The New York Giants restored former defensive coordinator, Rod Rust, into the fold as defensive quality control specialist, a guru position equal to that of Jim Fassel’s QB title. Rod Rust was the former coach of The Montreal Alouettes, but was let go just weeks before the Grey Cup, for which the team may not qualify, after enthusiastic season opening expectations.

Rust is the innovative genius who devised the R & R defense rumored as much despised by the fabled Giants’ team of Taylor, Banks and Johnson. “We Americans are an aggressive bunch,” says Rust, “and the idea of a “Read and React” defense didn’t sit well with the guys.”

Learning from his cultural misjudgment, Rust devised a variant of the R & R to accomodate the more thoughtful Canadian culture, a new defense called the R & D, or the “Read and Discuss.”

“Once the ball is snapped,” explained Rust, “the defense will read the play and quickly discuss the best counter. When they reach a consensus, they act in unison to stop it.”

The scheme was better in theory than in practice, or in the games themselves, a fact the honest Rust freely admits after his first one and sixteen season. During the discuss phase, the linebackers would turn their backs to the line of scrimmage to get input from the secondary. “Naturally, our opponents broke some big ones.”

Players, however, enjoyed the bonding experience created by the “Read and Discuss.” Strong side linbacker Gord Mahaffy tells how he got to “really know” middle linebacker Mike Solomon in the second quarter of a one hundred seventeen to three loss to the Stampeders.

“It was a pitchout to Clemmons,” says Mahaffy, “and as I was gathering my thoughts for the discuss phase, Mike shouted over to me that the play reminded him of a passage from a Margaret Atwood novel, ‘Lady Oracle.’ Well, hell, I didn’t know Mikey was a Margaret Atwood fan. I’m a Robertson Davies guy myself, but I liked Atwood’s dark, brooding characters and detailed sense of place. So did he. We would’ve never have found this out if it wasn’t for the R & D, even though the ‘Stamps’ broke a big one.”

Rust admits his job was complicated by the Quebec language problem. Always careful to keep their language pure, the French are loathe to adopt American terms. His scheme was re-named the Read and RSVP, or respondez vous s’il vous plait. Also, in the heat of a game, it took the English players a while to realize “dessin du quart-arrère” was a quarterback draw and not an appetizer, or that “un semblant de jeu renversé” was a fake reverse. “By the time you called the signal, the guy was gone,” Rust said with a chuckle, “and they broke some big ones.”

In his second year, Rust abandoned the R & D for another R & R scheme, the “Rest and React.” At the snap, the entire defense rests, to gather strength to stop the oncoming play. “We had good results,” says Rust, “but for reasons I never expected.” He continued, “you know when you push down a door that’s already off its hinges? Well, not only does the door go down, so do you. We found that when our defensive front four rested after the snap, our opponents’ O-line just pancaked them, but because resting players offer no resistance, they fell kerplop on top of our guys. This created a huge pile-up of players on the line of scrimage that the tailback couldn’t get through. It was human gridlock and worked well for a while, until everyone started scrambling wide and broke some big ones.”

I asked Rust what other ingenious schemes he had lined up for the unsuspecting CFL should he have remained as head coach. He cited the R & H, or the “Run and Hide.” Before the snap, corners run and hide behind the linebackers. When the tailback thinks he’s making it past the linebacker, the corner jumps out from behind him and scares the shit out of the guy. Rust expects the system to cause the tailback to fumble as he reflexively grasps his heart from the surprise, the way you do when someone yells “Boo.” “Of course,” he adds, “you need really huge linebackers and small corners, which we didn’t have,” and other teams broke some really big ones.”

Other possible schemes are the R & W, which is the “Read ‘em and Weep,” the “Rise and Shine” the “Rum and Coke” and the “Twist and Shout.” He was about to install two other schemes before he was fired. Both are variants of the original R & R. One is the “Rant and Rave,” where at the snap, the entire defense throws a huge tantrum. “It should be interesting,” said Rust. “Nobody knows how to deal with tantrums. I’ve been a parent and grandparent and still haven’t figured it out. Maybe the other team won’t know either.”

The other scheme is the “Rude and Run.” At the snap, selected defensive players insult the man across the line and then run away as the guy chases him, forgetting his original assignment.

But the team did not give him the chance and only scheme Rust experienced was the CFL’s own R & R, a Rocky Ride and it’s hoped he can bring his defensive innovative genius to the Giants this coming year.

Comments(0)