Supermassive NC State Football Preview: Defensive Front

An era is over for NC State's defense as Tony Gibson jumped into the head coaching ranks with the Marshall Thundering Herd (one of the coolest mascots in sports). Davin Vann, the last starter from the record-setting 2022 and 2021 defenses, is gone, and 2025 State is breaking in a new coordinator with a new scheme and a new ideal talent profile.

A shift in philosophy is coming for NC State’s defense in 2025. Normally, we talk about the players first and then finish with some scheme discussion, but because of DJ Eliot’s arrival, we’re going to start with the scheme. Gibson’s defensive front was positionally rigid. He wanted to be huge on the defensive line and smaller at linebacker, with the philosophical goal of keeping the linebackers out of conflict and preventing double teams from releasing to them so they could fly around in space. Playing with 4i defensive ends (aligned on the inside shoulder of the tackle) as a tite front team prevented the will and sam linebackers from having an interior run fit, which made State harder to RPO and kept the speed on the edge to be the kill part of the spill and kill. 

Basic tite front box against 10 personnel

The size of the line and alignment of the line was designed to eat double teams. Almost every run play in football features a double team to the second level. Gibson’s defense was designed to prevent those double teams from winning, which would in turn keep the linebackers clean to attack the ball. Put simpler, State was trying to clog up the middle with beef and fly to the ball with speed behind it. It was a very effective structure against zone heavy teams.

This principle will still exist under Eliot, who will still use the tite front, but what’s likely coming is a shift toward a more variable defensive front. My expectation is for State to use a mix of four and three-man fronts and employ more hybrid-style players that will allow to "stem the front," disguise pressures and coverages, and generally muddy the pictures for offenses. Elements of this defense should resemble the Aranda defense at Baylor, and State has added a lot of personnel from the portal to try better suit this better. 

A key component is positional versatility. One of the challenges Eliot faced replacing Gibson was the total lack of hybrid linebacker/ends on the roster. As mentioned, Gibson was small at linebacker and huge at defensive line, so he did not employ anybody who could fit into both roles. Eliot had to find this. It added about 12 guys who could feasibly fit here. The Eliot defense will likely feature a larger variety of fronts, a lot of pre-snap shifts and post-snap stunts to alter looks, and a lot of sim pressures and creepers to confuse quarterbacks and protections. It is a defense of uncertainty, unlocked by personnel that can be useful in several different spots on the defense.

One component of this that you’ll see is the stand-up ends. At times, you may have seen this defensive alignment referred to as a 2-4-5. The ends, ideally, in these alignments are big athletes who can rush the passer, be physical setting an edge against the run, and drop into coverage. This defense drops these guys into coverage more and uses its positional versatility in the box to shift around responsibilities a lot. The goal is to give the offense more to consider on every play, introducing more uncertainties into their process.

Here you can see Eliot's Temple defense in a 2-4-5 alignment, which you could also just call a 4-2-5 if you wanted to. The ambiguity is the point. Temple drops one of the ends on this play, slants the defensive line, and rushes one of the linebackers. You can read more about it here.

This versatility is what State wants from guys like Tra Thomas, Cian Slone, Joseph Adedire, Kenny Soares, and more. It wants guys that can be versatile so it can be more positionless and give the offense fewer clues. This type of player, in theory, can play as an edge, drop into coverage, or shift off the ball and play as a linebacker. Whether or not the large transfer portal haul works out will have to wait, but State has added a lot of guys to try and diversify this defense. 

Thomas was the first guy Eliot brought in, and his experience and time with Eliot probably gives him an inside track to a lot of snaps. The senior is a good athlete. His best attribute is his athleticism and his explosiveness. He’s definitely a guy that could play on and off the ball for State. 

I watched him against Oklahoma, Coastal Carolina, and some against Navy. I thought he was disruptive as a run defender against Navy. His pass rushing tape against the other two schools wasn't as compelling. He was a pretty pure outside speed rusher. Thomas has explosiveness, but the win rate was low. It seemed like teams could sit on his speed. He needed to develop more counters. I thought he was notably more physical against the run in the Navy game later in the season. It will be interesting to see if he's primarily on the edge or if he gets a decent number of reps off the ball.

A late pickup that I am a huge fan of is Joseph Adedire out of Texas Tech. Adedire was a good football player back in 2023 for the Red Raiders in this type of defensive scheme. State got him in the portal off a 2024 season that he missed all of due to injury. It’s not uncommon for guys to return from a whole year of missed reps and not be the same player, so there’s a huge caveat with Adedire, but if he returns to form, I think State got a steal here. 

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Adedire is power-based defensive end. He plays at about 270 but his strength makes him feel bigger. He doesn’t have a bag of speed moves as a pass rusher. It’s mostly the bull rush, but he’s good at it, plays with good leverage and hand placement, and he is physical. I watched him against Oregon and he was a problem for a very good offensive line. 

Adedire is definitely not the athlete in space that someone like Tra Thomas is, but he can drop into an underneath zone and did some of that in Lubbock. What I like about Adedire is that he can slide over into a 4i from a 5-tech and open up opportunities for State to shift pre-snap from an over/under/heads front to a tite front without having to change personnel. He’s smaller than your prototypical 4i, but like I said, I think he plays bigger than he is. 

This is my favorite clip of Adedire. He's the back side of an outside zone run. The tackle's job is simply to cut him off so he can't chase down the play. He does fine to reach the playside shoulder, but Adedire then takes the man's body and drives him all the way down the line of scrimmage, tripping the running back with the right tackle. He chased down the zone play from the back side using another human. That's awesome.

Here's Adedire getting aggressive against a counter play and blowing it up. This is big for a State team that really struggled against gap scheme runs like this. Adedire's physicality is a plus trying to box these plays in, which was State's preferred method of handling them last year. Adedire actually ends up spilling this one outside before bouncing off the kick out and vicing in the ball carrier.

This is just an example of the types of shifts you may see that Adedire can open up. Texas Tech is in a tite front here. It shifts to the 2-4-5 over front right before the snap, and actually ends up causing a false start.

Cian Slone is the other addition that I was personally a big fan of. He’s probably the best player State got in the spring portal this year. Slone is a high-motor pass rusher with an array of speed moves he used at Utah State to be disruptive. The Aggie transfer is immediately the most developed pass rusher on the team. 

Slone is in a wide 9 technique there on your left. It's a tough ask for the tackle to get in front of that. Slone is good at dipping his inside shoulder, making his surface small, and stepping through as an outside speed rusher. He's got active hands too, which you can see in the above clip.

Here is Slone using the inside move as a counter. He's got a pretty good bag.

State has also added Sabastian Harsh out of Wyoming, Kenny Soares from Northwestern, and Sterling Dixon from Alabama. Harsh played from a three-point stance and as an off-ball linebacker some at Wyoming. Soares was a rotational piece at Northwestern, but an intriguing one as a prospect. His athleticism pops on tape. Dixon is injured and isn't likely to play.

When it comes to more true defensive linemen, Brandon Cleveland is back and is the defense’s best player. He played a pretty thankless role lining up as a 0 tech a lot but he was really good last year eating double teams against zone. State would also ask him to rock back against counter plays, which is a tough task that he did well with because he's a pretty good athlete for his 300+ pound frame.  

Cleveland is a stud and a lock-down 0 and 1 tech nose tackle. He brings a lot of power and is extremely difficult to move, and he should anchor the center of this defensive front no matter how it aligns. Because he aligned head up on the center so much, State was a big user of what’s called a lag technique, and Cleveland was good at it. 

Cleveland (44) is reading the center and working opposite his first step, "lagging" into the backside A gap. The center and backside guard are double-teaming to Sean Brown (0). The successful lag from Cleveland prevents the guard from cleanly overtaking the block, leaving the center in a difficult spot of either jumping the double team too early or allowing Brown to run through. Brown is able to run through and make the play. A good lag creates that space for the backer to attack, or it creates penetration if the double team breaks too fast. That's what is meant by "eating double teams."

I expect you’ll still see a lot of this.. Justin Terrell, a young freshman who got on the field late in the season, was also good at this, and I think he may see the field as a rotational interior lineman. Outside of Cleveland, I think this defensive front has some serious questions, but I feel optimistic about Terrell and Joshua Alexander-Felton providing some additional answers. It has some compelling youth, most of which was recruited to fit the old scheme, but could certainly be effective as a 3-techs and 4is.

Travali Price may have found a better fit in this new defensive scheme, where he could play more on the outside as a 5 technique. He was always slightly out of position as a defensive end in the tite front, and State will probably ask him to do that less this year. He was more a speed-based player and never really had elite power. Playing on the edge more should suit that better. This is one way you might see State stem or shift its front. Price can align in a 4i and State could shift its three linemen and walk up a backer like Thomas to create over spacing.

Genuinely, I think State is decently versatile here. It has achieved its goal of being multiple and has the personnel profile it needs to run this scheme. Now, whether or not it will actually be good is a different question. Outside of Cleveland, it doesn’t have any obvious all-league contenders. The talent level of this defense is certainly not what it was during the heyday of Tony Gibson. There’s no sense in pretending that isn’t true. 

My hope is that the scheme can raise the floor a bit. Gibson did some fun stuff with stunts and blitzes, but his base was elite during the days of Wilson, Thomas, Jackson, Vann, etc. State was extremely difficult to move the ball on even if you knew exactly what was coming. This team doesn’t look to have the consistent matchup winners that defenses of the past did, but hopefully the scheme can carry some water for the unit and create more mistakes from the offense.

Eliot’s Temple defense was 24th nationally in sacks, a climb of 100 spots from the year before. Here is Temple’s sacks-per-game rankings nationally from 2020 to 2024, randomized. Find the year DJ Eliot was the coordinator (this should be easy because I already told you it was 24th).

• 83rd

• 24th

• 124th

• 128th

• 84th

This is one of the natural strengths of this defense, and it also happens to be one of the reliable parts of the DJ Eliot experience. Sim pressures and creepers are not technically the same thing, but they’re very similar. Playing from an over front, then dropping one of the ends into coverage and rushing one of the linebackers would be a creeper. You’re still rushing the same amount of guys, but just a different set of guys that you were originally showing. 

This is a big thing in this defense, which is enabled by the types of ends it uses. It can do a lot of this, and you can confuse protections and generate pressure via the scheme without sacrificing the structure of your coverage. One sound bet is that State will rank high in the league in sacks. 

Linebacker play was not good last year. State’s inability to correctly fit runs was enough to put an Alec-shaped hole in my living room window. It was actually numbing to watch this happen all the way into the final couple games of the season. Assignment football was not up to par. 

One guy that was on the more reliable side of that was Caden Fordham, who ended up missing most of the year with an injury. That bumped Devon Betty back to the mike and brought Kamal Bonner onto the field. Bonner had the juice. He was going to be a good player, and State will miss him.

Fordham was State’s best linebacker before he was sidelined for the entirety of the season. He’ll never be an insane athlete and he’s undersized for a mike linebacker, but he plays with good instincts, is willing to be physical, and he usually tackles well. He’s a high floor, lower ceiling type guy who can definitely give you consistent linebacker play at the ACC level. I actually thought he was better in 2023, which was true for a lot of guys. He made more mistakes in 2024, but I think it's easy to see a reliable contributor here this year.

This is a duo play from Wake Forest. It's a really good open field tackle from Fordham. This baby is springing and might score if he misses.

Fordham is physical enough and a good enough tackler to be a good linebacker. Below is an example of the bad fits that neutralize that. Fordham was definitely not the worst offender here, but this is just an example.

Fordham is the backer standing on the hash here. He has frontside A gap responsibility, and he's in the wrong place. Aydan White has crack-replace responsibility and should be coming down when Wake cracks the strong safety. Fordham should not be over there. He should be where the ball hits

Sean Brown was kind of the exact opposite in the early parts of last season. He’s an excellent athlete, but it was a messier experiment. To Brown’s credit, he improved as the year went on. I actually like Brown a lot in this new defense. I think he can do some stuff rushing the passer from the second level and he can fit into almost any part of a coverage structure, which should unlock some post-snap rotation stuff for Eliot. He makes sense as a breakout pick, but he needs to fit the run a lot cleaner than he did last year. This is the stuff you want to be done with if you’re Sean Brown. 

It's a classic power run from NIU. The sniffer TE kicks out Devon Betty and the pulling guard wraps and leads. It's good from the defensive line to keep the linebackers clean. It's also good from Fordham (10) to squeeze the point of attack with some physicality. Sean Brown (0) thinks the QB pulled the ball and he doesn't fit this up correctly as a result.

State as a whole needs to fit the run better, significantly better, and Brown is part of that equation. Like most of State's defense, he was good against zone plays but ran into issues when teams started introducing pullers and decoy motions. This became a big part of how teams attacked State. and its linebackers and DBs were unacceptably bad at fitting up those gap scheme and split zone runs.

AJ Richardson is an All-American at the FCS level and could be another high floor, low ceiling addition to the room. He's undersized and not an outstanding athlete, but he generally tackles well and seems to have made some headway with the staff in the spring. Fordham, Brown, and Richardson are players that I think you'll see off the ball more, but you could certainly see a guy like Kenny Soares or Tra Thomas in that off-ball linebacker role more regularly should they earn it.

Parting Thoughts

I don't think State is going to win football games this year because of its defense. It did better in the spring portal than you would expect (there's a lot of garbage in there), and it found some guys that could be difference makers. That has elevated the ceiling, but the talent level is not what it was during the days of Savion Jackson and Payton Wilson. My hope is that the scheme can generate a high rate of early-down negative plays, putting offenses in bad and predictable spots.

Last year, State's defense took the field with a one-score lead on what would be the opponent's final real drive of the game six times. It gave up four touchdowns. If this defense can get off the field in critical moments better than that and have some game pressure taken off them by a good offense, that would be the path to a good season.

Check out our other previews:

Passing Game

Bull Case for CJ Bailey

Running Game

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