Very excited about how the defensive pieces can fit together

by Mike (bart), Thursday, April 16, 2026, 09:04 (3 days ago)

I tend to look at defensive structures back-to-front. The pieces in the secondary aren't just good, they fit together really, really well.

1. You've got a true star at corner in Moore.

2. You've got a strong safety in Shuler who excels at generating havoc downhill/behind the line. He's a decent enough cover guy on the back end as well.

3. Super rangy and athletic free safety

4. Super aggressive playmaker in Gray with some susceptibility to get beat deep.

5. Experience and athleticism at corner with Sanders, McKinney, Golden, Zackery

6. Kind of a mutant guy in Talich

Shuler and Moore to the same side can be a really deadly combination. Shuler will be able to put his feet at 10 yards and unless there's an inside vertical route coming at him right away (which he'd then have to run with) he'll be free to raise hell since Moore isn't going to need any help over the top. With Johnson over the top you'll be able to play the nickel and non-Moore corner as aggressively as you'd want and that's where a guy like Gray excels in particular.

Getting Shuler in that kind of easy trigger situation changes everything up front. You can be much more aggressive with your linebackers penetrating because you will have a free hitter coming downhill in Shuler to clean up whatever gets through. I like the ability of Bryce Young and Traore to set the edge, I like the chances of a guy like Gray being able to eat double teams, and I like the odds of a guy like Brewu winning against single blocking.

Part of what killed us early on last year was we had vicious defecits at the back end. Stroman couldn't provide deep support (and when he tried to it was disastrous) so that put Shuler in the Johnson role, which was a misutilization of him. Hobbs was playing nickel with a low amount of confidence, and the pairing of Hobbs in coverage with Stroman supporting pretty much ruined the Texas A&M game. You could see Ash figuring things out in real time during that game when he finally was able to get Johnson in there and get Shuler into his more apt role as an attacking safety. Unfortunately, Shuler got ejected for targeting and it was back to square one.

With the way the secondary is setting up now, though, it's almost like we get to play with 12 guys as it will be really hard to force Shuler into pure pass coverage iwth anything but a vertical route right at him. If we can cover 4 verts we are gonna be pretty nasty against both the pass and the run