Don Landry
CFL.ca
When you boil it down, it’s quite simple. The job of a defence is merely to stop the other team’s offence. But when it comes to getting that simple mission accomplished, things are getting more and more complicated.
It’s a picture you get when talking to Winnipeg Blue Bombers Defensive Coordinator Tim Burke.
In search of his third consecutive Grey Cup victory, Burke has brought his sterling reputation as a scheme designer to Winnipeg, after winning those two cups with the Montreal Alouettes. Despite enjoying a large amount of success, he’s sure his job is getting harder, not easier.
“Guys are coached so well now. Since I’ve been in the league for seven years I think the coaching has really excelled. Guys are going out and studying the hot trends in football and what people are doing, for example, in the NFL for protections and all that kind of stuff. It makes our game a lot tougher in that respect.”
Tougher to pull one over on offensive coordinators, line coaches and quarterbacks coaches, as Well as the men they are tutoring.
When I asked Burke what would be most crucial for his crew to accomplish against the B.C offence on Sunday, he talked about the need for both pressure and trickery.
“I would say pass rush for us. I don’t think we can let Travis (Lulay) sit back there and just wait ’til somebody comes open. He’s really good at reading coverages now, and getting the ball out quicker and being more accurate with it.
Lulay’s emergence as a more poised quarterback likely has something to do with experience. But it has just as much to do with that improved coaching Burke mentioned. It’s why guys like Burke lose sleep at night, trying to devise new ways to make things appear different than they are. “Disguise”
is almost as important a word in football, these days, as “execution.” If you have easy to read blitz packages, people like Lulay will beat them.
“He and (Lions’ Offensive Coordinator) Jacques Chapdelaine are good at it (exploiting blitz packages), explains Burke. They’re doing a good job of recognizing, in a pre-snap look, whether someone’s blitzing or not. Then they bring in some receivers to help in the protection. That kinda takes away your blitz when they do that.”
“I think it’s really imperative that we get a four man pass rush on them and make it tough for him (B.C. quarterback Travis Lulay) to locate his reads and his receivers.”
It’s not that you shouldn’t expect the Bombers to occasionally rush a fifth man to help pressure Lulay. What Burke must have his blitzers accomplish is confusion.
“When we do blitz we’re going to have to do a great job of disguising, and when we’re not blitzing we’re gonna have to make it look like we are blitzing. We’re going to have to play mind games with Travis. I know he’s gotten a lot better at picking all that up, but we’ve gotta try and make it hard for him.”
THE EXTRA POINT
You might wonder if Tim Burke employed an “Alouette style” defence when he arrived from Montreal. Or did a “Bomber style” defence employ him? Burke says you can take a little from column A and a little from column B:
“It’s both, actually. I brought some of the stuff that we did in Montreal and we kept some stuff that was already in Winnipeg. Part of our zone package is from what Winnipeg was doing before, but we just simplified it and made the rules easier for the players and didn’t force them to audible as much. We just made it simpler and easier to perform.”
