Houston has a Cowboy hero

ATHENS, Ga. — Since becoming Georgia’s defensive coordinator in January, Todd Grantham has conducted a lot of show-and-tell sessions.

Those include numerous videotapes of the Dallas Cowboys, who run the 3-4 scheme that Grantham has brought to the Bulldogs. Grantham spent the past two seasons as defensive line coach for the Cowboys, and Dallas outside linebacker DeMarcus Ware has the Bulldogs in awe.

“If I could play half as good as that guy, I would be all right,” Georgia outside linebacker Justin Houston said.

Ware has been rated by The Sporting News as the National Football League’s best outside linebacker in a 3-4 system, and he has the sack totals to back it. The 6-foot-4, 262-pounder out of Troy University has amassed 11 or more sacks each of the past four seasons and racked up 20 in 2008.

He tallied 58 tackles and eight sacks as an NFL rookie in 2005 and had 73 tackles and 11.5 sacks in ’06, when he earned his first Pro Bowl invitation.

“The thing with those guys in Dallas, especially in my second year there, is that I thought we were very technique-oriented, so there is a lot of learning that you can get from those guys,” Grantham said. “We’ve got it kind of broken down for our guys to where they can watch each different technique and how each guy did it. When you can watch a guy who is a Pro Bowl player and is playing with technique, to me there is something there.

“When you see one of the highest-paid players in the National Football League going through drills and seeing him on tape, they want to do it the same way, too. So from that aspect of it, I think it’s a good thing.”

Georgia’s three prominent outside linebackers hoping to emulate Ware are Houston, Darryl Gamble and Cornelius Washington. Houston, a 6-3, 259-pound junior from Statesboro, led the Bulldogs with 7.5 sacks last season as a defensive end, which ranked third in the SEC behind Auburn defensive end Antonio Coleman (10) and Florida defensive end Carlos Dunlap (9).

Houston lined up last season with a hand on the turf but has no such restriction this season at the linebacker spot that will rush the quarterback the most.

“In the other system, I had to read and I couldn’t always attack,” Houston said. “In this system, I’m attacking a lot more. It’s great knowing that I’ve got one assignment, and that’s to attack.

“There is a lot of pressure off you when you know there is just one thing to do.”

Houston can admit now that he didn’t always get better this past spring as the 3-4 was being installed. The more that was added, the more he often wondered what was going on.

It slowed down for him and the other defenders this summer, as they studied their tape of the spring as well as watching video of the Cowboys.

“They have one of the better defenses in the league,” Gamble said, “and learning from DeMarcus Ware is a great attribute for us.”