...Fred shut down his half of the field as a coverage linebacker and also in defending the edge against the run. A huge chunk of the D rested on his shoulders his senior year. It was very similar to how Ziggy shut down an entire side of the field against the run and allowed Bronco to run a 2 man front and drop extra guys back in coverage, still defend the run and still put pressure on the QB. For most of Ziggy’s senior year we were in a 2-4-5 or 2-5-4 package (depending on if Joe Sampson or Spencer Hadley was in) and it was crazy effective.

Fred, while not as freakishly big and athletic as Ziggy was, was insanely smart and intuitive and took away a lot of the field from opposing offenses. Think about it, his senior year he finished 2nd on the team in passes defended and also 2nd in TFL’s. The one area he didn’t have much of an impact was sacks and if he wasn’t so valuable playing in space he likely would’ve been used more there as well. But we had a conglomeration of players who could pick up the slack in the pass rush (Corbin, Laulile, Tautu, Taele, etc). As a group that was one of our better defenses in the past 20 yrs as they finished 14th in the nation in pts allowed.