As a young assistant coach at Western Carolina, Geoff Collins lost his starting strong-side linebacker to an injury during a game, and had to replace him with "the sixth best linebacker" they had because they hadn't cross trained the linebackers to know each other's positions.
Collins doesn't make that mistake now. If you're a defensive player at Florida, you're expected to learn the entire defense.
"The way that we do things is that every kid on defense has to learn the whole defense. We don't really care about positions, Mikes or Wills or Sams or safeties. Some of you guys have seen practice a little bit, and they're lining up everywhere. We like it very interchangeable." Collins explained yesterday.
"We've learned to cross-train them so that they can learn, and play a bunch of different positions so we can just roll them in and out. In practice we have guys that are playing nickel, different guys are playing safety and our safeties are playing corner."
Collins also explained that they don't use a traditional depth chart for his Florida defense. Instead there is a line of expectations.
"We talk about all the time, there's no depth chart on defense here. If you're above the line you're going to play, and if you're not, you've still got some work to do." Collins explained. "They understand that they're competing to get reps on that field and that line fluctuates every single day."