Speed or Strength?

Bears coach Lovie Smith remembers the day he interviewed for his first NFL job. He was coaching defensive backs at Ohio State in 1996 when he received a phone call from then-Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Tony Dungy, asking him to come to the Indianapolis scouting combine for an interview.



Smith was ambitious, as a glance at his resume tells you -- at one point, he coached at six colleges in 10 years -- but he wasn't sure he wanted to jump to the NFL. He had heard the players were hard to coach, the lifestyle was tough on families and the hours were murder.

"It seemed like I saw all the negative things about the NFL,'' Smith said.

But he was intrigued by the opportunity to work with Dungy, whom he knew only by reputation. So Smith drove from Columbus to Indianapolis and met with Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin. They exchanged niceties, then retreated to a small room in the hotel where teams interview players and spent four hours talking football and diagramming plays.

Smith left with a new job and the realization that the sport he loved didn't have to include recruiting trips and academic concerns. It could be "football 24/7, if that's what you wanted,'' he said.

Smith will return to Tampa on Sunday with his NFC North-leading Bears for a showdown against some of the people he grew up with in the NFL. Dungy is coaching the undefeated Indianapolis Colts these days, but Kiffin remains the Bucs' defensive coordinator. And one of Smith's great friends is Bucs defensive line coach Rod Marinelli, whom Smith tried to hire as his defensive coordinator before Ron Rivera, only to have the move blocked by Bucs coach Jon Gruden and team ownership.

Marinelli and Smith were hired in Tampa at the same time and shared a tiny room at a Holiday Inn Express for their first two months with the team. Smith joked that they were cellmates as much as roommates and said they refer to each other as "Roomie'' to this day. It was also in Tampa, of course, that Smith first met Bears general manager Jerry Angelo, who worked with the Bucs for 15 years and wound up giving Smith his first head-coaching job.

Friendships aside, Tampa also remains a significant place for Smith because it's where he discovered the defensive scheme that he continues to run and that has helped turn the Bears into the No. 1 defense in the league.

"I had a lot of stops in my career,'' Smith said. "I got paid by four teams in one year, so I have been in a few different systems. But when I got there, I said: 'This is it. This is what I believe in. When I leave, this is what I will run.'

"I wanted to be the best linebackers coach, but I wanted someday to coach my own defense and wanted, of course, to be a head coach. You had to have something that was yours, that you really believed in, that you knew would work. That is what I got in Tampa.''

Cover-2, speed and strength



The Cover-2 defense -- or Tampa-2, as a lot of teams call it these days -- signifies a pass coverage that cuts the field in half with both safeties playing deep. It's designed to prevent big passing plays and encourages teams to throw underneath. Dungy has said he learned the scheme as a safety with the Pittsburgh Steelers during the late 1970s and credits former Steelers coach Chuck Noll and defensive coordinator Bud Carson with writing the playbook.

Smith said the Bears use Cover-2 only a quarter of the time, but he conceded it is their signature coverage. The fact is, just about every team plays some form of Cover-2. The Bears did during the ###### Jauron era, but with a different defensive philosophy than the one Smith developed in Tampa.

Perhaps more important than anything else, what Smith adopted from his time in Tampa was the idea of giving up size for strength and speed. He said it's important to include strength in the equation because he wants top athletes and thinks power is important to go with speed. Smith's gap-shooting scheme relies on speed and gang-tackling to create turnovers, and he encourages players to try to score every time the ball is on the ground.

"It's a takeaway game, and if guys can't run and there is a fumble, how do you get to it?'' Smith said. "To get that fumble, you want 11 guys, as many as you can, as close to the ball and getting there as quick as possible.

"Gang-tackling, how do you get there? With speed. Whatever way you play football, if a player makes a mistake, you need the other 10 guys to get there as fast as you can.''