This season marks the 50th of football for the Cincinnati Bengals, five decades filled with highs, lows, dynamic personalities and innovations that changed the face of the National Football League. The Enquirer brings you the 50 most influential people in Bengals history through various forms of media, bringing you the names and untold stories that shaped this franchise over its first half century -- good, bad and ugly.

Dick LeBeau isn't that different from many Bengals coaches in that his history with the franchise, to a degree, began as a player. The London, Ohio native and Ohio State alumnus was drafted by Paul Brown – in Cleveland.

LeBeau was cut however and spent 14 years in Detroit. After he retired, he got right into coaching and called up the man who drafted him looking for work.

"I did call up Mr. Brown one time looking for a job. I always wanted to get back into Ohio," LeBeau said. "He said at that time that he had another coach in mind but if something happened that he would call me back. And it was, I would say, three or four years later he did call me back. I took the job immediately."

That was in 1980, as the defensive backs coach under defensive coordinator Hank Bullough.

“It was definitely a high point in my coaching career," LeBeau said. "My mom and dad were both still alive, just 90 miles from Cincinnati and I could get back to see them periodically. My brother lived his whole life in central Ohio so family wise, in our business, you don’t get to be where your family is very often and this was that opportunity and I was very thrilled about it. No doubt.”

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In 1984, when Sam Wyche was named head coach, LeBeau was promoted to defensive coordinator, a position he maintained through 1991.

And it was at that time when the zone blitz was born, largely because of the proliferation of Bill Walsh's "West Coast" offensive scheme and the high-powered "Run N Shoot" offense of the division rival Houston Oilers.

"Nobody had too many answers for it," LeBeau said of those offenses. "Part of our existence was going to have to be to answer it some. So I started with this zone blitz concept, which was really – they say that necessity is the mother of invention – nobody could stop those two offenses, and for us to get where we wanted to go we had to at least slow ‘em down.”

LeBeau's defenses, statistically, weren't prolific or consistently dominant. In those eight years, the unit finished in the top 10 in total defense once (1987), in the top 10 in scoring defense once (1989) and in the top 10 in passing defense three times (1986, 1988, 1989) -- but the zone blitz concept revolutionized football.

"It defeated the theory of the West Coast, blitz-read system," then-Bengals offensive coordinator Bruce Coslet said. "It's still effective today."

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"You’ll see time after time it’s just impossible (to block) and you’ll make the quarterback make a bad decision and it goes right back to you," added former San Francisco and Kansas City quarterback Joe Montana. "If you look at the play in the Super Bowl (XLIX) with Seattle and New England. Because he had to make a quick decision (Russell Wilson) throws the ball to the right when you’ve got Marshawn Lynch being covered by a defensive end and he runs right by him on the other side. So, those are the kinds of things you don’t have time to do against that, you’ve got to make a decision and go one way or the other. (LeBeau) was great. He was fun to play against.”

LeBeau, who is currently the defensive coordinator and assistant head coach in Tennessee, would win two Super Bowls and lose two as an assistant in Pittsburgh – but he recalls the two Super Bowls he coached in for the Bengals with great fondness.

"I think about it in maybe a different light," he said. "The Super Bowl is a difficult proposition. Thirty-two great teams and only one of them is going to come out of there with a trophy and the franchise has been there twice and I was a part of that team when we got there twice, and I've always been very, very proud of that. Also, the fact that in both of those games we had excellent opportunities to win it, it just didn't break our way.

"People have a tendency, particularly not necessarily in Cincinnati, but around the country, that Cincinnati has been to the Super Bowl twice. I've always been proud to say that I was with them when they were there."

LeBeau is also part of the head coaching history with the Bengals, taking over for Bruce Coslet when Coslet resigned three games into the 2000 season. LeBeau became a head coach at the age of 63, and stayed on in that capacity for two more seasons and compiled a record of 12-33 through 1995.

"It was kind of a fluke, actually, that I got the job in the first place," LeBeau said. "And I said when I left Cincinnati when I got the job I worked as hard as I could 'til the day that I left, and today I'm leaving. Nothing happened to change my thought pattern on that. I was an Ohioan working for a good family and I think we got some things done we just didn't win enough games."

LeBeau will turn 80 right before the start of his 44th season of coaching – and while he understands he's viewed differently in Cincinnati due to his time in Pittsburgh – he keeps a part of his heart warm for a home-state team founded by the man who drafted him and gave him an opportunity to come home back in 1980.

"The time that I spent with them were treasured years and I'll always remember them. I wanted to be in Ohio and it doesn't happen very often," he said.

"I've always been really a Bengal and Brown guy at heart, like I am a Buckeye, because I am from Ohio and I like the Ohio teams. Looking back I wouldn't change anything. My career experience, I've been blessed and Cincinnati has sure been a big part of it."