Today's first practice in pads could not come soon enough for the oldest free-agent acquisition in Steelers history. After 46 NFL training camps, Dick LeBeau holds no less enthusiasm for No. 47 than a seventh-grader on the first day of summer vacation.

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He turns 67 Sept. 9, but LeBeau looks 47 going on 23 as he begins his second term as the Steelers' defensive coordinator. He will need that energy to infuse a defense that played a brand of football not seen around here since the "soft and cheesy" days of the late 1980s.

"The man has been around football for so long and he still has that fire like a young teenage boy coming out to play football," defensive end Aaron Smith said. "It's very exciting."

Sacks came at the slowest pace ever under Bill Cowher last season, and no Steelers defense produced fewer turnovers in 16 games. Cowher fired coordinator Tim Lewis and lured back LeBeau, trumping Buffalo's bid to rehire him under new coach Mike Mularkey.

In a year in which the Steelers added virtually no one to their defense and released several starters, LeBeau became the most important addition to that unit. The pioneer of the zone blitz defense that served the Blitzburgh teams of the 1990s so well will try to put the smack back into the brand.

"When you play us, you know you're going to get a certain amount of pressure because that's what we believe in," LeBeau said.

LeBeau likely will have more authority to run the defense than did Lewis, who often was at odds with Cowher over game plans. LeBeau served as assistant head coach last season in Buffalo, where he landed after he was fired after 2 1/2 years as Cincinnati's head coach.

This will be his 32nd season as an NFL coach, an unbroken string that began with the Eagles in 1973. A London, Ohio, native and Ohio State standout, LeBeau holds the NFL record for cornerbacks with 171 consecutive games played. His 62 interceptions in 14 years with the Detroit Lions rank seventh in NFL history.

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LeBeau and Dick Hoak are the only remnants of Cowher's first coaching staff. LeBeau arrived as secondary coach in 1992 and succeeded Dom Capers as coordinator in '95. He left after the '97 season to return to Cincinnati, which is home and where a son was completing high school.

There were reports at the time that he and Cowher did not get along. If so, that has changed, which is also what the two hope to accomplish on defense.

Cowher released linebacker Jason Gildon, the franchise's all-time sack leader and a defensive co-captain, along with cornerback Dewayne Washington and free safety Brent Alexander. Two new safeties, Troy Polamalu and Chris Hope, will start. Clark Haggans, who has started only four games in four years, will take over for Gildon once his broken right hand heals. That injury, though, shows how much experience the Steelers lack. Second-year pro Alonzo Jackson, who played only two games as a rookie, will keep Haggans' seat warm.

"We're going to lack some experience in some areas," LeBeau said, "and we're going to have to acquire that quickly. I think that we will, but until we answer that question I suppose we'll have to take a wait-and-see attitude about it.

"I think if you put us in a 40-yard dash and a vertical jump contest that athletically we'll measure up to NFL standards. How will we measure up as a defense when we start playing in a championship season? We'll have to answer that when it happens."

Although lacking depth, the Steelers have an accomplished trio of linebackers behind a solid line with Joey Porter, James Farrior and Kendrell Bell. It's not quite the mid-1990s version of Kevin Greene, Gildon, Levon Kirkland, Chad Brown and Greg Lloyd that LeBeau previously coached, but not many defenses in the free-agent era have had that type of collection.

"That was a pretty good bunch," said LeBeau, who will have Greene coaching the outside linebackers as a summer intern the first two weeks of camp. "They all got into the Pro Bowl, over 100 sacks, things like that. Those guys played pretty well, didn't they?

"I don't know that any team will have better linebackers than that group was. I will say this, I think we have an excellent core of linebackers here and we have a Pro Bowl player in Joey, and Kendrell's been to the Pro Bowl, and James Farrior is a solid veteran guy. I've always been impressed with the way he plays."

The Steelers maintained their use of the zone blitz after LeBeau left, but there's nothing like having its creator show another generation the paths to the quarterback.

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"He's not running the same 3-4 we always have had," Haggans said at the conclusion of spring drills in June. "He's running a whole lot of defenses. He's one of the pioneers of it. He's added to our package. There's a lot of new material."

Said Smith: "Everybody knows he likes to bring the pressure, which is nice for us. We always want to blitz."

The zone-blitz scheme is simple in its design but not in reads for an offense. Before it appeared, a blitz -- generally five or more players rushing the quarterback -- left defenses vulnerable in pass coverage if the rushers did not strike quickly enough. The zone blitz adds more coverage security. A safety, cornerback or inside linebacker can blitz while a more common rusher -- an outside linebacker or even a defensive lineman -- drops into pass coverage. In its early days, it was strange to watch 325-pound nose tackle Joel Steed drop out of his three-point stance and pedal several steps backward into zone pass coverage over the middle.

All NFL teams use that defense today, but the Steelers used it less often last season in order to beef up their pass coverage. They improved the passing yards against them from 216.3 per game in 2002 to 190.1 last season but at the expense of sacks and turnovers.

"All pressure has to be an element of surprise," LeBeau said, "and if an offense knows it's coming they'll probably pick it up and hurt you somewhere. Hopefully, we use our head a little bit as to when we use it."