An Overview of UF Defense

I don’t know much but I do know by game 3 or 4 Ben Hanks will be starting at corner. He’s going to be extremely special.

 

I've been waiting for this. Good read.
I see Hayward as a Gates clone.

 

Good report. Not expecting our True FR to help early and hopefully they do not have to. But without the True FR, do we have the depth?

 

Nobody does anymore.

 

Might as well play them, even if it's on special teams. No one stays 4 years anymore. No reason to develop them for another team.

 

C…excellent.
I know we have been traumatized by our lack of defensive consistency, especially in defensive secondaries for over a decade..but..when things are more balanced, as we have seen by more successful football programs..sometimes early entries in the secondary had IMMEDIATE impacts. Freshman cornerbacks especially. Experience is always welcomed but NOT an absolute necessity. For us, sadly, those truths are stuff of legends, for we have not seen that in our illustrious program for a while.
Wide receivers can also have serious impacts as freshmen, as well.
Regarding our defensive line possibilities, we do have some good youngsters. Jc transfer Brown, arriving here at 290+, could contribute as a solid 300# tackle. Spring will give us insight. Boireau at 350+ will be a sophomore and his contributions as a freshman showed he has promise. Shiver, a signee, is enormous at 364, and if he can avoid the DEZ complex, and stabilize at 360 or perhaps 350 also, as did Boireau, we have something very good there.
Linebackers are young, but finally we have true promise with our six youngsters. Chiles is a physical freak. Robinson is a find. He will show out.
Keep the conversations going please. Well done.
Stevo

 

It also seems we have improved our defensive staff a bunch, stabilized it, and several key members in their 2nd year should notch it up. Solid hires who will allow Roberts to elevate to the head coach of the defense as intended.

 

Worried about stopping the run. Will young interior DTs step up? Will Lyons come back strong? Can we replace Jack in run support now that he is at LSU? CB and Safety play should be improved experiences if we can replace Bridges who played great. LB has some great athletes but replacing a good one

 

I truly feel like Ron Roberts in his oversight role has opened up the opportunity to continue to get better on defense. I don't think it's a coincidence that we almost immediately started having better defensive games as soon as he took the reins back and moved up to the press box.

 

I believe the Eagles were playing two rookie CBs last night, FWIW.

 

I'm more concerned about freshman playing extended snaps at Safety (the so-called qb of the secondary) as a true freshmen than CB. Our S play over the past several years has been poor much of the time. I am still hopeful that McClain or someone else will resolve the depth at cb issue. The other big question is backup at Nickel. We missed on most of our top choices at cb so Im unsold on Carraway as opposed to Maddox. Think we are in better shape at Jack than it seems right now (using a combination of bigger Jacks like Taylor and smaller lbs like Chiles or Pup depending on situation and matchups). While there may be some drop off at DT I like the options and feel overall line may be better.

 

So did the Falcons in 2017 - well, rookie DBs

Keanu Neal
Brian Poole

 

I hope it won't be too long until we begin comparing one of our freshmen Safeties (Stubbs or Hayward) to Keanu Neal. That guy was a beast!

 

Looks like he really needs a great offseason in the training room as much as anything.

 

Getting Konanbanny and Caraway completed the CB/DB room. Thinking Johnson, Denson and Foster is the first team at CB/star on day one of spring practice. Moore, McClain and Caraway have more top end talent. They'll be looking to take those 1st team spots. Hanks is the Fr. wild card... I really like this group.

I think the defense just needs one more experienced NT type to have a complete defesnive roster. It's more for depth than a hole that needs to be filled. Last year they had a starter lost for the year in fall camp and seemed to have one or two DTs hurt on a week to week basis. If that scenario repeated itself in 2025 it would be a big problem for the current DTs. Adding a quality SEC type NT in the spring, a guy who can play 20-25 snaps a game, would go a long way to alleviate that potential problem.