The Importance of Defensive Line Play

2 comments so far May 21, 2007 by Steve Hanway

If defense wins championships (and the numbers say it does), then the defensive line is quite simply the most important part of a football team. Hall of Fame NFL coach Bill Walsh believed that the ability to generate a pass rush in the fourth quarter of games was the key to winning in the NFL. Oklahoma's reign atop the Big 12 standings under Bob Stoops might be considered exhibit B.

Greatness comes in a couple of forms on the defensive line- the irresistible force and the immovable object. Richard Dent was the fearsome pass-rusher coming off the edge for the vaunted 1985 Chicago Bears and was the Super Bowl MVP for what many consider the greatest team of all time. He was the irresistible force that could not be stopped coming from the outside. Sam Adams was a defensive tackle (not a New England brewmeister) for the 2000 Ravens, a team many consider to have had the greatest defensive unit of all time. Adams smothered offenses by not allowing them space to run and by forming a wall between the offensive linemen and the linebackers. Ray Lewis’ MVP performance in the Super Bowl after the 2000 season is in no small part due to Adams.

One reason that the Huskers went so long between Big 12 championship game appearances has been a lack of standout defensive lineman. The Huskers have played some good defensive football with a single standout defensive lineman (e.g. Kyle Vanden Bosch or Chris Kelsay), but in order to reach a championship caliber defensive performance, they’ve needed multiple stars on the line. The 1999 Huskers had All-Big 12 tackle Steve Warren to team with Vanden Bosch. The 1997 team had Grant Wistrom and Jason Peter. The 1995 squad had Wistrom, the Peter brothers, and Jared Tomich., the 1994 squad had Terry Connealy teamed with Christian Peter and Dwayne Harris. Going back to the pro example, the 1985 Bears had Hall-of-Famer Dan Hampton to team with Dent. The Ravens had a pair of former pro-bowlers at defensive end in Michael McCrary and Rob Burnett to team with Adams. When an offense can’t handle four defensive lineman with five offensive linemen, it gives the defense a major advantage.

The Adam Carriker- Jay Moore tandem put the Huskers back in the Big 12 title game in 2006. Looking ahead, the Huskers need to find some standouts if they want to repeat as Big 12 North champions (perhaps Ndamukong Suh and Barry Turner). As this will be “Defensive Line Week� at the Big Red Network, we’ll go deeper into the past, present, and future of the defensive line. We’ve chosen to lead our series of major position breakdowns with the defensive line because it is not only the biggest question surrounding the 2007 Huskers but also the strongest answer to how the Huskers can return to the Big 12 title game.

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