Last year was embarrassing.
It’s a year that Memphis cornerback Dustin Lopez and the rest of the Tiger defense would probably like to forget.
“But we’re not,” Lopez said. “Last year was embarrassing for everybody here, and we want to prove that that’s not who we are, that we can play.”
One thing is for sure, the Tiger secondary can only be better this time around.
As a unit Memphis ranked 114th in the nation in pass defense, giving up a whopping 276 yards a contest.
What was most troubling to coaches and players was that the very poor numbers weren’t from lack of talent.
“The problem last year was everybody was trying to do everybody else’s job instead of doing their job first,” said senior linebacker Carlton Baker.
“This year it seems like everybody knows to just worry about themselves and about what they have to do, and it’s going to make us a much better defense than we were last year.”
That would also ease the burden on the offense.
“We’ve got to be a help to our offense this year,” said Lopez, who had four interceptions in six starts last year. “They’ve got DeAngelo (Williams) but he’s not going to be able to do it by himself. We’ve got to make stops and give our offense more chances.”
Another factor working for the Tiger defense will be experience. They return almost everyone, and linebacker Tim Goodwell said that itself can make all the difference.
“This is really our second year together,” Goodwell said. “So many of us were new last year and now we’re going into our second year together. Now we understand each other more, we know what’s going to happen and what’s not going to happen. We know what we have to do to be better.”
Goodwell also echoed what seems to be this year’s defensive motto: “worry about yourself first.”
“That’s one of our major issues that we talk about,” Goodwell said. “If everybody gets their job done then, as a unit, we’re going to take care of things. That’s the main thing (defensive coordinator Joe Lee) Dunn has been telling us is do your job and let the person next to you do their job and everything will click.”
As for Dunn, don’t expect, just because of last year’s disappointments, to see any changes in his famous, if not infamous, blitz-heavy strategy.
“It’s just Coach Dunn,” Goodwell said. “He’s not going to change the way he coaches. He’s going to run a defense his way until he can’t run it anymore, and that’s not going to happen.”
