Colonels’ defense hungry for a championship title

It’s safe to say the Nicholls Colonels may have been pleased with their defensive performance but they weren’t completely satisfied with their performance last season.

After all the team finished fifth overall in the conference but were last in the conference in red zone defense, leaving plenty of room for improvement entering Saturday’s season opener against the Air Force Falcons.

This year’s Colonel defense has a new commander-in-chief. Former defensive coordinator Steve Ellis left his alma mater to become the defensive backs coach at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Taking his place is former Colonels linebacker coach for the last four seasons, Jeremy Atwell.

Behind Atwell’s leadership, the Colonels look to return to the defenses of old, and finished ranked in the top of the conference in every defensive category.

Atwell said he’s worked on building a bond with his defense all summer, something that would help the team go a long way.

“So far we’ve been pretty solid,” he said. “You build that relationship so when you ask them to do things for you they’ll listen. Anytime there is a change over you have to earn their trust. That’s been the tricky thing for me, not so much the play on the field, but getting that bond with the guys.”

To do so, the defense has adopted a slogan this year, which is on the front page of their playbooks, “Be Accountable.” Atwell said if the defense wants to be successful, it starts with being held accountable for yourself, teammates and eventually coaches.

“We want to be accountable for yourself, then to your teammates and lastly to your coaches,” he said. “That’s what we try to do as coaches is to instill that effort and accountability and let the X’s and O’s take care of itself.”

However doing so will require the Colonels to replace possibly one of the best athletes to have ever worn a Nicholls uniform, Lardarius Webb.

Doing so won’t be just one athlete. According to Atwell all of the athletes in the Nicholls secondary – seniors Tyson Andrus, Dominique Daniels and Jordan Nevels and sophomore Bobby Felder – all have the potential to make the Colonels secondary even better than it was last season.

Daniels said it’s up to him and his fellow teammates to make plays where they would normally have relied on Webb.

“We have to make the plays and take the blame for it this season,” he said. “We are very hungry. We’re excited and ready to play. We have a good group of guys, and we are really becoming a brotherhood back there.”

Nevels agreed with his teammate saying the group of guys in the secondary are hungry to prove they can play too.

“We’re ready to get out there an get at it,” the senior transfer said. “We want to prove to everyone we can be just as good without Webb.”

Head coach Jay Thomas said he has been pleased with the way the secondary has stepped in to fill the voids left by Webb, Andrew Eddie and Jamal Simmons, who is expected to miss the season while recovering from an injury.

“When you have a special guy like Lardarius, sometimes it might take two or three guys to replace him,” Thomas said. “But we have a number of guys on our team capable of doing that. We have some really talented guys in the secondary – Jordan Nevels, Tyson Andrus, Dominique Daniels – that are all really talented players. We have some talented guys back there. I feel like we have a number of players ready to step in.”

On the defensive line, Atwell said the team has more depth than they’ve had at that position since he’s been there.

Despite the loss of Chris Noble and Duan Thompson to graduation, the Colonels still appear to be deep in line depth.

The Colonels return All-SLC Second Team selection Zac Reddix and fellow senior Quenton Mims to the starting rotation. Reddix finished 2008 with 21 tackles and one and a half sacks. Mims completed his 2008 season with 15 tackles and one and half sack.

Senior Henry Perez, redshirt freshman Fernandez Garner, Thibodaux native sophomore A.J. Carter and redshirt freshman Marshall Crawford are all expected to see playing time on the line this season along with true freshmen Darrell Brown, and Chad Allfaro this season.

“We lost some guys with graduation but we did a great job of recruiting to get more guys in,” Atwell admitted. “We have got some guys that are going to play quite a bit for us on the line and its probably one of the most talented groups we had since I’ve been here. We are expecting big things out of them.”

The Colonels linebacking corps remains virtually unscathed, only losing two starters from last season (Ivan Ledet and Damien Reed). Assumption High product junior Yashua Willis and senior Garrick Spain are expected to be the leaders of the corps this season. Originally Spain was expected to sit out for academic purposes but later qualified after changing his major.

Transfer junior Ed James and fellow junior Anthony Sparks are expected to compete for playing time with sophomores Anri Stewart, Kevin Persick, LSU transfer Josh McClinton and junior Jesse Montero.

“I’m pretty excited with what I see from these guys in our scrimmage,” Atwell said “I was a little nervous going into it because we had to move some guys around. We made a good transition replacing the coaching staff and that alone has been a tremendous help.”

In the end, Thomas believes Atwell is exactly the motivator the defense needs. He hasn’t been let down yet.

“Atwell is doing a great job with it, he said. “He’s been part of our program off and on for a number of years now. He is doing a good job and the kids are doing a good job relating to him. It’s going to be fun to watch these guys on the field.”

Defensive linemen A.J. Carter (93) and Darrell Brown go through pass rushing drills as defensive line coach Dustin Gisclair looks on. The Colonels are expected to have more depth on the defensive line than they have had in a while, according to defensive coordinator Jeremy Atwell. * Photo by KYLE CARRIER