South Florida may not have had the worst defense in the country last year, but it was close to it. Some numbers: The Bulls ranked 118th out of 133 teams in total defense. They were 100th out of 133 teams in scoring defense, 127th out of 133 in pass defense and 81st out of 133 in rushing defense.
If the Bulls are going to get where they want to go this year, which ideally would be the College Football Playoffs or, more realistically, their first ever AAC championship, then the defense has to make major improvement.
The question is whether or not it will be able to do that. Going into the new season, there are a lot of returning pieces and some new additions from the transfer portal as well, and Todd Orlando, the team’s defensive coordinator, is counting on being able to blend them all together to make a more formidable unit.
When you look at USF’s defense and break it down, a number of things stand out. The secondary is experienced. Tavon Ward made 13 starts at one safety spot. DeShawn Rucker had 11 starts at cornerback and Brent Austin started all 13 games at the other.
There are two all-conference type linebackers in Mac Harris, who started all 13 games, and Jalen Shuler, who started 10 games and did not play in the other three. The linebackers are easily the strength of this defense.
But it’s what’s up front the counts, and frankly, the Bulls didn’t have much up front last year and don’t look like they’ll be a lot better this year. And if there isn’t drastic improvement at the line of scrimmage, the whole defense has a problem.
This is especially true for South Florida because the offense plays at such a fast pace. Last year, the Bulls ranked 46th in the country on offense and 33rd in scoring, averaging 32.2 points per game. That’s extremely impressive when you consider USF lost its starting quarterback, Byrum Brown, about halfway through the season.
Normally, when an offense plays that well it means the defense is not on the field very much and stays strong throughout the game. But that wasn’t true for USF. Because the offense averaged 74.8 plays per game, eighth highest in the country, South Florida’s defense was on the field almost constantly.
So, while the offense scored a lot of points, it didn’t take very long to do it and that meant that the defense barely had a chance to sit down before it was back on the field again. In fact, USF’s time of possession ranked an astounding 133rd out of 133 teams, the worst in college football.
This made it particularly hard on the defensive line. The offensive and defensive lines have the toughest job on the team. They are the only position groups that engage in strenuous physical activity on every play.
On defense, linebackers and defensive backs get a break but the linemen never do. And if they don’t overpower the guy in front of them, if they don’t disrupt the offense more than the offense contains them, then their team will likely lose.
Because line play is so physically demanding, good teams rotate players in and out frequently. And when you have a team that plays as fast as USF, that becomes increasingly important because the defense is on the field so much. And last year, USF wasn’t good enough to win with its starters up front let alone its backups, and that problem must be fixed this year or the Bulls will be in trouble again.
The defensive line lost an 11 game starter at end and a 10 game starter at nose although how much that will hurt is debatable. The top returning lineman is tackle Bernard Gooden, who made 11 starts last year.
Gooden had 10 tackles for a loss and two fumble recoveries among other things and is a solid player and the one known commodity up front. But he can’t do this by himself and Orlando knows he has a big job to bring this defense up to a truly competitive level.
To help Gooden and the other returnees, USF brought in three defensive linemen to plug the gaps, Winter Haven high grad Josh Celliscar came over from Texas A&M. He spent most of his career at UCF and got less playing time every year. He didn’t play at Texas A&M. Dre Butler (Charlotte) and Jacob Merrifield (Florid Atlantic) are the other two.
Butler was at Auburn, Liberty and Michigan State before winding up at Charlotte where he made six starts with five tackles for a loss. Merrifield never started at FAU and only played in seven games. What’s worse, Butler wasn’t good enough to be a regular on a Charlotte team that ranked 116th in the country and Merrifield couldn’t start for an FAU team that ranked 111th, so how much they’ll improve the defensive line is questionable.
But good or bad, they’re going to have to play. “You’ve got to roll those guys in because eventually guys are going to get tired,” Orlando said. “So, if you run 70 plays, even the backups will need to go for 30, 35 plays sometime.”
Still, Orlando thinks the newcomers are up to it. “We feel like we’ve got much more depth than we’ve ever had,” he said. “Especially up front.” We’ll see.
