movement team to team within the league.
“The same thing happened, in my mind, in college football. The
better you recruit and the more talent you get on a young roster, how
do you turn that talent into production?”
Linebackers coach Cort Dennison, who coached under both Grantham
and now Sirmon, explained it this way: “We want to have one meaning
for each signal, not multiple words for any particular defense. We want
to get the call in and make it as easy as we can for our guys to play fast.”
So the need for simplicity seemed to be clear, but what does Sirmon’s
“simple” defense look like? Well, that’s a little more complicated.
Louisville lined up in a base 3-4 defense for most of the Grantham
tenure. Sirmon sparked debate and intrigue when the 2017 media guide
was released and showed Louisville’s base defense in a 4-3 scheme. He
used both – and more –during his time at Mississippi State, and Louisville
has even been practicing 4-2-5 and other pass-heavy defenses during
Fall Camp in preparation for some pass-heavy opponents.
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“I like to be the toughest group of guys out there,” Sirmon said when
asked how he wants his defense to play. “I think there is toughness that
intrisically in us and there is some toughness that is developed and I
think there is some toughness when 11 guys choose to play together.
I think the tough guys can pull some guys along with them. We talk a
lot on defense about the terms team, we and us. Team, we and us is
the slide that we begin every meeting with and that is about the 40-50
guys we are working with and the coaches supporting the 11 guys on
the field at that particular time.”
Sirmon’s pedigree in the NFL gives him a certain weight that makes
the players take notice.
After a strong career at Oregon, Sirmon was drafted in 2000 by the
Tennessee Titans and played seven seasons as a linebacker in the NFL.
“As with most athletes, I got old,” said Sirmon. “I hit 30 and got older,
and then I took a year off after the NFL and did some broadcasting with
the Titans. Then, I coached at Central Washington, and the coaching
bug bit me. I didn’t really plan on going into coaching, but it bit me,
and I’ve been a coach ever since.”
Sirmon is one of the hottest names in college football. He broke into
coaching at Central Washington in 2008 and then Oregon as a GA in
2009, followed by stops at Tennessee (2010-11), Washington (2012-13),
USC (2014-15) and Mississippi State (2016) before coming to Louisville.
“You know he understands what it takes to play defense at the highest
level,” Dennison said when asked why Sirmon seems to be such a hot
commodity in the coaching ranks. “It is great to get to work alongside
him, and our entire defensive staff is strong with ‘LD’ and ‘Whammy,’ too.”
Whammy is Lorenzo Ward, the veteran defensive backs coach from
South Carolina who was hired after the bowl game to help Louisville’s
secondary reach its potential. LD, is former Louisville defensive lineman
L.D. Scott, who has been Louisville’s defensive line coach since Petrino
returned to Louisville.
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Sirmon and the new coaching staff on defense will be tested early
and often. Louisville’s schedule is packed with dynamic offenses that
include two of the last four national champions in Clemson and Florida
State and some of the top offensive coordinators in the country.
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