FIU Football: Defense Dominating Fall Camp Early On

Through two weeks of camp, the Panthers defense has been dominant

FIU Athletics

MIAMI, FL - These past two weeks, the FIU Panthers have put the pads on during fall camp. While there is a lot to take away on both sides of the ball, the defense has arguably impressed the most thanks to the amount of depth and improvements that are noticeable, early on.

Through the beginning of camp, it certainly feels like the defense has won most days, especially in week two. Pressuring the quarterback has been a big factor in their early success, which leads to turnovers.

"We've spent a lot of time focusing on how we can adapt and create some more chaos," said Dewitt. "We were a little bit more stationary [last year] than we are this year. All the chaos that we are able to create right now and forcing our offense to move blocks and moving parts I think has been good. Trying to find ways to get big guys to do little guy things and little guys to do big guy things. When they look at that from an offensive perspective, we're trying to do that from a defensive perspective. The fun part for me now is our defense understands more why are we doing some things as opposed to just what we are doing."

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Although rotations amongst the positional groups have been common, the one where a lot of change is noticed is in the linebacker group which has the most depth, led by Reggie Peterson and Elijah Anderson-Taylor. With the departure of Donovan Manuel, Reggie Peterson, to a certain degree, has taken over his role per Dewitt.

"He's such a veteran presence for us," said Dewitt, on Peterson. "He's a calming influence on the defense. It's really fun to have those guys now. What I've been doing is moving him around with all the different groups. What I like to do is move the backers around early in camp so nobody is going to be described as a one, two or even a three from that standpoint because I want to see what pairs of people worked the best with each other and who worked with the secondary. We rotated Reggie and Eliah Anderson-Taylor. We kept those guys separate from each other throughout most of the camps or most of practice today because I want to force them to communicate with different people and across the board, with different units."

Another group that seems to be taking a massive step forward are the safeties. Shamir Sterling continues to be the talk of the town amongst the coaches, especially Dewitt who notes there is a good chance he plays this season.

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"Don't count him out," said Dewitt. "He's a freshman that's come in. He's big, long and athletic. He's so mature for his age. He's one of the more advanced freshmen I've seen in a really long time."

Sterling is a Treasure Coast product that was rated a three-star recruit by 247Sports and received nine offers including FIU. He chose to stay in Florida.

Along with Sterling, 2023 team interceptions leader CJ Christian is sure to make an impact after also posting 55 total tackles, 35 solo tackles, 20 assisted tackles and two tackles for loss. After only playing in five games in 2022, he came back and only missed one in 2023.

The rest of the defense will begin to shape up once a clear depth chart is established, but the defensive line certainly has some names like Jeramy Passmore and Quaylen Hill who can be the man in the middle when running with the three-four scheme. The edge rushers have also impressed with Keegan Davis and Eddie Walls III having had the most success getting to the quarterback.