Michigan State’s defense has been working towards improving in every possible aspect this off-season. In its attempt to revamp, they’ve worked to enhance communication between different position groups and create accountability.
If the team hopes to meet their goals this season, it’s no secret that the defensive area that needs to see the most improvement is the secondary. To help make this a reality, the corners and safeties have been meeting together for all off-the-field meetings, a change from last season.
Junior linebacker Darius Snow spoke to how these joint meetings have helped everyone attain a “unison amount of knowledge.”
“I think that when you have guys meeting together you can hold each other accountable, because if one guy doesn’t know something and everybody else does, you can hold him accountable because he should know it as well,” Snow said.
This change isn’t isolated to just the secondary, the defensive line has also benefited this off-season from combined position group meetings. Defensive tackles Simeon Barrow and Maverick Hansen both believe being in meetings with the defensive ends has allowed the defensive line to work out some kinks.
“We talk about it all the time, like why haven’t we did this before because we had a lot of confusion and a lot of conflicts going on between the D-tackles and the D-ends because we wasn’t in the same room knowing what we were both doing,” Barrow said.
Hansen not only echoed Barrow’s statement, but also agreed with Snow that the meetings have allowed for more accountability.
“I think that having the D-line together allows for more communication,” Hansen said. “We kind of know what everyone’s supposed to do, so we can all hold each other accountable. I think it’s a good thing. I think that the D-tackles and D-ends should be together because it’s one unit and we all work together.”
It’s not just the position groups that will need to work together to muster some defensive improvement this season, both the secondary and the defensive line must be a united front.
“We work together,” defensive line coach Marco Coleman said. “The secondary, we got pretty good guys back there. They work in tandem. It’s not one or the other. We got to have both and I think that we’ve shown throughout the summer it’s pretty well coordinated.”
Defensive chemistry and confidence seems to be at a higher level than last season, and internal communication changes appear to have been playing a factor.
“It’s (the communication) louder and when it’s louder that means people are more confident in what they’re saying, so I think that’s a combination of guys really knowing what they’re supposed to do, and just us being more confident as a group,” Snow said.
The defense will look to bring this confidence to the field when they take on the Western Michigan Broncos to open the season this Friday at 7 p.m.
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