Our defense is pretty good, but nothing special. We're really young, so we're a lot less aggressive than a normal Greg Mattison defense. Jake Ryan is only playing his 5th game after blowing his ACL in the spring, so with him not at 100% we don't really have any stars you have to gameplan around/account for. We also don't really have any glaring weaknesses, for the most part.
We rotate a ton of guys, most of them underclassmen. We rotate through 9 DL's, 5 different CB's, 5/6 LB's and 4 safeties each game. As far as "starters" go, our 2 corners are pretty good, but are always going for the INT which has been boom or bust. Countess is the most consistent. Frank Clark is a pretty good DE, but struggles when teams run at him. Our LB's are good against the run, but are normally exploited in the passing game, now that Ryan isn't at full speed. We have two solid yet unremarkable safeties that play as a unit, but since the Nebraska game Mattison has been playing the "other" unit for the majority of the snaps. Nobody can understand why as the "other" unit has been horrible, hopefully they find their way back to the bench for the bowl game.
Overall, our D has struggled against HUNH offenses the most (Indiana,OSU). In a few others they seemed to wear down late in games when the O stalls out (over and over)and the D's on the field for long stretches.
