Curt McKeever: Manual about tackling techniques would be popular throughout football
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The idea was conceived at a baseball game in Omaha a couple years ago, when a friend and I returned to our tailgate leftovers in the parking lot to discover someone had made off with the Smokey Joe.
We’d call our invention “The Tailgate Terminator,” a no-fuss, air- tight contraption that would instantly chill hot coals and allow you to store the grill with no worries you’d come back to find your car looking like a giant charred burrito.
Maybe someday we’ll get around to advancing that concept to the next step, because I really believe it’d be a hot seller. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about another product that’s begging to be put on the market:
A new manual for the fundamentals of tackling.
If you’ve been following the Nebraska football team the past two weeks, you know what I mean. But this isn’t meant just to single out the Huskers, who have had about as much success stopping a ball carrier as American League hitters have trying to catch up to Joba Chamberlain’s fastball.
No, NU, which ranks 75th out of 119 teams in total defense, is hardly the only Big 12 Conference team routinely taking big swings and missing.
Six of the league’s defenses rank in the bottom half, nationally. Missouri, the pick to win the North Division, is No. 89, for cryin’ out loud.
What in the name of Dick Butkus is going on?
“I think it’s a trend (where) everybody’s getting the ball to their best players in space, and what’s happening is defenders are having to beat a block and then try to go tackle a very talented player out in space,” Kansas State coach Ron Prince said.
And then he offered something that might even cause the Hall of Famer Butkus to be thankful his football career came at a time when offenses were essentially built on bruising, between-the-tackles play.
“The days of having a small chute where you’re running an isolation play on a linebacker, or you’re running some of these kind of plays where it’s kind of football in a phone booth, those days are over,” Prince said. “And so when the ball’s out on the perimeter, and the person who’s catching it is on the run, or the person who has it really has a lot of terrific moves and can be out in space, it’s challenging to try and make a good tackle.”
Hopefully, you’re starting to understand why Bill Callahan spends most of his waking moments thinking about nothing but offense. And why many of the plays he designs are built on getting past the first wave of attackers in order to put the back end of a defense at a disadvantage.
You want to play defense? OK, your chore is to stop Texas. Hey, statistically, the Longhorns have just the sixth-best offense in the Big 12. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Nationally, though, they’re 27th, so I’m guessing they can make tacklers look just as silly as Ball State did the Huskers last week. Or like Toledo did the Cyclones.
“We try to work on tackling as much as we can,” said Iowa State’s first-year coach Gene Chizik, who had brick-wall defenses when he was at Texas and Auburn. In a 15-13 win against Iowa “two weeks ago, I don’t know that we missed very many tackles. We always count yards after contact, and there wasn’t many.
“All of a sudden (against Toledo) we’ve got to go down (to cover a kickoff), and we have seven guys miss.”
ISU gave up a touchdown on the play, which negated a pretty solid defensive effort and led to a last-minute loss.
“Offensively, there’s so many variations of what people are doing nowadays, you spend so much time scheming and working your schemes, you can get away from the fundamentals of the game,” Chizik acknowledged.
But even if you get those down, it might not be enough to beat the sophisticated offenses of today.
Currently, 29 teams are averaging at least 36 points a game. And sure, those numbers will dwindle through well-scouted and better-matched conference battles. But I’d be shocked if they sink to the level of last season, when only five teams averaged 36 or more points.
“The thing with tackling these days is when you have guys on offense that can really make things happen, like you’re seeing, it comes down to you have to have a vicious mentality,” Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller said. “If you’re a defensive guy, you can’t just rely on assignment play.
“I have a general view of defenses where (I think), ‘They can’t tackle us. We’ve got guys to run through them.’ But I’ll tell you what. When you come up against a defense that hits you in the mouth and you can really feel them, then you step back and say, ‘Well, that’s pretty impressive.’”
Sounds like a good opening chapter for that manual.
Lesson No. 1: You may get beat on a play, but a good, solid, one-on-one lick will always pay dividends.
“When you tackle somebody, if I was telling them how to do it, I would say make them think about that three plays down the line,” Keller said. “Believe me, when you smack somebody and you hit them hard, that receiver may have just gotten a 20-yard play, but he’s not just going to dust that off. And so you might get a team out of whack just because you’re an animal, just because you’re physical.
“… It just brings about a mentality where your defense is playing up-tempo and they’re not hesitant.”
Wow! It just hit me. We’ll call the manual “Tackling For Dummies.” And with every purchase, we’ll throw in “The Tailgate Terminator” for three easy monthly installments of. …
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.
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