offense" developed by Bill Walsh. LeBeau pointed out that Walsh developed most of that system while coaching "in the Midwest".

Paul Brown, Bill Walsh, Dick LeBeau. . . Bengals have an impressive history of Hall-of-Fame coaches.

[fredtoast]

Damn.  Wrong forum.

Mods please move to "Jungle Noise"

[grampahol]

(06-11-2022, 02:35 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Damn.  Wrong forum.

Mods please move to "Jungle Noise"

Fred, Fred, Fred.. When are you going to use the site gps feature to get the right directions?