Just saw ESPN rank the top defensive players for 2026 and I have to say something about the state of defensive coaching in this sport because it ties right into what I have been watching for forty years. We are sitting here in June with no games to watch and I am thinking about the difference between Coach Erk Russell and what passes for position coaching these days. Erk had those 1980 Junkyard Dawgs playing with a kind of fury you just do not see anymore. Belue to Scott gets all the glory but that defense held three ranked teams to single digits down the stretch and they did it with walk-ons and guys who worked summers in the mill. There is a reason they called him the Junkyard Dawg. He could take a kid who nobody wanted and make him believe he was the baddest man on the field.
Nowadays you get a transfer from the portal who has been at three schools and the linebacker coach has to teach him the system in four weeks of spring ball. How do you build that kind of bond when you know the kid is gone the second somebody offers him a better NIL package? Coach Dooley used to say defense wins championships and he was right but defense also requires continuity and loyalty and trust. You cannot build those things in a dead period workout session with a roster full of mercenaries.
I watch these ESPN lists and I see all these names from Texas and Oregon and Ohio State and I wonder how many of them will still be at the same program in two years. Back in 1984 when we held Clemson to three points in that 26-3 win at Sanford Stadium we had guys who had been playing together since they were freshmen. They knew each other's tendencies. They did not need to check the sideline for a signal on every single play.
The game has gotten faster and the athletes are bigger and stronger than anything we saw in the 80s or 90s. But I would take a Coach Russell defense over any modern scheme because he understood something that these analytics guys will never grasp. Football is about want-to. You cannot buy that in the portal.