He's credited with creating one of the most complex and unconventional defenses in football, but when McMurry defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn discusses the 3-3-5 defense, birthed in 1991 for a single-game plan, he says it's simple: tackle.

“If you've got a bunch of people that can't tackle, you're not going to stop anybody anyway,” said Dunn. “It's not me, or a scheme, or how you line up; it's the players, and if you can't tackle it doesn't make any difference what you run.”

And while the only ingredient to a defense may be players that can tackle according to Dunn, it's hard to argue with what he's accomplished with the 3-3-5, blitz-heavy scheme.

Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) was preparing to face the University of Southern California in 1991. The Trojans were ranked No.14 in the nation coming into the game and had an offensive personnel on the line that Dunn feared would dominate the Tigers' undersized line.

“We were a small Division I school. We were able to be very competitive and had some great linebackers and defensive backs, but defensive lineman were hard to find, and we couldn't compete in the recruiting game with larger schools like USC for the big boys down front.”

As it was, Dunn's Tigers ran a 5-down defensive linemen set with three linebackers, two corners and a free safety.

“I though the only way we could compete was to drop our defense ends back off the line. The guys we had down there were agile enough to play in the secondary anyway,” he said.

Thus, the 3-3-5 defense saw its first action in college football Sept. 2, 1991 at the Los Angeles Coliseum where the Memphis State Tigers downed the national powerhouse 24-10 in a game that is still considered by Memphis as one of the biggest wins in school history.

However, Dunn's new and innovative alignment did not immediately become a main stay. In fact, Dunn said that he didn't use it again for five years.

“I went back to the 5-3,” he said. “We used it because we just didn't have the personnel against USC, but we didn't play that caliber of team every week and I preferred the 5-3.”

However, when Dunn took over as defensive coordinator at Mississippi State, a Southeastern Conference school, in 1996, he found himself in a familiar position.

“I was there for seven years, and there were a couple of seasons where we had the linebackers and secondary, but we were short on talent at the defensive line,” he said.

Dunn dusted off the scheme and implemented it as his base defense for the Bulldogs and coached the nation's No. 1 defense in 1999 and helped MSU to back-to-back bowl wins in 1999 and 2000. By the end of his tenure in 2002, the defensive scheme had caught fire and coaches from around the country at every level wanted a piece of it.

“You can't imagine how many phone calls I got from coaches wanting me to help them utilize it,” he said. “It's really become a mainstay at the high school level. I still have visitors who call and want to know how and whether they should put it in.”

If you ask Dunn who he thinks has run the 3-3-5 the best outside of his own tutelage, he'll give you a shrug.

“I'm pretty old, I don't really think about all that,” Dunn said. “I always just try now to get better at what we are doing.”

While Dunn doesn't concern himself with other coaches who are running his system, several big college football programs still run it including West Virginia and Wake Forrest. In fact, last season in McMurry's first season under head coach Hal Mumme and the defensive schemes of Dunn, Mississippi College used the 3-3-5 defense and stunned McMurry with a 61-14 beating at home.

Despite the Choctaws victory last season, McMurry still improved from the No. 9 passing defense in the American Southwest Conference in 2008, to the No. 2 pass defense in 2009 under Dunn. And so far in 2010, McMurry has held opponents to just 276 yards of total offense in two games thus far including the team's first shutout Saturday since the 2006 season.

Dunn hired Barris Grant and Kendall Roberson to join Mumme's staff at New Mexico State when all three men made the move to Las Cruces in 2008. After Mumme's departure, he brought his staff to McMurry, and Dunn said that his former MSU players in Grant and Roberson have been a huge help for McMurry's defense.

“They haven't been separated from it that long,” Dunn said of them coaching the scheme. “They do a good job of coaching and recruiting, and no matter what scheme you're running you have to be able to recruit and coach to win; those guys can do it.”

Dunn's goals for McMurry are to become a defensive unit that others fear to play rather than vice versa.

“We've got to get out of that kind of performance, we can't be a program that gives up 60 points anymore,” he said. “I want McMurry to become a defense that the offense is going to worry about having to play us. I feel confident we are going to get to a place and time where they don't want to play McMurry. If we keep up the recruiting and get people who can tackle, we will.”