Thursday, Oct. 30, 2003 | 10:27 a.m.
Rocky Long had just finished his first year as defensive coordinator at Oregon State in 1991 and he knew he had to come up quickly with something different for the Beavers to be competitive.
Oregon State was a perennial candidate for the Bottom Ten as one of the nation's worst Division I college football teams. The Beavers had just finished another 1-10 campaign under Jerry Pettibone which saw OSU lose by whopping scores -- 58-6 to Washington, 55-7 to Washington State and 44-7 to UCLA.
"We played a 4-3 defense that year," Long said, "and we got smoked."
So with Pettibone's blessing, Long and his defense staff took a trip the following spring to Mississippi State to meet with Joe Lee Dunn, a master of blitzing defenses who had been New Mexico's defensive coordinator in 1980 when Long was the secondary coach.
Long brought many of Dunn's blitzing concepts back with him to Corvallis. He and his staff, which included current Lobos defensive coordinator Osia Lewis and Ball State head coach Brady Hoke, spent long hours in an old storage room nicknamed "The Dungeon" in the basement of famed Gill Coliseum coming up with what is now commonly referred to as the 3-3-5 defense.
What the Beavers didn't have in talent they more than made up by causing havoc with Long's then uncoventional stunting, blitz-from-all-angles defense. Oregon State finished ranked in the Top 20 in the nation defensively twice in the next four years and Long was eventually lured away to become defensive coordinator at UCLA.
In Long's second year in Westwood, the Bruins ranked 15th nationally in both rush defense and pass efficiency defense. They finished second in the nation in turnover margin. That helped land Long, a former starting quarterback at New Mexico in the late 1960s, the head coaching job in Albuquerque in 1998.
The Lobos have been ranked among the nation's top 30 defenses in each of the last three years. They enter Saturday night's game against UNLV ranked sixth in the nation in rushing defense (74.9 yards per game) and 23rd in the nation in scoring defense (18.6 ppg).
And perhaps not so surprisingly, Long's 3-3-5 defense, once viewed as too risky and unorthodox by many coaches, is now being adapted by a number of schools across the nation, including UNLV. In fact, four schools in the Mountain West Conference alone --- New Mexico, UNLV, Air Force and BYU --- run some form of the 3-3-5.
"It used to be that we were the only ones in the conference to run it which was a big advantage then," Long said. "It's kind of like Air Force running the option in our conference. They're the only ones who do it, which makes it tougher to prepare for in a week. But now that so many more teams are studying and running (the 3-3-5), I don't think there is as big an advantage as there once was for us."
BYU last spring paid big money to hire Long protege Bronco Mendenhall away from New Mexico to install the 3-3-5 in Provo this season. The Cougars rank 17th in the nation in total defense allowing just 302.6 yards per game and are second only to New Mexico in the Mountain West Conference in rushing defense.
"They even hand signal in the plays the same way," Long said. "I can watch their games on television and tell what coverages they're using."
"It's been a very good defense," UNLV coach John Robinson said. "They're very aggressive. It's in the mold of the eight-man front teams in the NFL that are going to press you and force you to make errors and try to beat you in the passing game by making you throw fast so that you can't get them deep."
Although there are only three down linemen in Long's scheme, Robinson said the concept has similarities to the famed "46" defense that the Chicago Bears used to win a Super Bowl almost 20 years ago.
"I don't think there's any question about that," Robinson said. "It's not the '46' defense they're playing but the concept of coming on you and outnumbering you is the same."
Long agrees.
"There are a lot of similarities other than the fact the Bears had a four man front," he said.
West Virginia, South Carolina and Wake Forest are among the other schools in the nation who have picked up Long's defense.
"Coaches are great imitators," Long said. "If they think something will work, they'll copy it."
It's too bad Long didn't patent the 3-3-5.
"I don't see it like that," Long said. "Joe Lee Dunn (now an assistant at Memphis) did a lot of the things I first saw. He was one of the pioneers of it. Then we started to develop our own strain of it."
It's a strain that continues to gain in popularity among college coaches.
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