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Ask Texas State’s defensive players and they’ll tell you, nothing has been accomplished yet.
Sure, the Bobcat defense took great strides in 2018, improving from No. 102 in total defense in 2017 to No. 53 last season. But Texas State only won three games. Now enter first-year head coach Jake Spavital and his defensive coordinator Zac Spavital, looking to ensure the “new era” of Bobcat football features a top-rated defense.
“They're naturally going to be a very promoted defense just based off of all the guys that come back,” Jake Spavital said at Texas State’s media day on Sunday. “I'm telling you, I was looking at the depth chart, there's so many guys that have played football on that defense, you know.
“But the thing is, I think we're fifth in the conference last year, we still got a ton of room for improvement, you know, and that's what we got to keep talking about. Yeah, they made great strides from where they've been but they could be better.”
Texas State’s defense did finish 2018 ranked No. 5 in the Sun Belt in total defense, allowing nearly 384 yards per game. The Bobcats held opponents to 182.4 rushing yards per game, while giving up 201.6 through the air per game — ranking No. 4 and No. 3 in the conference, respectively.
The Bobcats believe they can build off their much-improved defensive season in 2018, but it’ll take constantly working to see the kind of growth they want in 2019.
“We just got to come to work every day and do our job,” senior linebacker Frankie Griffin said. “Just do our job, execute, take care of our bodies, and be the best we can be.”
Texas State’s linebackers have received much of the attention on defense during the offseason, and rightfully so with eight seniors and familiar names like Bryan London II and Nik Daniels, who were named to All-Sun Belt preseason teams this offseason, along with Griffin. But the defense knows it’ll take everyone contributing to be more successful.
“When everybody's doing their job, everybody's doing their one-eleventh, that's when we’re strong,” junior defensive tackle Caeveon Patton said. “Up front, we can do our job but if the back end isn’t doing their job and we're doing our job, we're not together. We're stronger together.”
Although Texas State has a plethora of experience on defense, Zac Spavital says there’s no room for freelancing in his defense. Everybody has to do their specific job.
“You can’t freelance on defense,” Zac Spavital said. “So now, instinctively, we try to put our linebackers in positions where they can flow. So they can play a little bit more. But there's no freelancing, they have a job to do every snap and that's been the biggest emphasis these last four days is execution because the biggest, most glaring thing from their defense last year was the consistency of the defense called. They would call the same defense to the same (offensive) play, maybe three times that game and then on the third time they called it, a mistake would happen, somebody wasn't on the same page, big play (for the other team).”
With strides still left to make, Texas State knows it can’t rest on last season’s laurels. There’s no time to be satisfied with fifth-best in the Sun Belt.
“We haven't done anything yet,” Patton said. “You know, as a defense, yeah we made a couple plays (last season). We got Nik Daniels and Bryan London at the top of the charts in the Sun Belt, you know. But as a team we haven't done anything yet. You want that team success. You want to win, you know? And when we start winning games, that's when we’ll know we're doing something.”
