Justin, Paul, and Ian dive into the Texas DL for the coming season. What schemes and personnel can help us stay effective on the interior? Subscribe to Inside Texas to stay locked in with your favorite team every single day https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/
Inside Texas Football
Deep Dive: Increasing DL Aggression in the 2024 Season
And welcome to the deep dive on the Inside Texas football YouTube channel, powered by InsideTexas.com. I'm your host, Justin Wells. And joining me, as always, is Ian Boyd and Paul Waddlington. Today, we're going to talk a little bit of more about on the defensive side. And we're going to ask the question, does PK and those guys have to be more aggressive in 2024? This team was built around that defensive line in the last season, and how they're going to replace those guys to Von Drey Sweatt, Byron Murphy. And we'll also go over strengths of the new D line, weaknesses as well, and kind of touch base a little bit more on what a more aggressive style could look like. And so let's just jump right into it. Ian, you kind of started the conversation with the 46 defense, which instantly made me start to ask about the Chicago Bears and Buddy Ryan. What does Texas and PK going to have to do differently this year, especially on that defensive line? Well, they don't have to Von Drey Sweatt, Byron Murphy, and Jalen Ford anymore. So obviously, it's going to have to look a little bit different. They don't have another 375-pound-- what do you run, like 5'2" in the 40? Pretty good when you weigh 366 or whatever you measured it. They don't have a guy like that. They don't have a guy like Byron Murphy. He ran a 487 at 300 pounds. Those guys are both special, extremely powerful. They could basically just play base defense last year in their base two high coverage. And nobody could run the ball. Alabama, Kansas State, nobody else even really tried. It was hopeless. It was just turn the page of the playbook to something else. And then I had Jalen Ford, too, who was a veteran. It was his third year as a starter. Can you worry to be big, strong, fast? They're all gone. So they can't do what they did last year and expect things to look the same, right? It's just not going to work. So we're going to talk about who they have this year, what they do well, and how they could build something that is effective, maybe not as effective, maybe more effective in some ways than what they did last year with a different cast. OK. And this is interesting to me, because this defense is going to look different. And I think they're going to have strengths at different spots. Paul, let's start with the guys that are coming back. With the guys that they're going to have to rely on the most on that defensive interior. And we'll kick it off with Alfred Collins. Absolutely. So there's going to be seven guys we're going to talk about on that defensive interior. And then we're probably going to highlight a main four, maybe five, that I think we're going to roll with when the bullets start flying. Alfred Collins is one of those guys. He is a guy who's set up to have a big year. However, how they play him will be a big determinant of how big a year that is. Because Alfred Collins does not have Andre Swett, OK? Alfred is very long. He's very quick. He's agile. He doesn't have that power. He doesn't have that ability to line up in a two technique directly over the guard and dominate that guy if he's single block. And if they bring the center, he can hold his ground. You know, to Andre Swett can hold off one guy with an arm and one big paw and the other guy. And he just still drives him back in the backfield, right? Alfred Collins is different. He's not an anchor kind of guy. He's a penetrator movement guy. And you're going to hear that description repeatedly as we go through this personnel, Alfred is probably the best of the group in that regard in totality. Unless there's a guy that emerges and flashes a little bit longer-- later down the list, we're going to talk about, named Mr. Bledson. But Alfred Collins, long, quick, very good basketball player in high school, we've seen him last year be incredibly effective playing on the edge when we wanted to play our jumbo front. He was stuffing offensive tackles. And obviously a tight end against him was a mismatch. But Alfred is going to make his money in the NFL, at least via Quikowski's defense by playing on the interior down by down, right? He's not going to be able to go out on the edge and get mismatches. So what we need to do is change the overall defense as Ian foreshadowed and to a more penetrating defense. Or instead of lining head up on that guard in a two technique, you're going to line up in the one or three. And a three is the outside shoulder of the guard. The one is the inside gap between the center and the guard. And you can line up differently. You can be a little shaded on the center. You can be shaded more to the guard. But the idea is to get up the field. The idea is to attack that gap and not just own and dominate space. And if Pete Quikowski does not make that change towards the strength of this personnel group, it's going to hurt this Texas defense. The next guy we should talk about is Vernon Broughton. Can we say one more thing about Collins? Absolutely. One of the places where he really looks special is when he's looping from one gap to another. Which is normally something that like an edge passer I sure would be really good at. And if your tackle is good at it at all, you might do it to set somebody else up. The Collins will like slant over and look for an open gap, like one or two gaps over. And it's unbelievable how quick he is laterally to find those. And every time he does it, you're like, this guy is unbelievable. - Well, in this point, we did not do that very often. - Right. - And part of the reason that we didn't do that is because you have to practice it to get good at it. Secondly, it makes you a little bit unsound. You can get caught, right? And so at its worst, it looks like an Alex Grinch defense where you've got everyone stoning and looping and someone just runs inside zone and everyone's out of position and you get driven off the ball, right? But if you do it correctly and you practice it, you can be incredibly disruptive at the college level. And that reinforces the larger point of this group of interior defensive tackles is stronger at movement penetration and moving around and using their quickness. And the next guy embodies that and Vernon brought. You guys want to talk about Vernon? - Yeah, listen. Brought into me, he didn't break out last year, but I think it was his first year where he was a viable option. He was a guy that you could count on. He was in the rotation. He was doing what a backup defensive tackle does when you want to get more snaps. I think this year could be big for him going into the next year's draft after watching Sweat and Murphy do what they do. Him and Collins are going to be coveted. How's Vernon going to adjust in this new D-line Ian? - Well, you know, he was the last year was the first year where he wasn't like a liability. And if he was played in a role where he had to like stand his ground and hold space, he's always been pretty athletic. He's been, he's had moments where he was obviously a promising disruptor for probably a couple of years now, but you didn't get to see him that often because if he played and he got like a double team or a run down hill at him, then it was bad. Like the long touchdown run the Washington had in the Alamo Bowl. If you rewatch it, they double team brought in and he's just like unscathed five yards off the line of scrimmage and instant. You just can't have that in the way they were playing. So he's gotten better at that every year. If they played that way again, he would probably be adequate, probably not great, but maybe solid. But as a path rusher and in what Paul's talking about, if you can just shoot a gap or slant, then you see like, I mean, he was like, didn't he play like defensive end in high school, Justin or like? - Yeah, Broaden did, I think it was Cypher's side ridge if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. - Him and Collins both are like, probably their ideal fit would have been as three, four defensive ends. And that's the scheme that they were recruited to come play. - Now they got, there's another guy that's gonna be coming in. We're gonna talk about it real quick. I wanna pay the bills and give a little shout to Andre the lawyer. If you're ever injured and you're in the Dallas area, hell if you're in Texas, give Andre the lawyer a call at 214-444-8808. He helps all injured people, including Longhorns. He's a longtime reader and subscriber inside Texas. He helps injured Longhorns with car wrecks, slipping falls, wrongful deaths, 18-wheeler accidents. Anything, if you ever found yourself in a position, you're stuck, you need help, call Andre the lawyer. He will definitely be the guy you need. 214-444-8808. Paul, the next guy up is Tia Sevea. And that's the big time defensive tackle who is basically Johnny Nansen's child, it seems like. He's followed him to three schools in three years. And so it feels like there's a connection there. And he's already bringing a workman-like intensity to workouts. He's a guy that's trying to get in the rotation early. What's his skills and what exactly is he going to do in this defensive line this year? So it's funny, a lot of people operate off of stereotypes. I was laughing when I was watching the part of the NFL Combine where they were talking about Spencer Rattler. And they were saying, just, you know, he ran 4-9-5. This is very surprising. It's like, well, you've never watched college football because all of us knew that about Spencer Rattler. But the assumption was if you're an undersized black quarterback, you must run a 4-6 at minimum, right? The assumption with a Polynesian defensive tackle is that you're a massive 340-pound space eater. And that is not what Sevea is. Sevea's the movement guy. He's actually pretty agile. He's good on the move. He's not weak or anything like that. Now, that said, he's not super powerful in pushing the pocket. He doesn't have a lot of success as a pass rusher. But as a run defender, he could be very useful moving around. And you saw him-- Arizona was one of these teams I sort of adopted as a pet team that I just grew to like the team over the course of the year. So I watched him more. And you saw Sevea at the end of the year get really good at movement at the line of scrimmage to disrupt the run game, running little stunts and slants. And Arizona's defense was as complex as any defense I watched last year other than Michigan's. And they did a good job with it because they didn't have a ton of talent. And I think Sevea's baseline talent level, to be honest, is super high. But what he does, he does pretty well. And it complements what these other guys do well. Movement, quickness, penetration, and coordinating, that kind of stuff is going to be crucial. And then we got a guy coming up that we're going to discuss that I think we all are very interested to see his debut, more or less. And that's a guy named Jare Bledsoe. And I know we've talked about him many times. He's turning a lot of heads in the offseason. What does Mr. Bledsoe bring? And is it different from Collins-Broughton, et cetera? Or is it complementary to them? I think it's both. I think Bledsoe could probably do just about anything because his natural power is so great. And he's such a-- It's so aggressive. Yeah, is it a dog, as we were talking about the other week? And so I think we've mentioned this in a previous deep dive that he's only like 290 pounds, but he's like Levi Oenzeriki at Washington. He could probably play nose. He could two gap a little bit. That wouldn't be the best way to use him. But he could probably do it just because he has the length and the power to get away with anything. But for sure, someone with his get off in athleticism, you'd like to get him in the backfield. And now just have him holding the point. And also understand what Bledsoe, he's young. He's one of the young ones of this group. And he's taken a little bit of time to develop. He was a guy that he wasn't expected to come in and play immediately. They're letting him bake in the oven, which I think you're going to be able to see that. You're going to be able to see that this fall, how well he's going to be. What do you think-- we'll finish off with him, and then we'll go to the next one, Paul. What do you think that the ceiling is going to be for Bledsoe this year, where he's finally going to be depending on for some snaps? I think it's really high. I think he's going to be one of the main four guys in the rotation. And so the question is, is he an impact player who plays 30 snaps a game? Or does he become a guy that becomes sort of indispensable and you don't want him off the field? Now the interesting thing about both sweat and Murphy-- these are the two best offensive tackles in the NFL draft. And those guys play often 40 snaps a game. Sometimes not even that. I can't tell you how many times I recorded 27 in 31 snaps. Yeah. Let's go. So is that going to continue? Are they going to distribute these snaps amongst four or five interior guys? I suspect they will. But I think Gere Bledsoe is going to be one A on that by the end of the year, even though he might start off one B as he gets his feet wet and learns the drill. And to Ian's point, just to cap off on Gere, I think he can do everything. I think it'd be a real shame to take a guy that explosive and that quick off the ball and not let him attack up the field and embarrass, frankly, inferior athletes lined up a crossword. Yeah, Bledsoe has so much of the upside. Maybe as much potential as anyone on this line. Aaron Bryant might be on the other side of the spectrum. Solid guy, been in the program a couple of years. Ian, what are you guys, and Paul, what are you guys expecting from Bryant this year? Is he a guy that's going to try to crack the rotation? Or is he going to get lost in the weeds behind a severe Mitchell, an Alex January, and a Melvin Hills? OK, it just depends on the style they want to play. If they want to have at least one rock wall space eater guy that can eat blocks on the field at all times, then he'll end up having a role. Because I think he's pretty solid. He is, what, three years of Bo Davis teaching now under his belt? Yeah. Or two and a half, because he left-- He's going into this third year. Right. So he knows how-- he understands leverage at this point. I thought he was kind of promising in that guard already last spring, and then he didn't even really play that much. So if they need a guy that can just do what Coburn did for them a couple of years ago, I think Bryant could be-- he's not going to be as good as Coburn. But he could be like a decent facsimile. So it's possible that he would be in the rotation. It's one of the-- it's like one of four or five main guys. But just depends on whether or not just what they want to do scheme-wise, if they're how insistent they are in having that kind of guy in the field. I think his big battle for playing time is with Civea and to a lesser extent Vernon Broughton. And then there is potential for another guy who could be an anchor of all anchors. But we don't know where he is on the developmental spectrum. That's big Seder Mitchell. So one of the things that I love about Byron Murphy is he can play really powerfully, really low. And that's because he's six feet tall. But also, he can play like a Malcolm Brown, who is a favorite of mine. He should go off to defensive top and bread him. His pad level was like 12 inches off the freaking football field. I mean, I'm exaggerating. And he's still generating power out of that fire out, right? Collins, Broughton, these guys played with higher pad levels. Tobondre Sweat played with the high pad level. But he was so powerful and strong. It didn't matter. There was a plague, it's Oklahoma State. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it or anyone noticed. But it was a short yardage. They ran hurry up. And Tobondre Sweat didn't get down into his stance. He was standing looking at the snap of the ball. They double teamed him. He stuffed both guys. And they lost a yard. So any other football player in the world gets driven back 11 yards, right? And gets put on his back. And Sweat was just like, I don't need to need a stance. Seder Mitchell makes me think he has that potential. What does he need to do to crack the field in 2024? Or is he a 2025 guy that we need to put in the ice box? He may be one of those guys that he needs to see the draft in his near range future to really maximize. Like it was remarkable how much better condition Sweat was this year than last year, right? He made a concerted effort for that in the off season. He made Christian Jones. I don't know if Mitchell has been old and wise enough to put that kind of effort in. So he's probably going to be like, he might be close to what 2022 Sweat this year or next. But I don't know if we're going to see 2023 Sweat from Seder until 2026 or whatever. Seder is a-- he's still a big kid. I think he needs another year of maturity. Not that he's immature, you've got to develop. You've got to grow into it. You made a great point. He needs to see the draft. He needs to see guys potentially passing him on the depth chart. And after spring ball, we know Texas is probably going to add another defensive lineman from the portal. That's only going to push him more. Because if Bledso has the most upside, Seder is the biggest upside. I mean, he is a mountain. And that's a guy that people would absolutely love. And we're going to finish it off with Zach Swanson. Now, tell me something about Zach, because I don't remember-- I remember the tape at Bayside, and he was good. But I just never-- I didn't know if he was actually a Texas take. And for years, we thought, well, he might portal. This guy has stuck around, Paul. What's he going to be able to add? Yeah, he's stuck around. He's the seventh guy in the Sintugero defensive line. And like Ian mentioned earlier, he might be a guy down the road once he puts on better weight. It would be a 3-4 defensive end, maybe. Because I don't think he's a true edge in what Texas is looking for. And frankly, the edge room is too full right now. There ain't no room for him. There may not be room for him here. But one thing I did notice about Zach Swanson in the spring game, he's got good get-off. He's actually very-- he's got good quickness. He uses his hands well. And he's a pretty good penetrator. Now, we already have a lot of that in this interior defensive tackle room. So that doesn't distinguish him, right? So I think he's going to really be in a struggle to find pass rushing downs, rundowns, I mean any downs at all, because of the depth. And the fact that he's not that different from the other guys and the other guys do it better, right, in bigger bodies. So if I were Zach Swanson, I would seriously consider really attacking the dining hall and the weight room. Because I'd be very interested to see what he could be and what he could look like at 295. He's just not going to crack the lineup playing in the 265, 270, even as a change up guy. Because as I said, there's other bodies that are bigger and quicker ahead of him. He has to find a way to distinguish himself. And sometimes guys find their athleticism, right? Sometimes guys get faster and quicker as they get bigger. And people don't think you can do that. But in fact, it happens all the time. The entire Watt family is proof of that, right? Did you see that guy Brayden Fisk at Florida State? Yes. He was like a six-year-old senior, I think, at Florida State. And it took him like five years at one of the directional Michigan schools to add the weight and skill and power to play defensive tackle effectively. And then he was really good. And his fifth year at Central or Western Michigan. And then he came in the portal to Florida State and was a terrific defensive tackle for them last year. I don't know what all the different parts of his developmental journey looked like. But that'd be like a very good cop for what you're describing, for what Swanson could be. Whereas five or six years of lifting and training before he came out of the-- In football in general, if you're a little bit of a tweener, don't mess with the mister in between. Make a declaration. Like so, Zach Swanson needs to go try to be 245 and really harness that quickness and go try to be an edge guy, maybe a Texas or elsewhere. Or he needs to make the commitment to eating so much food that it hurts and lifting so many weights that he gets tired of it. And I don't mean standing on a Bosu ball and doing curls and plyometrics. I mean, go get under a squat bar, put on so many wheels, it looks like you've got an 18-wheeler and grind it out and see what you can do. But if you try to stay in that in-between ground, you're not going to be able to play edge, you're not going to be able to play inside. So that's just a general rule for football. The last thing I want to finish up, and this is kind of what we had opened up about, this defense is going to have to have a more aggressive style. And as soon as Ian started talking about the 46, Paul and I, we felt our age. 'Cause I remember that 85 Bears team, I remember that Super Bowl. It started making me think, hey, I would love that defensive line. I'd love those linebackers from that. And even Ian knew why they called it a 46. Why is this more aggressive style? Why do you think this could be possible? Why do you think PK is going to go to this? Is it just because of the bodies missing, Murphy missing sweat? Or is this just the next step in this defense? - It'd be more suited to the style, to the personnel that have. So we're talking about 46 defense. We're talking about teams playing a bear front, which means you have five guys in the Linus Kirmich over five offensive linemen. And then if it's a bread formation, so there's three receivers, and your 46 only has one linebacker behind them. So it's obviously geared towards aggressiveness, right? Five guys up front and then just one guy behind them and then whatever you do with the safeties. The obvious like risk benefit analysis is if you have five guys up front, everybody gets one-on-one matchup. All the protection calls don't know where to send help. So if you loop guys and move and slant after the snap, you can really cause problems and confuse people. And it really actually, it seems like you're all about stuff in big bodies near the trenches, but it's actually really well suited towards having a lighter, faster defensive front. 'Cause you're gonna be movement oriented. You're gonna get one-on-one matchups so you don't need anyone to eat a double team. And Pikwikowski has done this some. He's actually done it a little bit at Texas. If you watch him right now, and then you'll see like Anthony Hill or Jalen Ford, will line up as an edge and one of the edges will slide inside. They would do it sporadically for the last couple of years. He did it a lot at Washington in one year in particular in 2019 when he didn't have Vida Vay or Greg Gaines or Elijah Qualls or these other massive space eaters. He had like a 290-pound walk on. He had Umzerike and some other guys. So it's actually a pretty good fit for this personnel. It would really open up a lot of things. There's some fun personnel things that could do with it too, but I'd love to hear Paul chime in on just the idea first before I get into that. Yeah, I mean, look, I do think the biggest mistake we could make with this front is to play them in a very traditional way and say we're gonna set up our linebackers and we're gonna try to get doubled. And I don't think we're gonna maximize the defense running that defense. So I think Pete has opened it up in the past, but we've also seen him be stubborn with some of the two gapping principles. So I think it's crucial that he unleashed some of these guys. The other part is this affects your linebacker selection. If you play your defensive line, particularly your interior defensive line up the field, that means that blockers are going to leak out on your linebackers and you need to have linebackers who can handle that and they need to be instinctive because every now and then you're gonna loop it wrong, you're gonna guess wrong, you're gonna get a guy's momentum, a guy's gonna get trapped effectively, right? Sprinting up the field is gonna get trapped or displaced. And then you gotta have a guy who can fill that space physically, but also be there. So it's no coincidence that part of the 46 magic, if you wanna go back old school to the 85 Bears, was Mike Singletary, who was the most reliable middle linebacker of his era. I mean, an amazing diagnostician and he was undersized, but he brought it when he got there. And so I think that's something that we have to look at, whether it's Black Shear providing big physicality inside in case blockers leak out, or we think that Lefal is just deft and reads and gets there quick and causes that disruption because the downside of playing in that style is you can get gashed a little bit by the run game. You'll inflict negatives, but sometimes when you mess up, you need a linebacker or a very reliably tackling safety to make sure it's a nine yard game instead of a 49 yard game. - So this style works better if you play with one deep safety and then drop the other guy in the box is like a pseudo linebacker. So that would, the choice of the safety that would drop down would be pretty big in this to clean it up. Like is that Michael Tath? 'Cause he's just reliable and he's a, or do you need like Derek Williams to make a leap to be that guy or? - I think it's Williams. - Who else? I mean, it's not Makuba, right? Makubas can bring many things, but that's not really, that's not gonna be it. So here's two ways that could go with this. They could mix this in as a situation that could just mix it in periodically and have Anthony Hill walk down to the edge and bump the bigger edge inside. So if it's like Baron Sorrell, but you can play it inside a little bit from time to time, walk Anthony Hill on the edge. And then whoever that sole linebacker is to Eric's, to Paul's point needs to be very reliable. Probably big and strong enough to take on blockers and then also just consistently on it. So is that Blackshire? Is he up for that? Does he need to be bended? And you just hope that he's really good at avoiding blockers. But here's the other direction they could go with it. They could play with only one linebacker, true inside linebacker and either slide an edge inside or put in a Swanson or a Juman tap or just get more of your disruptors on the field. And you could go tray more on one side, Ethan Burke on one side. And then inside you could have like Collins, Broughton. - What so? - Yeah. And then Anthony Hill is the only linebacker behind it. So if you do that, you're committed to the package, right? It's not something you just throw in every now and then like the can from the other set. But Pete Kwikowski did that some against Oregon in 2019 when they were having trouble with the Krista Balls big line and really had some good results from it. And you think about it, if they could get away with it, it's safety and a linebacker. Getting all those guys up front on the field together, getting like more Burke or Simmons and then like three gap taking interior defensive linemen, you're gonna overwhelm some people if you can get it right. - And I'm hearing this and I'm wondering what the secondary is gonna look like with this construction, how things would fire off. But that's something for another episode. We're gonna put a pin in this one and come back to it because there's a lot to that as well. Be sure and like and subscribe the Inside Texas Football YouTube channel and please come see us at InsideTexas.com. We have a special for only a dollar for each month. It really isn't a better time. March is kicking off. We've got a ton of team info going up, a lot of stuff from Ian, a lot of stuff from Paul, from Joe, from Eric, from the crew and a lot of recruiting. We got multiple, multiple visit updates popping up on InsideTexas.com. So you gotta check it out. Any parting shots, Mr. Paul or Mr. Ian? - None. I think this will be super interesting and I think a lot of the upside of the 2024 long-term defense will be how we deploy these guys. - Yep. - So Paul's basically saying that Anthony Hill is gonna be the next Mike Singletary and I'm on board with that. I think they're both from Texas. So I'm digging it. Thank you so much for watching this Vans. Thank you so much for making us a part of your day and please tune into the Inside Texas Football YouTube channel powered by InsideTexas.com.