Four at the Heart

If anybody really believes that a good offense is the best defense, he should have a chat with Johnny Unitas, quarter back of the Baltimore Colts and the best passer in the National Football League. Johnny U. is easily the most offensive player in pro football. Twice, he has led his team to the N.F.L. championship, three times he has been named the league's Most Valuable Player, and the yardage he has gained on passes in twelve years adds up to more than 18 miles. But all that did Unitas little good against the Los Angeles Rams last week.

In what had to be the worst 60 min utes of his lustrous career, Unitas spent most of the afternoon running for his life from one of the fiercest defenses in pro football. Seven times the Ram defenders dropped him for losses; twice he was intercepted. At the gun, the high-scoring (28 points per game) Colts had 10 points v. 34 for the Rams, who thereby sewed up the N.F.L.'s Coastal Division championship and earned the right to play the Green Bay Packers for the Western Conference title.

That game -- and dozens like it in 1967 -- pointed up an increasingly ap parent fact of pro football these days.

That the defense, after years of playing patsy to the razzle-dazzle offense, is catching up fast and getting off some dazzling shots of its own. The coaches know it. After all, Green Bay's Vince Lombardi has always insisted that "defense is the most important part of the game." Now they are beginning to make believers of the fans. As the Rams trot ted out of the Los Angeles Coliseum last week, the standing ovation was not so much for Quarterback Roman Gabriel, who threw three touchdown passes, but for the eleven battered defense men who got him the ball.

Heroes in the Pits. Not that there haven't been defensive stars before. Washington Redskins Linebacker Sam Huff has been a popular figure for years, and Larry Wilson of the St. Louis Cardinals practically holds the patent on the safety blitz. But they are the visible parts of the defense. What six-year-old could fail to spot a blitzing safety man or cheer a cornerback's one-handed interception. The difference is that knowledgeable football buffs have now found a whole new pantheon of heroes in the heart of the defense: the front four linemen, the immense tackles and ends who fight their battles in what the pros call "the Pit." It is an arena that measures only about eight yards by two yards. But it is the place, as ex-Halfback Frank Gifford says, "where it all happens, where football games are won or lost." And the campaigns waged there are as skilled and complex as anything in sport.

In the old days, seven stalwarts manned a defensive line, and they did not have to be particularly mobile or particularly intelligent--just particularly immovable. Then in the 1950s, as offenses became more sophisticated and the pass became a primary weapon, the New York Giants hit on the "four-three" defense: a four-man forward wall buttressed by three linebackers. The conversion of three linemen into secondary defenders provided extra coverage of pass receivers, but it also left four men to do the job of seven in rushing the passer and shutting off the run. Suddenly, defensive linemen had to be bigger, faster and infinitely smarter. Suddenly, defense had to be a science.

Listening to one of today's linemen discuss his duties is a little like listening to a physicist describe some new process for detecting subatomic particles. "Our defense basically revolves around the concept of playing keys," says Tackle Henry Jordan, who together with Ends Willie Davis and Lionel Aldridge and Tackle Ron Kostelnik forms the front four of the Green Bay Packers. "We move with them all the time. On a trap play, for example, Aldridge's opposing tackle will fake a pass block by going for our middle linebacker. Now I've moved with my key, the offensive guard, so I'm trapped by him. Then Aldridge will move with his key when he sees him going for the linebacker. If Lionel had simply crashed straight ahead, he would have been trapped by the guard who has pulled and come across. But instead he has moved into the hole by following the tackle, and thus has fouled up the trap."

Haunches & Knuckles. It sounds like utter gobbledygook until Jordan explains what he means by "playing keys." In simplest terms it means to study an opponent, searching for clues to his intentions, then outmaneuvering him to break up the play. It can be as simple as noting the direction of an enemy lineman's charge--and divining that the play will go the opposite way. It can also be pretty cute. "When an offensive guard comes up to the line," says Tackle Ray Jacobs of the American Football League's Miami Dolphins, "I watch the way he sets himself. Some guys lean back on their haunches, which means that they're either going to pull for a run or go back for a pass protection." Tackle Alex Karras of the N.F.L.'s Detroit Lions examines opponents' knuckles. If the knuckles are white, they intend to block forward and the play is a run; if the knuckles are pink, the play is probably a pass.

Once he reads his key and analyzes the play, the defensive lineman reacts --and reacts fast, trying to beat his opponent to the block, catch him off-balance, squirt past him before he can plant himself. To confuse blockers, defenders will "stunt," or loop around each other; they may charge high to hurdle a block, or duck low to "submarine" under. They clutch at shoulder pads and jerseys, trying to spin blockers aside and clear a path to the ballcarrier. They have, in fact, become so adept at slipping blocks that not even the punter, standing 15 yds. back of the line of scrimmage, is safe any more. Kickers who used to count on 1.5 sec. to get the ball away now find that they must boot it within 1.2 sec.; this season in the N.F.L., no fewer than ten punts and 28 field-goal attempts have been deflected by onrushing defenders.

If a defensive lineman can't beat a blocker with finesse, there is always brutality. A favorite trick is the "vacuum pop"--clapping his hands over the earholes of an offensive player's helmet. Another is the karate chop, delivered with a beefy forearm encased in layers of tape. "You try not to let it get too personal," says Defensive End Sam Williams of the Atlanta Falcons. "But what the up-front struggle really amounts to is an angry, private little war between two people."

Rogue Elephants. In their more poetic moments, sportswriters liken the line play to an "elephants' ballet." The elephant part is accurate. The Los Angeles Rams' "Fearsome Foursome" weighs about 1,100 Ibs. between them. Left End David ("Deacon") Jones, 29, stands 6 ft. 5 in., weighs 260 Ibs., and runs the 100 in 10 sec. flat. The Rams' right end, Lamar Lundy, 32 (6 ft. 7 in., 260 Ibs.), appears briefly in the movie version of In Cold Blood as a motorist who offers a lift to two hitchhiking murderers: they take one look at him and turn down the ride. Right Tackle Roger Brown, 30, operates on the theory that "the opposing team hates me and is trying to cut off my career, so I'm going to hurt them first"--and at 6 ft. 5 in. and 295 Ibs., it hurts a lot. Left Tackle Merlin Olsen, 27 (6 ft. 5 in., 275 Ibs.), is the intellectual of the bunch-he is writing his master's thesis on "The World Sugar Crisis," and says: "Racking up quarterbacks is exciting. I like to bloody them up a little."

By exact count, Olsen and his chums have nailed enemy quarterbacks behind the line of scrimmage no less than 43 times this year, and they have allowed opposing runners an average of only 3.1 yds. per carry. "Some day," says Merlin, "the four of us want to play the perfect game: allow them no points and minus yards on the ground, and even off their passing yardage by dumping their quarterback."

Los Angeles' front four may be rated the best in pro football, but there are other individual linemen around the leagues who are every bit as tough, as talented, as respected--and as feared.

sbGREEN BAY'S WILLIE DAVIS, 33, a five-time All-Pro and the Packers' defensive captain is small (6 ft. 3 in., 245 Ibs.), as defensive ends go, but what he lacks in size he more than makes up in speed and an uncanny ability to read opponents' moves. "Willie is so quick," marvels Pittsburgh's defensive coach, LaVern Torgeson, "that he's on the blocker before he can get set. And when he makes a mistake he's one of the few players who can recover in time to make the tackle."

sbKANSAS CITY'S ERNIE LADD, 29, and Buck Buchanan, 27, are quite a pair. Right Tackle Ladd is 6 ft. 9 in. and 315 Ibs.; Left Tackle Buchanan stands 6 ft. 7 in. and 287 Ibs. Traded to the Chiefs by the Houston Oilers earlier this season, Ladd can dead-lift 700 Ibs., and "when he hits you," says Guard Charlie Long of the Boston Patriots, "he crosses your eyes." Buchanan is no less brutal, but "he doesn't rely totally on power," says Long. "He has a lot of tricks he tries to work on you."

sbDALLAS' BOB LILLY, 28, has a simple enough philosophy of defense: "Go in, grab the guy and throw him." But he plays for Cowboy Coach Tom Landry one of football's most brilliant defen sive strategists, and that makes things, pretty complicated. "We run everything through a computer here," says Lilly "We know, say, that the other team has been successful on 60% of its passes inside our 20. We talk these things over, and we work on them." A 6-ft 5-in., 260-pounder, Lilly is regarded a-, one of the two best defensive tackles in the N.F.L. (the other: Los Angeles Olsen); in one game against Pittsburgh last year, he personally decked the Steeler quarterback six times.

sbPITTSBURGH'S JOHN BAKER, 32, is a courtly, composed, pipe-smoking giant (6 ft. 6 in., 265 Ibs.) who works as a North Carolina prison-recreation supervisor during the off season. But his penchant for mayhem is well documented. "The dream of every defensive lineman," says Tackle Baker, "is to put the quarterback to sleep," and in 1964 he "laid the wood" to New York Quarterback Y. A. Tittle so solidly that he effectively ended Tittle's career.

Although the mobile monsters who bulwark today's pro defenses are truly remarkable athletes, they are by no means the ultimate. Pro linemen will get bigger and faster yet: Oakland right now is grooming a 7-ft., 300-lb. rookie tackle named Richard Sligh, and the Baltimore Colts have yet to make room in their starting line-up for 6-ft. 7-in., 295-lb. Bubba Smith, their No. 1 draft choice last year. The Colts may be looking even farther ahead. Posted on their rubdown-room wall is a photograph of another pretty fearsome foursome who held down the line for Santa Barbara, Calif., High School this fall. Their weights: 230 Ibs., 263 Ibs., 312 Ibs., and 447 Ibs.--for an average of 313 Ibs. per growing boy.

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