FORT WORTH, Texas — Dick LeBeau was relaxing in a seat inside Cowboys Stadium on Tuesday doing what he does best — talking defense — when someone asked him how much longer he planned to coach.
The 72-year-old LeBeau didn’t flinch.
“Certainly,” he deadpanned, “through the next seven days.”
That was great news for the Steelers and bad news for the Packers, whose charge in Super Bowl XLV will be trying to solve the complex and intimidating defense that LeBeau, Pittsburgh’s defensive coordinator, will be dishing out for Sunday dinner.
“I’ve been going one year at a time for a few years now,” LeBeau said. “I always say that in order to work, you have to have somebody that wants you to coach. I’ve been fortunate in that regard. I just go each year and see if they still want me to coach.
“I think I’ve got a good chance of having a job next year, so I think I’ve got a chance of keeping my job and I intend to be here,” he added with another straight face.
LeBeau’s tenacious 3-4 Steelers defense dominated the NFL statistics in most categories, including fewest points and yards allowed.
There’s a reverence for LeBeau all around the league and certainly inside the Steelers locker room. Rex Ryan often raves about him, talking about how many ideas he poaches from LeBeau.
“I truly believe that I wouldn’t be playing ball if it wasn’t for Coach LeBeau,” Steelers defensive end Brett Keisel said yesterday. “He’s a father figure to us. We love him like a father. To have someone like that who you respect so much, it makes you want to play that much harder for him. It makes you want to go out and work that much harder for him.
“Not only is he a phenomenal coach, but he’s a Hall of Fame player [defensive back]. There are not a lot of teams that get to have the opportunity to have someone like that in front of them every day. All that knowledge wrapped up into this one great man is something we all cherish.”
Steelers linebacker James Harrison called LeBeau, “a wizard of everything we do.”
“Without him and his schemes we aren’t the defense you see on the field,” Harrison said.
LeBeau is an architect of the 3-4 scheme and the father of the zone blitz, something every team in the league employs. He said he came up with it to combat the Houston Oilers’ “run-and-shoot” offense and the continued advent of spread offenses.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said. “The run-and-shoot was invoked. Houston had Warren Moon, who was practically unstoppable. The West Coast offense was similar to the run-and-shoot. It spread out the defense and cut it up.
“We defenders had to come up with something a little different and this was the thought I had [the zone blitz]. We went through some blind alleys, but we just kept sticking with it. I think history has proven that we had some good ideas.”