He looked like a fish out of water at DT

The coaching staff has tried to redshirt the junior, giving him two more years to play. He could be Gilmore's replacement at the strong side DE. At 6-3 and 288 lbs with a good history of getting to the QB (8.5 sacks in his last JUCO year), he is a nice prospect.For most of the season, Junior Shavod Atkinson was the main constant on the defensive line. He played well vs. the run and at times showed top level talent as a power rusher. If he improves his conditioning in the offseason and works on his pass rushing techniques, he could take his game up to an NFL-prospect level.Junior Kelvin Jackson may actually be more talented than Atkinson. He was on and off the field due to injuries and uneven play.

He too was generally solid against the run, but carried about 10 lbs of excess weight. He also has some stamina issues. It would have been ideal if the coaching staff could have played both Atkinson and Jackson together all season long. They really played well together, but with their conditioning, it was just not possible. The staff apparently made the decision to try to always have one of them on the field to anchor the line. Jackson seems less compact and explosive than Atkinson but flashed much better pass rush potential, flashing some speed and quickness. I really like Jackson a lot, but he has to have the same kind of offseason as Atkinson to really reach his potential.Redshirt Junior Draylen Ross looks like an NFL DE but was pretty marginal playing DT. At best, he played like a fourth DT on a Sun Belt team. He is a tall muscular player, who should be having an impact on the game. He started and played a lot, but didn't produce much. Shorter interior linemen were able to get leverage on him regularly and seal him off. In the pass rush, he lacked the leverage to power rush shorter interior linemen and in the cramped middle of the line couldn't get his feet moving to get by his man. He looked like a fish out of water at DT. Hopefully, the staff won't waste this guy's final year having him play DT again To me, it is the Gilmore situation all over again. (Ross was a star DE/TE in high schooltwo positions where UNT needs help and it doesn't seem a stretch to say Ross has the body type and physical tools to excell.)Junior DT Jesse Desoto was dramatically improved before succumbing to injury. He was OK vs.

the run and pass. He played at a fourth or fifth DT level, even though he is still a little undersized. With more strength training and further technique work, he could be poised for a strong senior year, where he becomes a good, solid rotation DT for a good defense.Over the course of the season, DL coach Mike Wilson figured out how to get the most out of these players and pulled his grade up from the depths. There was no question the defensive line played with much better technique this year. That said, not moving Gilmore back to DE from game one may have been the factor that stopped this defense from becoming one of the better defenses in the Sun Belt. That really was inexcusable. It would have been very intersting to see how many sacks this team could have rolled up with a run down package of Gilmore on the strong side and Owusu-Hemeng on the weak side and a passing down combo of Russo on the strong side and Akpunku on the weak side. Alas, it was not to be. It is generally your best move to play your players where they can best deliver. Gilmore was potentially an all-conference DE. Phil Steele's Sun Belt guide actually had him on one of the pre-season all-sunbelt teams. A lot of people in the sports media who follow football and the sunbelt saw Gilmore for what he was and wrote about it before the season. Still Gilmore had to spent half the season as the team's third or fourth DT. Everyone saw it but the coaching staff. There is no reason for that kind of coaching arrogance and bullheadedness. You have to take your home runs where you have them.Additionally, You have to ding them for the Russo loss as clearly it was one the team could not afford. It was a shock when he left the program after playing well down the strech in 2008. It has remained a bit of a mystery as to why he left as the stated reasons for him leaving ring false.People have theorized on it and what they have come up with makes more sense even though it paints all parties in an unfavorable light. This is certainly not gospel and even if it is dead on accurate, we will never know as no one will ever confirm it, because no one looks good if it is true.Here is what may have occurred.In the described chronology, Wilson felt Russo got lazy/was not showing enough progress and demoted him to third string in the spring behind unproven and far less talented players to light a fire under his butt. There is much of this that suggests "new position coach establishing that he is the authority".Russo felt like it was BS and he did what young guys sometimes do and tried improper means to make his point, rather than trying re-earning the PT on the field. If this is the nut of it, Russo looks a bit like a spoiled rich kid who thought he should have been given the benefit of the doubt based on prior accomplishments and the fact that he went with Dodge over other offers. He may have tried to use what leverage he had (whether it was connections with Dodge or the threat of transferring) to make a point. Todd Dodge who couldn't afford to potentially have a true believer South Lake guy being a clubhouse lawyer and undermining the team and the coaching staff all year.There is also the favoritism argument. Russo may have effectively had a rougher time because Riley Dodge had an easy time. Making Russo really earn it may have in essence become the "proof" that Southlake players weren't being shown favortism.Managing personalities is not a strength of Dodges' and so much was depending on DL play that he could not afford to have Wilson undermined. He called Russo's bluff. Russo freaked out and felt he had to leave to save face. That WAS over the top. They'd have gotten the desired effect by making Russo second team -close enough to starting to taste it - and giving him clear instruction on what was needed to become first team. The resurgence on defense in the second half coincided with Jeremy Phillips moving into the starting lineup at OLB, the shuffling of the DL personnel, and weaker offensive opponents.Senior Tobe Nwigwe was the headliner in the offseason, and he had a pretty good season until injuries took him out, but he didn't play as well as he did last season. With NFL talent, he is a guy who can make the eye-popping big play.

He had improved line play in front of him this year keeping offensive linemen off of him but was not consistently in the right place vs. He seems to lack the head for the game to be a MLB, but has the instincts married to size, athleticism, and explosion to be a good ILB. I am reminded of the Saints with Vaughn Johnson and Sam Mills. Mills made all the regular run stuffs and Johnson would occasionally chip in a big play. I don't know that Nwigwe has top-level NFL-starting talent, but he is the same kind of guy as Johnson.After Nwigwe went down, former starting OLB A.J. Penson stepped into the starting lineup at MLB and played well.