The Defense Attacks: Buddy Ryan and The NFL Playoffs

Buddy Ryan never won a playoff game as a head coach.

This year Buddy's boy and his old assistants are in the running for a ring.

Defense is back on the attack.

Despite all the advantages shifted to the offensive side of the ball by recent rule changes, that is max protection of the QB's and wide-outs, strict contact rules on defensive backs, and liberalized holding, defense is still winning games.

Rex Ryan's Jets rattled Carson Palmer and the Cincinnati Bengals offense. Besides,  running back Cedric Benson, most of the Bengals looked like they wanted out of the cold and into a sunny off season somewhere off the football field.

That's Cincinnati Bengal football, but these Bengals looked beaten and demoralized by the Jet defense and power running attack. Ocho Cinco, a player who never could have played in previous eras because of his fear of contact, came out, if not outright cowardly, at least flat and a bit scared.

Most of the Bengals followed suit as Palmer's passes were mostly either high and wide or behind and low. The Bengal offensive line could not deal with the variants of the old attacking Bear Defense of Buddy Ryan.

Joe Gibbs and Joe Theismann, who faced the old Bears at their best, were almost giddy watching the Jet defense work its old Bear like havoc. The network even dug up an old highlight of Theismann's famous one yard punt against the 1985 Bears.

Marvin Lewis, like his team, looked lethargic. Rex Ryan's team looked like they wanted to wreck someone, and the Rambling Wrecking Rexs rampaged past the Bungles.

This week Rex faces one of his fathers old players. San Diego Charger defensive coordinator Ron Rivera was a back up linebacker under Buddy Ryan on the Chicago Bears storied 1985 super bowl team.

Rivera was also the Chicago Bears defensive coordinator when they reached the Super Bowl with an aggressive, attacking defense in 2005. Rivera was fired by Bear Coach Love Smith over a scheme disagreement after that Super Bowl and the current Bears defense has been in hibernation ever since.

Oddly enough his old mentor, Buddy Ryan, left the Bears after their Super Bowl season, to become the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, and that Bears defense was never quite as good ever again.

Meanwhile in Dallas Buddy Ryans old Philadelphia Eagle defensive coordinator Wade Phillips attacking defense hammered the current Philadelphia Eagles for the second week, and the third time this season, in a row.

Donovan McNabb looked bad, befuddled, and maybe out of Philadelphia. Andy Reid, never a great game day adjuster, looked baffled as his offensive line cracked and crumbled under the Cowboys attacking pressure.

The Eagles paid a lot of bucks in the off season to upgrade their offensive line and, with the high priced Brothers Andrews on injured reserved, higher priced Jason Peters underachieving, and their center Jamal Brown injured, the money was not well spent. 

With the Eagle plucked in the post season yet again the Cowboys look north to the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings have a Buddy Ryan influence of its own as defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier was a starting corner back on the great Bears '85 team. His last game as a player was the Bear's Super Bowl destruction of the New England Patriots, a game in which Frazier blew his knee out in and never played again.  

Frazier will have his Vikings ready to face Wade Phillips aging offensive line. The game will be attacking defense against attacking defense and turnovers will be the decisive factor.

The Baltimore Ravens, Rex Ryans old defensive club, used an aggressive, blitzing, bullying attack to stop Tom Brady and the Patriots. Bill Belichick, a defensive mastermind, needs to rebuild his vaunted defense tow in in January again because he knows defense wins. 

The Ravens will try to attack the Indianapolis Colts this week by blitzing their way past Peyton Manning.

Which is exactly what Buddy Ryan and the old Bears would have done. Except, of course, defenders could punish offensive players in that era.

Everywhere except in the Arizona Cardinal and Green Bay Packer record setting offensive game defenses dominated in the wild card round.

This weeks New Orleans Saints and Cardinal match-up is predicted to be a record setting offensive affair. The over and under is, after all, a sky high 57 total points.

Drew Brees and Kurt Warner will light up the Super-dome scoreboard. The league loves that almost as much as they love Brett Favre.

If somehow good defenses win the big games this year, and the star quarterbacks are stymied despite all the rule tweaking, expect the NFL brain trust to twist the rules even more in favor of the offense next year.

The days of the neanderthal like Buddy Ryan defenses went the way of the dinosaur or so the offense loving NFL and its networks hoped and prayed.

But if teams like Baltimore beat teams with Brady like quarterbacks too many more times expect the NFL to ban all contact with the quarterback.

Expect the NFL to only let the defense field nine men next year to give the offense back an edge.

Defense is not wanted in the league, but like a bad movie monster, maybe its back anyway. Maybe, despite the rule changes, the attacking defensive dinosaur isn't dead.

Maybe someone cloned the defensive dinosaur DNA and brought it back or at least dug up its dusty, dino playbook.

Maybe the defenses do not want to die.

And somewhere Buddy Ryan grins.