Personally I'm pretty concerned about the DL depth. I think our starting unit is very solid (Eboigbe, Oatis, Smith) but behind them is a whole lot of inexperience that didn't nudge itself into the rotation last year....which concerns me about their talent level. The wildcard is the freshman James Smith, but it's silly to rely on a true freshman at DT/DE. If he is able to give 15-20 quality snaps a game that'd be a very big deal for us.

Edges will be very, very good. Turner and Braswell are both experienced and talented. I think the inside guys will be ok, but we still don't (at least as of now) have the sort of elite ILBs we used to have (Georgia has those dudes now). I think Lawson will be very solid and then they'll find a solid other option between Marhsall/Jefferson/Campbell.

The biggest difference, I think, is that we will play much more loose and fast with Steele. I'm not going to shite on Golding like others do, because I think he's incredibly bright and it probably wasn't entirely his fault, but we consistently played like we weren't sure where to go or which step to take. Steele is going to dumb things down and our guys are going to play a helluva lot faster and less nervous, I think. Now, that may backfire at some point if we play somebody who can match us athletically and outschemes us, but in general I expect to see a much looser defensive unit.

Does that mean we'll be better in the aggregate? I dunno. Kirby and Pruitt were great at running complex stuff and being able to communicate it in a way that players got and didn't feel confused all the time. Golding had the complex stuff down pat but struggled with communicating it. I think Steele is great at communicating things but isn't great at in-depth scheme stuff. My personal opinion is that when you have the level of athlete/player that we have, I'd prefer the guy who has adequate scheming ability but is able to get guys to use their athletic abilities to the maximum versus hunting the perfect matchup every play that also leads to playing a step slow and with nervous energy.

But we'll find out soon enough.

This post was edited on 8/3/23 at 12:44 pm