Dick LeBeau knows offense. When Ohio State beat Michigan in 1957 — imagine that, Ohio State beating Michigan — LeBeau played both sides of the ball and scored two touchdowns.

        LeBeau was the Buckeyes' leading receiver that season, which in those days was tantamount to being the world's tallest midget. Woody Hayes regarded the forward pass with the same dogmatic derision the Inquisition reserved for Galileo, and LeBeau was lucky to be able to latch on to seven throws in a single season.

        What he has learned about offensive philosophy, then, primarily has been through post-graduate work. What he believes is offense must be varied if it is to be victorious.

        “We're still going to run the football,” the Cincinnati Bengals' head coach said
Thursday morning at Paul Brown Stadium. “We're not going to change that. What we are going to change is the problems we pose to the other team's defense. We want to spread the field. We're going to give them more to defend.”

Offense by osmosis

        In hiring Bob Bratkowski as the Bengals' new offen sive coordinator, LeBeau has demonstrated that Hayes' hidebound influence and his own defensive background do not necessarily dictate a conservative philosophy. Rather than letting the air out of the football, LeBeau is inclined to pump it up with multiple formations and elaborate motion. The common thread among the coordinator candidates — Bratkowski, Kevin Gilbride and Chris Palmer — is they are all products of the run-and-shoot school of football pyrotechnics.

        LeBeau's own offensive education has been obtained largely through osmosis. As a young special teams coach in Philadelphia, he spent much of his unscheduled time studying line play from the esteemed John Sandusky. As the Bengals' defensive coordinator under Sam Wyche, LeBeau often served as a sounding board for the feasibility of newfangled ideas. As a head coach, LeBeau will delegate much of the offense's detail work to Bratkowski, but he has strong convictions about its concept.

        LeBeau's priority in the hiring process was to find someone who could devise an unpredictable attack without confusing a young quarterback. He wants a mentor for Akili Smith, not a tormentor. The Bengals will bring some veteran quarterback to training camp — if not Scott Mitchell, someone with similar experience — but it's plain they'd prefer to salvage Smith than resuscitate another retread.

Evolving attack

        Whether Bratkowski is the right guy for this gig is speculation. He has distinguished himself working with young quarterbacks at the college level, but his best work in the NFL was done for the 1997 Seattle Seahawks with the creaky Warren Moon. Emboldened by his success running the league's top pass offense, the then-41-year-old Moon missed most of the following year's training camp in a contract dispute. He eventually returned but never regained his rhythm. His coaches, consequently, were fired.

        Bratkowski's position with the Bengals is comparatively enviable, because he is taking a high-profile job on a coaching staff that re turns virtually intact. If there is progress, he is sure to be seen as a crucial difference. If the Bengals' problems persist, the blame will be widely disseminated.

        LeBeau wants the kind of offense that has bedeviled his defenses: formations that feature two receivers on one play and five on the next; pre-snap motion that causes confusion in the secondary; tight ends who periodically double as blocking backs. If LeBeau's Civil War studies have taught him anything, it is the value of a flanking maneuver as opposed to a frontal assault.

        “I still believe football games are won and lost at the line of scrimmage,” he said. “But the game is always evolving. One side (of the ball) will come up with an adjustment that will temporarily upset the balance, and then the other side will come up with an answer. The run-and-shoot was popular at one time, but nobody plays it any more. The "Fire Zone' (defense) we had in Pittsburgh was really dominant, but people have figured it out.”

        Though the Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants have relied predominantly on defense to reach the Super Bowl, LeBeau suspects this may represent only a “temporary respite.”

        “I really feel,” LeBeau said, “that the offense is in the ascendency right now.”

        E-mail: tsullivan@enquirer.com.
       

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