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Miller: LeBeau is mad scientist of Pittsburgh defense

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Updated Jan 28, 2009 4:36 PM ET
     
 

TAMPA

Steelers defensive players dug into their pockets for $300 apiece to buy throwback vintage jerseys honoring Dick LeBeau, their defensive coordinator, a couple of years ago. Year before last, the players pulled out those jerseys and wore them to the Hall of Fame exhibition game in Canton, Ohio. During the season, on the occasion of LeBeau's 70th birthday, his players presented him with a Rolex watch. During the 2008 season, those players stood on the field during a driving rainstorm to help honor LeBeau commemorate his 50 years in the NFL. "I would have stood out there for an hour and froze my butt off if I had to for that man," defensive end Aaron Smith said at the time. LeBeau may be the most beloved coach in the game. He's also one of the most accomplished. The Steelers' defense ranked No. 1 in the NFL in 2008, allowing more than 300 yards just once in 18 games, counting playoffs. During the regular season, Pittsburgh allowed 24 yards per game fewer than Baltimore's second-best defense. At 71, although he could pass for 45, LeBeau is the oldest coach in the league. His resume of innovation includes the zone blitz. He is so well respected that when the then-34-year-old Mike Tomlin, himself a defensive coach, became the Pittsburgh head coach before the 2007 season, he deferred to LeBeau. Tomlin's background included work with Tony Dungy, using the 4-3 alignment and the Cover-2 strategy. LeBeau uses the 3-4 and an assortment of blitzes. The Steelers' defense continues to play, very successfully, in LeBeau's style, not Tomlin's. Some of the players on the current team admit they were concerned about what the coaching change might portend. The concerns faded away once Tomlin decided he would retain LeBeau as his coordinator. "If he didn't want me there," LeBeau said Tuesday, "he could have let me go. It was just a matter of us sitting down and finding out the best thing for our defense, and that's what we did. "We talked about all phases. We're not foreign to the 4-3 ... but (Tomlin) wanted to stay with the 3-4, which I felt was the best thing. Our guys were all trained in that. It was his decision, of course." Of course. It's always the head coach's decision in the end. But give the head coach credit for deferring to a defensive coordinator who was playing in the Pro Bowl before the head coach was born. Tomlin, asked about his background in the 4-3, pointed out he coached defensive backs in a 3-4 defense in college. But he was never in charge of an overall defense until he became coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings in 2006, a year before landing in Pittsburgh. The Vikings were a 4-3 team. "Dick is a fundamentalist, I'm a fundamentalist," Tomlin said. "From that standpoint, we're very similar. So the X's and O's are just that. Things that he does schematically are geared toward putting his players in position to play. He's a unique teacher that way. "He makes the complex simple. He makes the irregular regular. And I subscribe to those theories. So from that standpoint, it was an easy marriage." It's one of life's enduring little mysteries that LeBeau doesn't have a bust at the Hall of Fame. He was third on the all-time interception list when he retired; his 62 interceptions are nearly twice as many as the Steelers' starting defensive backfield this season has (37) combined, in a total of 23 NFL seasons. Measuring his entire body of work makes a compelling case for enshrinement, and the committee -- I am a member -- is certain to take another look. His players and his peers would surely give their assent. "He's just a master," said Billy Davis, the Cardinals' linebackers coach. "We can run anything he calls, and he definitely comes up with new things every week," said Pittsburgh linebacker James Farrior. "The schemes that he comes up with and the game plan he sends us every week, we feel like it's the best, and we have confidence in it. We all believe that, no matter what the situation is, he'll come up with something to get us out of it and make us be successful." The relationship between LeBeau and his defensive players, however, goes beyond belief, to, well, it's not out of the realm to call it love. Smith put it into words earlier this season. "If he leaves, I don't know how much longer I would want to play," he said. "After him, I don't want to play for anybody else. I couldn't imagine this place without him." Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than three decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.
Tagged: Colts, James Farrior, Steelers, Aaron Smith, Vikings

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