One coach dares to be
different
Paul Zimmerman has covered the
NFL for Sports Illustrated since 1979. His exclusive online
column appears each
Friday.
Posted: Fri November 14,
1997
Would you like to know who my coach of the week is? Zaven
Yaralian.
Who? Says
which?
Zaven Yaralian is the New Orleans Saints' defensive coach.
I give him a major share of the credit for the most
shocking upset of the 1997 season, New Orleans' 13-10
victory over the Raiders in Oakland last Sunday. OK, you
say, it's the Raiders, big
deal. But, they
do have a lot of attacking weapons, and they ranked fifth in
the league in offense going in, and three weeks before the
Saints got them, they beat the
Broncos.
 Let me set the scene. It's 13-10 at the two-minute warning
and Oakland is at its own 46, needing two, maybe three
first downs to set up the field goal that will send the
game into OT. Now I have seen this situation a million
times, and what I've seen
defenses do has made me cry. You know where I'm headed, right?
They pull in their horns and go to a three-man rush and
keep the gains short and work the clock. And an offense
that's been getting hammered suddenly comes to life and
it's zap zap, first down,
first down, field goal, OT, victory,
hurray!
The defensive coach says, "Well, you've gotta play the
percentages," and looks at you like you're a real
idiot for not being able to figure this out for yourself.
But never in my life have I talked to a defensive player
who liked this philosophy. Did
Zaven fall into this trap? Not on your
life.
On the first play he put up an aggressive, stunting,
four-man rush, and Jeff George's pass was knocked down. On
second-and-10 he rushed five, blitzing a linebacker,
forcing another incomplete. Say what you want about the
ineptitude of this Saints team,
they do have a good front seven, keyed by a terrific
threesome of linebackers. You don't hold back the strength
of your team, you put the game in its
hands.
So what did Zaven do on third-and-10? He rushed six,
bringing a DB off the corner and a linebacker inside. And
George went to his hot read, Tim Brown, for a two-yard
gain. Now it's fourth and eight, and all the yahoos out
there are saying,
Fall back, keep everything underneath, hold the next gain
to under eight and you
win. Uh uh, Zaven blitzed two linebackers. The heat from the
six-man rush flushed George to his right, and he tried a
hopeless crossfield pass that was picked off. End game. And
back in his chartroom in New Jersey, poor old Dr. Z raised
a glass to Zaven
Yaralian, who dared to be
different.
I would really like to see statistics on what happens when
a team goes to a three-man rush (I hesitate to use the
dreaded term, "prevent defense") to protect a
lead, rather than sticking with the aggressive defense that
gave it that lead in the first
place. Somewhere, in some team's quality-control office, a
modern-day Clark Shaughnessy must be filing and recording
all this information. Maybe it's just the failures of the
soft-D that stick in your mind and the successes are
forgotten, but I'm just
bugged by the illogic of it. And I've been recording my own list
of its
failure:
Jets vs.
Baltimore, two weekends ago. There's 1:57 left and the Ravens, who
are down by seven and haven't scored a touchdown all day,
are on their own 20. They get to midfield. Jets go into a
three-man prevent. Ravens take it in in eight plays to send
the game into OT.
Jets drive the length of the field on their first possession.
Now they've got a third-and-15 on the Baltimore 27. Let's
look at this
logically.
It's a 44- or 45-yard field goal from that point, very
difficult in rainy, miserable conditions. What you want to
do is force an incomplete or get a sack. So the Ravens'
defensive coach, Marvin Lewis, who has basically rushed
four throughout the drive,
feels the icy fingers on his throat and pulls
el
choke-o. He drops into a three-man prevent with his linebackers
playing soft, and Glenn Foley flips a little wideout screen
to Dedric Ward, who dances down to the 20. The 37-yard
field goal is
good.
I'll give you one more . . . well, two, but they're from
the same game, and then get off this tirade.
Giants vs. Oilers last
weekend, a 10-6 bloodbath in which yards are very grudgingly given
and received. The first half is winding down with the
Giants trailing 3-0. Tennessee has a third-and-12 on New
York's 40. Steve McNair is shaky. Two plays earlier he'd
taken a hard sack and his
shoulder is hurting. Now's the time to bring heat, right?
Uh-uh, three-man rush and McNair, who can't believe his
good fortune, completes a 22-yard pass to Derek Russell
that sets up the game's only TD.
Wait, it gets better. Fifty seconds are left. The Giants
have picked up three first downs in the half. Their offense
has done zilch. Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher, who was a DB
under Buddy Ryan and should know better, goes into the
dreaded three-man
prevent. In four plays, the Giants move 48 yards to Tennessee's
25, and the 42-yard field goal is good. Oy,
vey!
Well, evidently Fisher learned his lesson. In the last two
minutes, with the Giants on their final possession, first
down on their own 34, he sends five, blitzing a linebacker.
The Oilers' Marcus Robertson picks off Danny Kanell's pass
to end it. Am I
making the point, or are you still unconvinced? OK, I'll keep
numbers on these situations and torment you with them in a
month or
so.
Speaking of torment, fasten your seat belts, here come the
picks. Something just dawned on me--I'd do a whole lot
better if I handicapped last week's games, but they won't
let
me.
First the upset special:
Bears over the Jets in
Chicago. They hung tough against the Vikings last weekend while
the Jets were whining about the bad call at the end of the
Miami
game.
Upset No. 2:
Baltimore, with its crippled wideout corps and no logical
reason to beat the Eagles, to do just
that. Still the same old formula until it nosedives--bet
against Philly on the road vs. the
AFC.
Denver has lost four of its last five in Arrowhead, and the
Chiefs are unbeaten at home this year, so, of course
I'll go with the
Broncos. Why? I think it'll take Rich Gannon another game or so to
get his sea
legs.
Washington, with all its people back, laid it on Detroit
last weekend. Norv Turner knows how to beat the Cowboys.
But I've got a funny feeling about this one. I just think
that now is the time Dallas makes its move, so
I'll award the Cowboys a grudging pick to beat the Skins at
home.
Miami over
Buffalo in the Monday nighter in South Florida. Marv Levy had so
much confidence in Todd Collins against the Patriots last
weekend that he started Alex Van Pelt, who promptly went
3-for-12 with three picks.
What does this tell me? It tells me I'd better pick the
Dolphins.
Finally an intriguing match-up. New England at Tampa Bay,
both teams coming off 31-10 victories. When is the last
time this happened? Beats me. (Seems like the Pottsville
Maroons had something like this going for them in the
1920s. Any information would
be
appreciated.)
Pats are on a roll, Bucs are still a head-scratcher. Again,
a hunch
pick: Tampa
Bay.
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