Discovering the discovered

 You ride this rock of ours long enough, you see stuff. You see, for instance, stuff that people came up with years ago regarded as revolutionary.

And so to last night, and Lamar Jackson running for his life from a pocket clogged with Dolphins. The Dolphins brought everyone but the town drunk to beat Jackson and the Ravens -- a team they had no chance of beating unless they did something desperate -- and it all looked new and exciting and completely daring.

What the Dolphins did, basically, was say, "Ah, screw this, let's just blitz everybody and see what happens." And so they did.

Twenty-four times last night, according to ESPN's Jamison Hensley, they brought defensive back blitzes, sacking Jackson four times and pressuring him into the worst night of his career. Once in the fourth quarter, they even blitzed four DBs and got away with it.

Know what I was thinking, geezer that I am, when I read all that this morning?

I was thinking, Golly, it's the return of Larry Wilson.

Also, Gosh, the Bears' 46 defense just crawled out of Buddy Ryan's grave.

Because, yes, I'm that old.

Larry Wilson, for those born too late, was a Hall of Fame safety for the St. Louis Cardinals who blitzed ALL THE TIME back in the 1960s, because that's what you did when you played for the Cardinals in those days. They had the ageless Jim Hart at quarterback and Johnny Roland at running back and a tight end named Jackie Smith, and that was about it. They were pretty so-so otherwise, which meant Larry Wilson had to blitz his maniacal heart out just keep opponents off-balance.

So there's that.

There's also the Bears 46, Buddy Ryan's brainchild, which was the most dominant defense in NFL history in 1985, when the Bears won their only Super Bowl. They called it the 46 because of safety Doug Plank, who did a lot of Larry Wilsoning and set the tone for a pretty simple concept: When in doubt, bring everyone.

Ironically, only the Dolphins figured it out that season. Everyone else was as overwhelmed as ...

Well. As overwhelmed as Lamar Jackson and the Ravens were last night.

When something long ago discovered was re-discovered.