Dick LeBeau
Dick LeBeau
Charles Richard LeBeauis an American football coach and former cornerback, who is the assistant head coach and defensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League. He has been active at field level in the NFL for 57 consecutive seasons–14 as a player with the Detroit Lions and 43 as a coach. He was most recently the Pittsburgh Steelers' defensive coordinator and is considered to be one of the greatest defensive coordinators of all time. Considered an “innovator”...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth9 September 1937
CityLondon, OH
To even be talking to Troy in that frame of reference is speaking very highly of him, because those two other guys were great players. I began to see a lot of the things that they did that Troy could do, and I think Troy has a ways to go.
The statistics will tell you that: They scored more points. That's usually a pretty good barometer for the effect that the rule changes had on the game for that year. The numbers, in this case, don't lie.
He runs real, real fast. And he's very instinctive. He just can diagnose and get to the right spot.
Troy's got that rare ability to play at all levels of the defense - deep, intermediate, at the line and blitz. Those people just don't come along every day.
Nobody remembers who loses the Super Bowl. Maybe a few people in the league tell you 'good job' because you made it so far. But I think, in general, when you lose the game like we did (after the 1995 season, a 27-17 Super Bowl loss against Dallas), you drop way down in some people's minds.
Make no mistake, they've got a great quarterback. It's not easy to hold him under 20. Our guys did that and it gives you a great chance to win. It was the execution of our players. They did a great job with their timing.
You can just do more with the 3-4 (than the 4-3). If there's any advantage, there's not as many 3-4 teams in the league right now and that gives us maybe a slight advantage. They don't play against it every week.
We always know where he's going. But I'm not always sure how he's going to get there.
I try to stay out of Troy's way. We establish parameters for him, and he has to be at a certain place at a certain time.
It's a nice even number, isn't it? When I reached 30 years, I didn't think about 50. But we're a little closer to 50 now. So we'll see. I'll take it one snap at a time.
We were able to take away the big play. They've got a great running back and an tremendous quarterback, and they were able to move the ball on us. But we were able to get things straight for the second half.
They don?t hold the ball very long. It?s out of there quickly.
All quarterbacks have to have time and space to operate. We'll do the same thing we always do: play zone pressure. And our guys play it very well.
They do a good job of protecting the quarterback. So I thought instead of beating our head against the wall, we'd let our guys drop back and play some max-coverage. I thought they did a good job of that.