Alex Gibbs, the Denver Broncos’ recently hired Coach Consultant, and the man who, with Mike Shanahan as coach and John Elway as quarterback installed a modern version of the zone-option running and blocking system once employed by the Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry, says “cornerbacks are shitty tacklers.”
That’s just one of a number of colorful statements Gibbs makes in the video below: a selection of what football coaches call “cuttups” of tapes of game action, used to make coaching points.
But look at the video and listen and watch because in it, Gibbs shows how their version of the system has evolved.
Some of the segments go back to the late 1990s, when Terrell Davis was the featured runner. Then, the offensive linemen on the other side of the direction Davis was running went for the knees of the defensive player, so you see defenders falling to the ground because a lineman took his knees out from under him. Gibbs points out that you can’t do that today, and no wonder, because on tape, it looks nasty.
Another point: Gibbs says that they don’t block corners in their system, but they do block safeties. Great. That means I can “force” or bring my cornerback into the backfield to down the runner for a loss. Why not? Gibbs says they’re worthless for the running game, anyway, right?
And finally, before you see the video, Tom Landry’s Flex Defense was designed in its teaching such that if there was a “Flex Strong” each defender was to have his head in the gap to the strongside of the offensive lineman. Thus, the Flex Defense would have worked against Gibbs system – in fact, that’s why it was created: to stop daylight running, where the running back systemically picks a place to run.
Here’s the video:
Stay tuned.