Like any self-respecting linebacker, Lance Briggs prefers physical communication to verbal communication.
So when asked the secret to tackling Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on Sunday night at Soldier Field, Briggs placed his head across the chest of his questioner. Then the Bears’ weak-side linebacker and leading tackler planted his left shoulder under his target’s right armpit, reached his right arm around to grab the man’s shirt and said, “Boom!”
“Getting your head across is 98 percent of it,” Briggs said. “A clean shot will take you down.”
The Bears will take their shots against Vick, one of the NFL’s best running backs playing quarterback. He’s harder to lay hands on than an Xbox 360 before Christmas.
The challenge comes one week after the Pittsburgh Steelers ran roughshod over the league’s No. 1 defense on a muddy field that exposed a potential weakness on a unit that took pride in not having one. As defensive coordinators since the leather-helmet era have agreed, nothing hurts a good defense more than poor tackling.
“We put our heads down and did not wrap up,” defensive end Adewale Ogunleye said simply.
That effort renewed the emphasis on fundamentals in practice last week and reminded everyone how difficult the art of tackling can be in the NFL.
In the half-century between Bill George and Brian Urlacher, the speed and size of the athletes and the emphasis on stripping the football might have changed the method of tackling. But for tacklers of all ages and eras, no matter how much technological and equipment advances factor in, it still comes down to a guy combining technique with tenacity to take a ballcarrier to the ground.
It’s not about physics or finesse. It’s about force, and it comes from within.
“The single most critical element of tackling is attitude,” said Gary Fencik, a sure-tackling member of the ’85 Bears who played safety from 1976 to ’87. “So much of it is emotion, energy and persistence. It’s more psychological than the physical act of bringing someone down.”
Coaches in the NFL worry about managing a player’s method more than his mood. And linebackers coach Bob Babich has coached his players well on the Bears.
All three starting linebackers, asked separately what makes a good tackler, named the same three priorities: getting leverage, taking good angles and wrapping up.
“You’re not going to be in great position to make a tackle every time,” middle linebacker Urlacher said. “So the No. 1 thing is leverage and taking the right angle to the football.”
Added Briggs: “If you’re going to miss, miss on your leverage side, which forces him into someone else who’s going to take another shot.”
Strong-side linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer, who led the NCAA in tackles as a senior at Vanderbilt, disputed the notion that tackling is a lost art in the NFL with so many turnover-driven defenses such as the Bears emphasizing the ball over the ballcarrier.
“The first guy in is trying to secure the tackle, the second guy in is trying to tackle the football and most of the time the guy causing the fumble is coming at it from a non-aggressive angle,” Hillenmeyer said. “It might just be a case of getting away from fundamentals because the game is so fast. [But] by the time you get to the NFL, if you don’t have fundamentals, you won’t make it.”
A notable exception
Fencik might disagree. He played wide receiver at Yale before the Bears converted him to free safety as a rookie in 1976. Smart enough to know his own deficiencies, Fencik asked then-secondary coach Ross Fichtner to teach him how to tackle.
“I told him I really needed some instruction, and he told me he wasn’t in a position to give me training and if I wanted to succeed, I’d have to pick up the technique myself and every defensive player developed his own [tackling] style,” Fencik said. “So I had to learn, and Doug Plank was the tutor–for good or bad.”
The epitome of heart, Plank usually led with his head and relied on intimidation as much as execution. You don’t see the type of tackles Plank used to deliver anymore; the league has ensured that.
Stiff fines have served to reduce the punishing nature of tackling so severely that Bears defensive tackle Tank Johnson recently was docked, essentially for allowing his 300-pound girth to land on Brett Favre. In other words, reckless abandon no longer is rewarded the way it used to be in defensive huddles.
“Tackling has changed from the old school, stick-your-face-in-the-numbers to where it is today where you’d get a $10,000 fine if you did it that way all the time,” Fencik said. “So DBs especially have a difficult challenge making tackles. It’s tough not to lead with your head when you’re hurtling your body at somebody who is trying to escape you. It’s a difficult thing to learn.”
From the NFL to Pop Warner leagues, coaches still teach tackling following the same basic principles.
Mike Gross coaches kids from 7 years old through 8th grade in a South Elgin league. The ex-Eastern Illinois receiver probably sounds a lot like Lovie Smith when preaching to his players about how to bring down a running back. Good tacklers never outgrow some things.
“The biggest thing we tell them is keep your head up–we call it `bite the ball’–and not going to your knees when you break down,” Gross said. “We practice without equipment on three simple things: getting a fit with the head across, biting the ball with your head up, and grabbing cloth so he doesn’t get away.”
Gross encounters more than his share of kids forced into bad habits trying to copy the big hit they saw on “SportsCenter” or the rare one-armed tackle from behind that saved a touchdown.
“All the kids on defense want to be like Brian Urlacher,” Gross said. “But there’s only one of him.”
Urlacher has become a contender for NFL defensive player of the year this season by making plays less athletic linebackers never could imagine making. Urlacher’s uncommon speed allows him to reduce pursuit angles and run down runners even as swift and elusive as Vick, the hardest quarterback in the league to catch.
He represents the perfect match for Vick: two freakish athletes who have redefined their positions in the new millennium. His rare athleticism makes Urlacher the prototypical linebacker for someone designing a video game, but perhaps not an instructional film on tackling.
It’s hard for anyone to beat Dick Butkus out for that role.
A Butkus video student
Shaun Gayle used to watch Butkus videos before football games every Friday night at Bethel High School in Hampton, Va. “It was all about fundamentals, and from watching Butkus [tapes] I picked up the aggressiveness it took to make a tackle and how to bring a ballcarrier down,” Gayle said.
A Bears safety from 1984 to ’94, Gayle developed a reputation as one of the league’s surest tacklers. At Ohio State, his position coach, current Dolphins coach Nick Saban, instilled the formula Gayle used. Saban taught tacklers to keep the bend in their ankles, knees and hips at a 45-degree angle when approaching ballcarriers to create a coil in the body that explodes into the runner.
“That was the great equalizer against larger, stronger running backs,” Gayle said.
That approach once allowed Gayle to lift 225-pound Herschel Walker off the ground and make one of the more memorable tackles of his career. It also has helped many smallish defensive backs survive in a league in which wide receivers are as big as running backs used to be and today’s running backs resemble yesterday’s tight ends.
Gayle, though, never will accept the changing size of NFL players as a legitimate reason for the changes in the quality of tackling.
“The culprit is everything from it not being harped on as much by coaches to players coming into the league who don’t have as much experience as a kid growing up playing football because many play soccer, too, and never really learn,” Gayle said. “There are a lot of factors, but unfortunately, yes, I think the level of tackling has dropped off.”
Retired Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy considers the way the game has changed when evaluating how tackling has.
“Everything evolves,” Levy said. “It’s a lot more difficult now to get a one-on-one, form-up, fundamental tackle in the NFL. It’s more difficult to execute than before. But overall, I think the state of tackling is excellent in the NFL today.”
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Tackling 101
The main principles
According to Bears defensive players, here’s what to remember when pursuing Michael Vick:
LESSON NO. 1
Get the angle
Most tackles are missed by defenders taking bad approach lanes. The trick with someone like Michael Vick is not underestimating his speed and quickness and providing enough space to recover from his jukes so he cannot run past you. A tackler with a cushion and the right angle cannot be faked out.
LESSON NO. 2
Establish leverage
Getting Vick down, once you catch him, depends on balance and body control because he is as strong as he is slippery. It isn’t enough just to get the right angle and get to him. Assuming a position of strength is a must. If you must miss, Bears players say miss on leverage side so there is help from your friends.
LESSON NO. 3
Wrap up
Hitting any NFL runner, especially Vick, is not enough. Putting him on the ground requires throwing him there. The only way that is possible is if tacklers “grab cloth” and make sure Vick doesn’t slither through the grasp of a would-be tackler.
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Manhandlers of the Midway
One look at 10 of the best tacklers in Bears history:
Bill George. Middle linebacker set the standard for franchise.
Dick Butkus. He’s where running games went to die.
Doug Buffone. You don’t survive 13 years (1966-79) in the league without mastering the art of the tackle.
Doug Plank. Headhunter missed some wildly but remains the standard by which Bears’ big hitters in the secondary are measured.
Shaun Gayle. Quiet contributor stayed low–and on Bears’ roster for a decade.
Ed Sprinkle. “The Claw” knew how to get a grip and not let go.
Mike Singletary. The mesmerizing eyes and pulverizing hits were as certain as death and taxes.
Joe Fortunato. Alongside George, he called signals and made stops on ’63 champions.
Gary Fencik. Learned how to tackle quickly enough to have eight 100-tackle seasons.
Roosevelt Taylor. Stalwart from ’60s seldom let anything slip by.
— David Haugh
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dhaugh@tribune.com
