This is an outstanding post btw, outstanding and well thought. I agree with you wholeheartedly that defense wins championships and that without marked improvement on that side of the ball we are highly unlikely to make noise on the national level. The long history of our sport makes that point very clear. I also agree with you that Hunt (I believe he is going by Hunt now, no?) is only one guy and this is a team game. I offer you this as a mitigating thought: if you had to make defensive improvements on our team (pretty much ANY team really) with just one guy, you would want that ONE GUY to be a DT. My firmly held belief is that good defenses are built from the inside out. Good DTs are like a good foundation to a house. Without it, no house is worth the value of the rest of the materials. Hunt's impact is obviously yet to be seen. I am hopeful in his case.
If you dissect what was going wrong with us last year on defense it basically revolves around two main things: inability to get pressure on the QB without sending the house and inability to consistently hold point in the trenches making run fits for LBs difficult. This one guy has a chance to help in those areas. First and foremost, having Hunt (and the development of Kallon and the addition of psuedo ready freshman) allows us to move Gamble out to DE. He did a much better job of holding point and setting a firm edge than the others. In my mind this is a huge factor. I believe Hunt will be enough of a pest on the inside to draw quite a few double-teams. He is laterally quick enough that a single guy will be really challenged to get a hat on him in the right way. When that happens, the numbers structure changes for the rest of the defense in a favorable way.
To take this even further, I don't beleive it will be just ONE GUY helping to make a difference. We were thin, young, and inexperienced along that front line last year. Freeman was a good player, for a freshman, but lets be real, if we had the kind of quality depth at that postion as most teams do, he would have worn a shirt. It is my opinion that he was not truly physically ready to play at the level that he is going to play moving forward. He was undersized and not quite physical enough, forcing him to simply rely on his athleticism and tenacity to survive. He is a stock that you would have wanted to buy in 2014. That is for sure. Most players make their biggest jump between year 1 and year 2. Last year's experience and this year's work in the weight room has a chance to really pay off. You may feel like that is the end of the list but other guys were forced into service before they were ready too, guys like Simmons and Merriweather, who are both very athletic players.
I don't really know what we have in Whitehead, but it seems to me we will get to the passer better this season, with him or without him.
Having the same "Hancocks" (love the expression) in the defensive backfield this year is a good thing for us, not a bad thing. I think they were dealt a very bad hand last year. They are good players who did the best they could. You can't "fold 'em" in football and wait for the next hand. You just have to do your best and play through it. Staying coverage against elite athletes for ridiculous periods of time is pretty much impossible for anybody.
Who knows really? We may finish this season and I will be one disappointed dude in terms of our defense. However, I honestly don't believe that will be the case. Having watched a ton of DVR replay last year and seeing how things broke down, I can visualize the improvement I am trying to describe quite easily. If I can see it, I know the coaches and the players can see it. We just have to go do it.
