For a few years, Missouri’s defensive linemen—the group that earned the moniker “D-Line Zou” and gained the Tigers repute across the country—had one job: Listen to the linebackers and go where they were told as quickly as they could. That single job has now become quite a few.
“In the past, linebackers give us calls, you got one play, but now as a D-line, we make the calls ourselves sometimes,” senior defensive tackle Rickey Hatley said. “We look at the formation, weak side, strong side, look at the backfield set, the tight ends coming in, everybody moving around the backfield. That’s a big change for us.”
“You have like five different things in your mind you're supposed to do versus having only one or two things last year, this year having five different things,” junior defensive end Charles Harris said. “It is, it's an adrenaline thing, it's environment thing, but like I said, you've just got to be able to calm yourself down.”
Head coach Barry Odom—who was the defensive coordinator last season before handing that job to DeMontie Cross when he became the head coach—said while terminology has changed, he does not believe Missouri’s defense has undergone “an overhaul.”
“It’s just a little bit at times we’re asking more of a read scheme,” Odom said. “There’s times that we’re playing up vertical on the line of scrimmage, there’s times that we’re not. There’s some of those things that are built in differently with calls that we have.”
“It creates a little more hesitation for anybody when you have to change something like that,” Harris said.
