Famed Alabama head coach Bear Bryant is credited with saying, “Offense sells tickets. Defense wins championships.”

Every year, high school coaches throughout the nation repeat this phrase like a mantra, but is it really true?

In the book, This is Your Brain on Sports, the authors investigate the validity of this hypothesis. What they found was interesting.

Of 50 Super Bowl winning teams, 31 possessed a Top 5-ranked defense and 27 had a Top 5-ranked offense.

The numbers are almost identical.

Digging a little deeper, if you look at the 28 Super Bowls that pitted a Top 5 defense against a Top 5 offense, the best defensive team won 15 times; the best offensive team, 13 times.

Again, the difference is negligible.

However, the Super Bowl is a single contest that has been played only 50 times. What if the sample size is increased?

The authors examined 462 NFL games played from 1966-2015. They found that the better defensive team won 58 percent of the time, while the better offensive team won 62 percent of the time. There are instances of winning teams possessing both the better offensive and defensive units, which explains why the total is slightly above 100 percent.

Universally speaking, defense and offense are equally important to winning championship.

However, recent examples involving the Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals provide divergent examples of what a defense actually provides a team.

Matthew Stafford and the Lions were on fire to begin the 2011 season. The quarterback had thrown 19 touchdowns against seven interceptions while compiling a 6-3 record. The Lions were poised to make the playoffs for only the second time since 2000.

However, over the course of the remaining seven weeks, Stafford’s play nose-dived with only 10 touchdowns against 12 interceptions. Meanwhile, the Lions defense was sixth against the run and 23^rd against the pass in yards allowed.

The combination proved lethal to the team’s playoff hopes. The Lions went 2-6 over the final eight contests and missed the playoffs. 

Just due south, the Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton had a similar season to Stafford in 2011. Dalton came out of the gates strong and threw 15 touchdowns against only seven interceptions while leading his team to a 6-2 record.

Dalton’s play dipped for the remainder of the season as he threw 17 touchdowns versus 13 interceptions. If one stellar game against the Vikings is removed, Dalton had 13 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.

However, even with the steep drop-off in quarterback play, the Bengals went 5-3 to finish the season. Ultimately, the team complied a record of 11-5 and made the playoffs.

Both teams started the season strong and were poised to make a push for the playoffs. Both teams also experienced poor quarterback play throughout the second half of the 2011 season. Yet, only one team made the playoffs.

The difference between the two teams? Defense.

The Bengals possessed a defense that was ranked No. 5 against the run and No. 5 against the pass in yards allowed.

So what does all of this mean?

While Bryant may not have been 100 percent accurate, there is a grain of truth underlying his contention.

More specifically, teams certainly cannot win without a defense that can pitch in, make tackles and get the opposing offense off the field. 

The purpose of this drill is to teach to linebackers to react late to a short pass thrown in the flat.

The linebacker will take a normal pass drop, react to the pass by breaking up-field and making an open-field sideline tackle.

Drill Setup

Place a linebacker at normal depth in a proper stance.

Place a cone approximately 10 yards behind the linebacker at an angle that represents the desired depth and location of his flat drop pass responsibility.

On the outside sideline, approximately 15 yards width away from the linebacker’s starting position, place another linebacker holding a tackle shield.  This player will represent the pass-receiving runner in the flat.

Key coaching Points

The linebacker begins the drill with a good pass drop by opening his hips, keeping his head and eyes on the quarterback while quickly dropping to his area of responsibility.

Once the linebacker has dropped back into his area of pass responsibility, which is represented by the cone, his feet remain active and his eyes on the quarterback to determine where the ball is thrown.

Once the whistle is blown to denote the pass being thrown, the linebacker must explosively get up-field to cover as much ground as possible to limit the ball-carriers gain.

The linebacker then makes a proper open-field tackle with good Heads Up technique.  

 

Photo courtesy of MiamiDolphins.com