New Defensive Coordinator, New Defensive Players

A Transfer Portal Review

Skyler Cassity is the new defensive coordinator for North Texas. He has an impressive resume of building good defenses with less-than-perfect conditions. His resume is impressive, as he has turned around ACU, and Sam Houston in short order. He’s the son of a defensive coordinator — as usually is the case with young wunderkind — and talks a great game.

We’ll have more of a break down of the defense as the new season draws closer in Fall 2025, but for now you know it is a 4-2-5 base scheme, with variations. We’ve mentioned in this space and others about how everything is more multiple than every before. We’ll see Odd fronts (which to me means a man covering the center) and we’ll see Even fronts. The Mean Green internet has been wailing for four-down linemen since last season. The idea of the 3-high is to get your best eleven on the field. I think we either didn’t have the best eleven (means we could have used another defensive lineman) or the best eleven weren’t good enough. Of course, the results could be a combination of the twain.

Cassity’s defense from a THSCA talk

That’s the 4-2-5 you see everywhere since TCU popularized it under Gary Patterson. Everyone has their own version that is slightly different based on what they know. Some versions are derived from a 4-3 defense. Some use a lot of the old Bud Foster stuff his Virginia Tech days. Some teams have simply adapted their nickel packages to this, and fell backward into the same things. The Patterson defenses would call the fronts and the coverages completely separately. Others, like Dan Lanning like to have one word calls.

Football is fascinating because it is ever-evolving. The West Coast offense killed the Bear 46 defense. The 4-3/3-4 defenses with zone-blitzes killed the K-Gun, some of the simpler West Coast stuff. The spread (especially with tempo) blew away slow defenses with plodding linebackers built to stop the run. The hybrid defenders in Bud Foster’s, and Gary Patterson’s defenses slowed the spread a ton. The zone-reads, hybrid QBs opened it up. Quarter/split-field coverages slowed it again. Then RPOs killed base cover 4 looks. Tom Herman and Ohio State out-ran the Alabama defenses sideline-to-sideline so Kirby Smart added a Mint front to control the B gaps. Now, the latest and greatest is attacking those 4i guys with gap runs.

That last note is something we are familiar with here. TTU (and others) killed us with the counter runs often when the squad was running a 3-high look. It certainly is possible that the double 4i look can be played better with better athletes at those spots. NT tried to upgrade — getting Dawkins and Shipley — and there was the slightest improvement but the change was made to hire a 4-down guy.

The good? We see a guy who has had success, coached under and with a lot of good, knowledgeable and experienced coaches and a guy who has coordinated a defense before. That last aspect may simply be the deciding factor in why Cassity would succeed compared to Caponi’s tenure. We shall see, however.

Okay, so what do you need? Well you need two true linebacker types. A good mike, and another backer, a couple of safeties that are good against the run and a free safety that can cover ground. Oh, and of course a couple of lock-down corners. The good news is that NT’s 3-3-5, and 4-2-5 before that were similar.

new and old

Cassity wants his guys to play fast, with aggression, and to be sound. Now, that is typical coach speak from any defensive coordinator — but you have to be able to communicate complicated ideas quickly. Also, making sure the guys know the ideas behind their plans helps them to solve problems on their own.

Speeding up this process by bringing in dudes who have been successful in this scheme is the plan. North Texas signed (among others) seven Sam Houston State players, including five starters.

• Trey Fields, LB

• S’Maje Burrell, LB

• Da’Veawn Armstead, CB

• David Fisher, CB

• Quincy Wright, T

• Richard Outland, Jr, N

• Briceon Hayes, Edge

In the above clip, NT signed five of the players on the field, including the LB (Fields) who disrupts the play by pushing by the right guard, and the Nose who cleans it all up and gets the sack (Outland) after breaking the double team.

Sam Houston grabbed three interceptions, and wreaked havoc on their way to a bowl win and a 10-win season. Incredibly, they won games like 9-3, 10-7, and 20-18. It was a real grind-fest. That was one reason why Fields was excited to come to North Texas, where he says he can finally get to play with a high-powered offense.

If North Texas can get a little bit of that kind of defensive improvement, it could pay amazing dividends. There are so many metrics detailing how poor NT was these last two seasons, but the simplest is the most obvious: ppg. NT finished last in the league and 11th of 14 in scoring the last two years. Sam Houston State was first in CUSA.

We do not need to go from 11th to 1st, but top five? That would put the squad among the best in the league. We mentioned (and Morris has mentioned) how often his play calls were affected by what he thought the defense could (or could not) do. It all could change.

Here is a weird thing, however. Sam Houston’s guys didn’t grade particularly well.

(paywall since I will be giving you some PFF screens)