WEEKEND SPORTS
Widenhofer’s schemes remain mostly viable
L.C. Greenwood (68) was a mainstay of the vaunted Steel Curtain, but even it gave way to progress — and age. Woody Widenhofer, who died this week, led the Steelers’ transition from a 4-3 to a 3-4 defense after the 1981 season. “With the new types of pro offenses, you have to go with the 3-4 just to keep up with the Joneses,” John Banaszak (76) would say a few years later.
With the recent death of former Steelers defensive coordinator and play-caller Woody Widenhofer came a chance to fire up the archives to learn more about his role in the Super 1970s dynasty. Widenhofer certainly was a key cog in his post as linebackers coach (and later coordinator/assistant head coach), but his Steelers legacy might be defined more by his impact on the Steelers teams that came just after the very good years.
Sure, the Steelers mostly ranged from bad to mediocre once the 1980s arrived, marking the end of an era as the Steel Curtain finally crumbled and Chuck Noll’s career wound down. But that’s where Widenhofer came in, as the engineer of the team’s transition from its vaunted 4-3 defense — the one with Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes and Dwight White on the front line — to the basic 3-4 alignment they have used ever since.
Changing their base formation was like “picturing Pittsburgh without rivers, like seeing local roads without potholes,” John Clayton wrote in The Pittsburgh Press in July 1982. For Steelers fans of a younger generation, seeing them list something other than a 3-4 base defense on their official depth chart would feel just as strange.
Granted, the Steelers of today are barely more of a 3-4 team than the ones before 1982, when Widenhofer began converting his and Noll’s defense from the 4-3.
In 2019, Mike Tomlin and defensive coordinator Keith Butler used their nickel sub-package with two linemen and five defensive backs more than any other defense, but the bones of it all goes back to a league-wide shift almost 40 years ago.
“Our new defense won’t be the conventional 3-4. I believe we now have the people to play the 3-4,” defensive end John Banaszak told Clayton in 1982. “With the new types of pro offenses, you have to go with the 3-4 just to keep up with the Joneses.”
Once Greene, Greenwood and White retired, the Steelers’ options were to try to find suitable replacements or join most other teams in phasing out four-man fronts.
With Jack Lambert, Jack Ham and Robin Cole still comprising the linebacking corps, the personnel might have made that choice for Noll and Widenhofer, who would plug in veteran Loren Toews next to Lambert at inside linebacker.
Widenhofer once described it as a “self-taught” version of the 3-4, so much so that internally, the Steelers actually referred to it as their “33” defense. Whatever they did, it worked right away, as the Steelers went from barely a sack per game in 1981 to an average of 3.8 a season later.
“You have to play a lot of three-man fronts today because at times you want to drop eight guys in coverage,” Widenhofer explained in 1983.
Of course, that thinking has only expanded with the surge of high-powered passing games. But, as Steelers coaching staffs changed, from Noll to Bill Cowher, and then Cowher to Tomlin, the predominant defensive scheme has remained the same. You can trace that all the way back to the effect Widenhofer had in installing it, especially given that the likes of Noll and Lambert were stubborn to accept it.
“It’s time for change,” Banaszak said at the time. “When you go 9-7 and 8-8 [in 1980 and 1981], you look for new ways to go about it.”
Not unlike the current situation the Steelers are in, though if anything, 2020 could see them move back to using more base defense. As more and more teams rediscover the ground game, NFL defenses will get back to trying to stay ahead of the curve, same as always.