Clemson’s defense should prepare for demanding spring under Steele’s watch

CLEMSON — When Clemson began spring football practice Sunday afternoon, the Tigers’ defense had good reason for excitement.

In its first season under Kevin Steele’s steely watch, Clemson finished 20th nationally in total defense and 25th in scoring defense, allowing 314.3 yards and 20.4 points per game.

Beyond Georgia Tech’s flexbone offense, few opposing systems solved it.

But if the Tigers were confident at the start of practice, there’s an excellent chance they were brought back to reality by its end.

“I told them (recently) that things have been ratcheted up,” Steele said while previewing spring practice. “This is a journey, not a destination. And if they think they’ve arrived, guess what — we’ve changed the destination. Nobody’s arrived. We have a long ways to go but we’ve a lot of progress.”

Steele has several key holes to fill: “Will” or weakside linebacker Kavell Conner, 2009’s leading tackler, is gone, and so are three-year starting cornerbacks Chris Chancellor and Crezdon Butler, who combined for 84 career starts.

Veteran reserves Byron Maxwell and Marcus Gilchrist are the leading candidates to fill in at corner, while Conner’s successor is less clear.

That’s as much a function of the overall linebacker depth as it is of the “Will” depth; Steele wants “player-coaches” on the field, and while he said he’d already identified several on the defensive line and in the secondary, he had yet to find any in the linebacker corps.

“If you want to be a champion, you’ve to get enough champions around you,” he said. “Champs are not just guys who win the game — champs are guys who think about the process. Champs are guys who say, ‘I’ve got to know my job good enough that I can be a player-coach. When you capture that, you’ve got something.”

He doesn’t have that with his linebackers; Brandon Maye had 103 tackles but was inconsistent, and fellow returning starter Scotty Cooper has struggled with knee injuries.

Steele tacitly admits it, too, saying his depth is “a little thin” while acknowledging that young players like highly-touted signee Justin Parker might have to play early and often the next two years while he builds the depth chart through recruiting.

That’s all part of what Steele likes to call “the process,” a phrase he borrowed from former boss Nick Saban.

The “2009’s team is 2009’s team,” he said. “What they did, how they did it is irrelevant in large part to what’s going to transpire in spring practice. We have some understanding of what guys do well, what we have to improve on. Some guys don’t have a whole lot of understanding what to do yet.”

Assuming he remains at Clemson long-term — Steele turned down a lucrative offer in January to become Tennessee’s defensive coordinator and will receive a healthy raise to stay — Steele’s track record suggests that he’ll form a nasty defense, sooner rather than later.

But as anyone who finds his gaze this spring will find out, that hasn’t happened quite yet. Not by his standards.

© 2010 Anderson Independent Mail. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.