The Falcoholic
Throughout NFL history, most of the greatest defenses have had their own great nicknames.
The Purple People Eaters. The Fearsome Foursome. The Steel Curtain. The Monsters of the Midway. The Legion of Boom.
Atlanta Falcons fans know all about the Grits Blitz defense of 1977, designed by head coach Leeman Bennett, defensive line coach Jim Champion, and defensive backs coach Jerry Glanville. That defense allowed the fewest points (128) ever in a 14-game season, and the average of 9.2 points per game is still an NFL record.
Now, there’s another metric that puts forth the proposition that the Grits Blitzers were the NFL’s best. DVOA, the opponent-adjusted efficiency metric invented by Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz decades ago, finally got the 1977 metrics up (hey, it takes a long time to get all the games on video from that long ago), and the Grits Blitzers had the No. 1 defense overall that season — ahead of the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys and their Doomsday defense, and the AFC Champion Denver Broncos with their Orange Crush squad.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 1977 Falcons defense is how bad the 1976 Falcons defense was. That defense had little but uncooked grits to show for itself, ranking 20th among 28 teams in yards allowed, and 22nd in points allowed. For that group to rise all the way up to second in yards allowed (behind only the Cowboys) and first in points allowed — especially with the retirement of legendary linebacker Tommy Nobis in the interim — is one of the more remarkable accomplishments in pro football history.
How on Earth did they pull it off?
The Falcons hired Leeman Bennett to replace Marion Campbell as head coach on February 3, 1977. Bennett brought Glanville, the former Detroit Lions’ defensive assistant and special teams coordinator, to help run the defense along with Champion, the former New York Jets defensive line coach. It was Glanville who was widely credited with the blitz-heavy schemes that set opposing offenses on edge and created the nickname.
The blitzes were one part of the story, but the 30,000-foot view also saw the Falcons taking the 3-4 defensive concepts recently popularized in the NFL by Chuck Fairbanks of the New England Patriots and Bum Phillips of the Houston Oilers, to a different level. As Bennett said that season, the Falcons of the time used five-man packages that would be more commonly seen in today’s game.
“The main thing we’re doing differently is using an odd-man front or a 5-2,” Bennett said. “Our philosophy is to stop the run. There’s a big difference between third-and-1 and third-and-4. We try to put pressure on the quarterback, and so far, we’ve been doing a pretty good job.”
It wasn’t just that. For all of those blitzes, the 1977 Falcons ranked sixth in the NFL with 42 sacks — not bad, but not historic. Where they were completely devastating was in their pass...
