With Joshuah Bledsoe unavailable for Saturday’s game against Wyoming due to an illness, the Missouri defense needed another safety. Normally, Bledsoe enters the game in third-down passing situations, when the Tigers employ their dime defense. In his absence, defensive coordinator Ryan Walters turned to Ronnell Perkins.
During his junior season, Perkins has emerged as the Swiss Army Knife of the unit. In the second half against Wyoming, he not only filled in for Bledsoe, but took over the starting spot at his normal position, Sam linebacker, when starter Brandon Lee was ejected for a targeting penalty. This week, when Missouri travels to Purdue, Lee will be forced to sit out for the first half, so Perkins will make his first start at the position.
Perkins sees his role against Purdue as being the same as it is every week: Line up wherever the coaching staff tells him and do his job.
“Just play defense,” Perkins said. “Nothing less than that. Make plays, help our team win.”
Walters turned to Perkins to fill in for Bledsoe because Perkins spent his first two years at Missouri playing strong safety. After the Tigers lost both of their starting safeties during the offseason, he found himself atop the team’s depth chart during spring practices. About two-thirds of the way through the spring, however, the coaching staff approached Perkins about swapping positions with Bledsoe, moving Perkins to Sam linebacker.
Lutheran North head coach Carl Reed, who coached University City high school while Perkins played there, said Perkins called him about the position switch. Even though it meant moving from a possible starting position to the backup behind Lee, Reed said Perkins was open to it.
“One thing about Ronnell is that he has the wisdom to listen and trust the people that he surrounds himself with when those kind of decisions are being made,” Reed said.
It helped that the new role, which Walters described as a “hybrid” between a linebacker and a defensive back, was not altogether unfamiliar for Perkins. As a safety, he often had to coordinate pass coverage assignments with the Sam linebacker. Plus, he has a lot of the same third-down assignments now as last season, when he sometimes entered the game as a nickelback.
After playing safety for two years, Perkins said the coverage aspect came naturally to him. Playing the run — as Perkins said, “you got those fat linemen running at you now” — proved a bigger adjustment, but Perkins believes he has been able to adapt to the position thanks to his speed and instincts.
“I got good instincts, so I know what’s coming before it comes, and I’m fast, so I can get there faster than they expect me to and make the play,” Perkins said.
Those instincts date back to Perkins’ high school days, when he played linebacker for his first two seasons before switching to safety. Even as a safety, Reed said, Perkins was a focal point in all of the team’s defensive schemes, from pass coverage to rushing the passer.
“He was probably the most dominant high school player in the area at the time,” Reed said. “He covered guys, he played well in space, he hit guys like a freight train.”
Against Wyoming, Perkins illustrated the versatility that has allowed him to pick up the Sam position. After Lee was ejected in the third quarter, he played most of the first and second down snaps at linebacker, then dropped to safety to fill in for Bledsoe on third downs. He forced an incompletion on one of those third downs by hitting Wyoming quarterback Tyler Vander Waal on a blitz, and also recorded a tackle for loss during the game. Pro Football Focus awarded him a grade of 79.6, the second-highest mark among all Tiger defenders.
Lee (who, even though he won’t play the first half against Purdue, said about 100 family members are renting a bus and making the drive from his hometown of Indianapolis to watch him play) said he was impressed by Perkins’ ability to balance the various responsibilities thrown at him against Wyoming. Not only can Perkins play two different positions in Missouri’s base defense, Lee said, he’s also used in several of the unit’s specialized sub-packages.
“I applaud him on it, because sometimes he’s back at safety, other times he’s blitzing, other times he’s playing the deep half, times he’s in man-to-man on the running back,” Lee said. “So he’s all over the place.”
Perkins said he isn’t viewing this week any differently because he’ll start in place of Lee. He plans to approach the game the same way he attacked his transition from safety to linebacker during the spring and juggled the responsibilities of both positions last week.
“I just go play,” Perkins said. “Whatever they told me to do, I was going to do it, and I was going to do it 100 miles per hour.”
