Slippery Defensive Line

After watching the Paladins defense sack Colin Harper of Clemson five times, I thought it might be timely to look into the sack numbers a bit.

This season after 3 games the Furman defense has recorded 11 sacks for 101 yards. Let's breakdown the 11 sacks.

Wallace Artis leads the Paladins this season with 3 sacks. Justin Brown has 1.5 sacks. Gaines Burnett, Channing Welch, Shaun VaRensberg, Corey Ray, and Julian Hicks all have recorded 1 sack each. But let's not forget Paul White 2 sacks for a whopping 32 yards.

How does this compare to previous season? Well the 07 bunch is within 5 sacks of passing the 2006 total and tying the 2005 total. And after only 3 games they are easily within striking distance of the 2004 mark of 24 sacks. By the way the 2001 Paladins recorded 38 sacks for 225 yards.

So whats up? I asked former Western Carolina offensive lineman, father of a Furman great offensive lineman Dwight Covington what he thought.

He said their slippery. The intensity is up and our guys are running through the blocks not around them. I wish I had thought of the slippery term. The last two seasons we've watched our end get bogged down on the edges only to see quarterbacks running around buying time for their receivers to break open.

You can argue that the 2007 Paladins are still weak to the pass. But, I think what we are seeing from the current group of defensive linemen will continue to improve week to week. The unique thing about the sacks this season, especially against Clemson, they were explosive. Dwight's thoughts make sense, these intense rushes by the ends and the line are creating choas in the backfield. The same physical pressure applied to the Tigers QB also resulted in a poor performance by two of the best running backs in the entire nation.

So do we dream that this defensive group could eclipse the sack total of the 2001 defense. Yes they could. One final note, the 2001 team played 15 games.