Reading the title you may jump to the conclusion that I do not know football. To be sure, the saying usually goes: “The best defense is a good offense.”

But consider the plight of Joe Paterno when he became head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions in 1967. He realized that he did not have a squad of outstanding athletes, particularly defensive players. To Paterno, defense was the key to winning football games. What was he to do? In his own words: “I had to find a way of playing great defense without great defensive athletes.”

Therefore, he spent the summer before the season began diagramming hundreds of defensive plans until he hit upon the idea of adding an extra defensive lineman to stop the opponent’s option play in which the quarterback pitches the ball to a halfback or fakes and ke…