The CheckerBoard

Good grief, Wes. Stop writing these awesome, in-depth articles. It is adversely affecting my level of patient care.

Personally, I will not be concerned if we play a 4-3 or a 3-4. Defense last year was not the issue for the most part and we lose only Malik and Johnson while adding a bunch of big players, figuratively and literally.

Also, I am still waiting to see an agressive, attacking, blitzing defense that Wilcox was supposed to bring.

2011 did it's job, and did well enough to win more than 5 games. I agree with both points Wes made: UT's D did not get gashed up the middle as it did in 2010, but faster teams like Florida, LSU & Bama ran around us with impunity. Dooley seems to have gone out of his way to recruit speed, which is good, but most of it seems to have been on offensive skill positions rather than DE or DB. Who of our DE's or LB's has great speed other than Maggitt?

DL looks stout, talented, experienced and like it has some depth -- something we haven't seen since... when? 07? Earlier? I don't think Kiffin or Dooley's previous teams were nearly this well off.

Problem is the future: there are 6 Jr's on this list. My concern is it'll take 2 years to master Sunseri's D, and by then, all the guys who know it best are going to be graduating. We need some younger defensive linemen -- unless we want to be holding our breaths on landing the JUCO's we need every year. Very glad we signed O'Brien, but we need more like him in upcoming recruiting classes. (Many more.)