Dom Capers, the Defensive Coordinator of the Green Bay Packers and Dick LeBeau who holds the same position with the Pittsburgh Steelers came together by chance in 1992. Bill Cowher, who was coach of the Steelers at the time hired both to serve on his staff in Pittsburgh.
Dom Capers and Dick LeBeau got along well, working with Cowher and linebackers coach Marvin Lewis to craft a defense that would take the Steelers to a pair of AFC Championship games and one Super Bowl in four seasons before success broke up the combination.
Capers moved up, he become the first head coach of the Carolina Panthers following the 1995 season, with LeBeau replacing him as Pittsburgh's defensive coordinator. Lewis, meanwhile, went to Baltimore to become the defensive coordinator of the Ravens before eventually becoming head coach of the Bengals.
"All that brainstorming, all that brain power, all those defensive schemes," said Green Bay assistant coach Kevin Greene, who joined the Steelers as a linebacker in 1993. "Just great defensive minds."
Two of those great defensive minds will meet Sunday when the Steelers play the Packers in Super Bowl XLV.
Needless to say, there are plenty of similarities between the Steelers' defense run by LeBeau and that of the Packers directed by Capers.
"This is probably the only Super Bowl in which the players from either team could jump in the defensive huddle and understand the terminology and probably run the defense," said LeBeau, who is in his second stint as defensive coordinator in Pittsburgh.
"I'm sure the nomenclature is different, but they could figure it out. Certainly, if you gave them two days of practice, either team could run the other's defense."
That's because everything LeBeau and Capers do with their defenses has is rooted in their days together in Pittsburgh. Capers still has in his possession a handwritten playbook from his Steelers days.
That playbook Capers and LeBeau drew became the bible of so many of the zone-blitz, 3-4 defenses used in the NFL. The zone blitz might have started with the Bengals, but it was perfected by Capers and LeBeau with the Steelers.
The zone blitz was born out a need to counter the pass-oriented Run 'n Shoot and West Coast offenses that dominated the 1980s and '90s. The defense is used in some fashion by nearly every NFL team.
The Super Bowl will be a showcase of the defense born from the work that began in Pittsburgh in 1992.
It's a rarity, only four Super Bowls have pitted the league's two stingiest defenses - in terms of points allowed - and Sunday will be the first such meeting since 1982. The Steelers allowed the fewest points in the league and Green Bay was second.
Even though both defenses are very stout, I'll think we'll see a good amount of points scored on Sunday.
Dom Capers