Undersized DL are becoming a pretty common theme to college football these days. Over at Inside Texas, Scipio Tex recently broke down how much Texas was getting out of their three-man DL fronts in the dime package they’ve ridden to dominance in the second half of this season.
In that front Texas regularly relies on Breckyn Hager (6-2, 240 or so) and Malcolm Roach (6-2, 270) playing an inside shade technique against defensive tackles and cancelling out B-gaps with quickness and strength. They’ve been able to pull it off, which has made it very difficult to run on Texas’ dime package because of all the speed playing behind them.
At Football Study Hall I just published a bit on Hercules Mata’afa, the middle linebacker-sized DT for Washington State who has led their defense to unprecedented heights for a Mike Leach Air Raid team. At about 6-2, 252 he’s playing nose tackle and 3-technique for the Cougars and he’s DOMINATING opponents, including big and physical teams like Stanford.
Wazzu DC Alex Grinch is going to be a popular name this offseason and could potentially make a jump to the Big 12 next season so checking out how he’s achieved this season’s results may be a worthwhile read for fans of certain Big 12 teams with coaches from the Air Raid tree.