New Job Description for Defense’s Old Anchorman

[Blake]

Hell of a good read.

By JUDY BATTISTA

Ray Lewis may have made the signature defensive play of the season — maybe, he says, the greatest of his career — with his shoot-the-gap fourth-down stop of Chargers running back Darren Sproles that sealed a Ravens victory last month. But he still feels unappreciated.

“People don’t give middle linebackers the credit they should get,” Lewis said after a recent Baltimore Ravens practice. “It puts all of the pieces in place, just like Peyton Manning puts everything in place. The heart and soul of the defense is your middle linebacker. Pass rushers, do you appreciate them? Absolutely, but you can take a pass rusher away by doing a lot of things. It’s hard to take a middle linebacker totally out of the game.”

Not exactly. The middle linebacker, for generations the defense’s glamour position, has been largely taken out of the game while defenses scramble to cover four or five receivers as football tilts more heavily than ever to the passing game.

The N.F.L. is now so dominated by quarterbacks (seven have ratings over 100 after seven weeks) that the heirs to Lawrence Taylor — not Dick Butkus — are the cornerstones of most defenses. Each time Tom Brady lines up with an empty backfield, the glamour of the middle linebacker fades a little more and the attention — and money — paid to the defensive ends and outside linebackers responsible for attacking the quarterback grows.

This Sunday will provide a stark example of the evolution, when the undefeated Denver Broncos play the Ravens in Baltimore. While Lewis remains a highlight-reel staple and leads the Ravens with 60 tackles, the front-runner for defensive player of the year is Elvis Dumervil, an outside linebacker who has transformed the Broncos’ defense with 10 sacks in six games. Dumervil is on pace to shatter Michael Strahan’s single-season record of 22.5.

The seeds of the shift were planted by the draft. From 1998 to 2008, 108 middle or inside linebackers were drafted compared with 229 outside linebackers, according to Gil Brandt, the former Dallas Cowboys personnel executive who analyzes the draft for NFL.com. The top two middle linebackers in the 2009 draft — Rey Maualuga and James Laurinaitis — went in the second round, 22 years after two inside linebackers were taken in the first round ahead of the future Hall of Fame defensive back Rod Woodson, who went 10th.

“Teams try to compartmentalize and say that guy doesn’t exist, there is no complete linebacker, so we’ll wait a couple rounds, we’ll get a run plugger for first and second down, then you get a guy to play the nickel,” Detroit Lions Coach Jim Schwartz said. “You do it by committee.”

The extinction of the three yards and a cloud of dust philosophy has led to the marginalization of the player whose primary responsibility is stopping it. Defenses are loading up on faster — usually smaller — players who can line up against running backs, tights ends or even receivers in spread formations.

Extraordinary players like Lewis, San Francisco’s Patrick Willis or 49ers Coach Mike Singletary, one of the greatest middle linebackers in history, combine speed and strength to take on 300-pound offensive linemen as readily as cover tight ends 20 yards downfield.

Those rare athletes never come off the field. But many inside linebackers cannot do both effectively, and if a linebacker cannot play on passing downs, he will be downgraded by scouts and plummet down the draft board. Willis was selected 11th over all in 2007 because everyone knew he could play all three downs. Houston Texans linebacker DeMeco Ryans, now a Pro Bowl selection, was a second-round pick and says it took him until his third N.F.L. season to feel comfortable covering the pass.

“You may have a running back where you hand off and let him pick a hole every now and then just to keep it interesting and to keep the defensive line honest,” Singletary said. It is not as important to have a conventional middle linebacker now, he said, “so you go toward a little larger defensive back and maybe you can accomplish the same thing.”

The result is that teams think they can get by with a little lesser athlete at middle linebacker than at the pass-rushing positions, said Vic Fangio, the longtime linebackers coach now with the Ravens. That allows them to select a middle linebacker lower in the draft and save money on the contract.

Before the passing game took over, the middle linebacker was almost always the biggest linebacker on the field (Jack Lambert, who played at around 220 pounds from 1974 to 1984, was a notable exception) and the dominant force of the defense. Bill Parcells wanted Harry Carson, the Giants’ Hall of Fame inside linebacker, to play at about 248 pounds, because he thought a lighter Carson would move better. But Carson would pack on at least five more pounds after he weighed in on Friday morning.

“I wanted to play heavier, because when I had to hit an offensive lineman who was 280, I wanted to have some bulk behind me,” Carson said.

Now, linebackers often look like big safeties, weighing in at around 240 pounds, blessed with speed and quickness, but not always power. Even when teams run the ball, it is often out wide or off tackle, rarely out of an I-formation with a fullback leading straight into the middle linebacker’s traditional wheelhouse. And more and more, teams are replacing runs with screens and flares, requiring linebackers to move laterally more often than forward to plug a hole.

The Giants’ current inside linebacker, Antonio Pierce, played outside in college, when stopping the run was still the priority. He did not have to worry about much then, Pierce said, beyond anybody who came to his side. At 6 feet 1 and 240 pounds, he is the prototypical size for today’s middle linebacker — forcing him to have a wider range of vision that encompasses what is in front of him and what is to his side.

Pierce, like many other middle linebackers, still leads the tackling statistics because most plays take place between the numbers where middle linebackers roam. But Pierce notes that on most teams the player calling the defensive alignments and reacting to the offense’s presnap motion is the middle linebacker.

Perhaps, like Lewis, Pierce is subtly acknowledging an image adjustment for what was once the most punishing player on the field. The brawn is no longer as important as the brain.

“You want a guy that is demanding and that knows what he’s doing,” Pierce said. “Today’s game is all about getting up to the line of scrimmage quickly. Look at the audibles the offenses call. The defensive coordinator gives you a call before the offenses even come out. They line up and that may not be the call the coordinator gave you. After that, you’re on your own.”

 

[footballplaya52]

the MLB is still the QB of the defense. even if they are not what they once were you still need one