When Hugh Freeze was hired as Liberty’s head football coach entering the 2019 season, he hired an unknown and unproven (at the FBS level) defensive coordinator in Scott Symons. The majority of Symons’ experience prior to his time in Lynchburg came at the Division II level.
It didn’t take long for Symons and the Liberty defense to show tremendous improvement. A unit that gave up over 30 points and 450 yards of offense each game against an FCS schedule in 2017, the Flames have seen those numbers drop each of the past three seasons. This past year, Liberty’s defense held opponents to 21.5 points and 320.2 yards per game.
Others took notice of that success and Symons was hired not far from his hometown as defensive coordinator at SMU. He took Liberty cornerback coach Rickey Hunley, and Coach Freeze was forced to rebuild his defensive staff.
He turned to defensive line coach Josh Aldridge and safeties coach Jack Curtis who have both been promoted to co-defensive coordinator. Each have coordinator experience in their past, and now they will come together to lead the Liberty defense in 2022. Aldridge has also moved from coaching the defensive line to the linebackers, and the Flames hired Jeremy Garrett to take over at defensive line and Darius Eubanks to coach the defensive backs.
“You’re not going to see a ton of difference in our defense,” Aldridge said earlier this spring. “You may see a different frequency of some things. It will be very similar to how it’s been the past three years.”
The coaching staff is still working through all the ins and outs as to how the defensive coordinator responsibilities will be divided up between Aldridge and Curtis. Aldridge will continue to coach on the sidelines during the games while Curtis will be in the booth. Aldridge has some experience coaching linebackers previously, and he says making that switch will help him with his new responsibilities.
“That was a big part of why I felt like I needed to move to linebacker,” he said. “It’s hard to call the game when you coach a group of 20 people. I think that will help coaching less guys.”
The entire defensive staff will help put together the game play, with Aldridge primarily dealing with the front end of the defense and Curtis will the back end before putting it all together. It will be similar to how Freeze and the offense handles game planning and play calling with it being situation-ally based on down and distance and areas of the field.
“There are some new things that we have installed on defense this year that is pretty foreign to our players at this particular point in time,” Curtis said. “We’ve done a pretty good job of adjusting. It’s very difficult against our offense because of the amount of high tempo and the amount of motions and shifts that we get. I think sometimes when we get into a game on Saturday it will be like stealing because the adjustments will be easier.”
While the Flames won’t be looking at completely changing the defense that Symons installed, there will certainly be some tweaks and some new calls.
“If you go back and look at it, our numbers were outstanding, but you’re always looking to improve in football,” Curtis said. “You never have it. The game changes, the game personnel changes. You’re always looking for ways to get better and how to highlight our play-makers and what were our problems and how do we get them corrected.”
In looking back at film from the 2021 season, Curtis and Aldridge both agreed that one of the biggest weaknesses for the defensive was the amount of explosive plays given up in the passing game. They have put together some new schemes to help combat that in 2022.
“We believe in spreading the stress,” Curtis said. “(Last year), the corners were stressed to the max. They were playing either cover three or man three almost every single snap last year and in one-on-one situations. So, how do we look at getting those guys some help? There are some situations where we can play two high safeties, play a little cloud. It gives those corners a break. When you’re doing that, you’re stressing possibly the linebackers or you’re stressing the D-Line.”
“We’ve talked during this off-season about spreading the stress,” Curtis continued. “Not every call can have all the stress on the corners and just hope we hold up in the passing game.”
By looking to spread the stress and take some of that stress off the corners, the Flames will likely put more stress on their defensive line in certain situations. The defensive line has been built over the past few seasons to take on that stress. Under Aldridge and Freeze, Liberty has recruited the defensive line hard and built that unit up to one of the best on the team.
Freeze is confident in the defensive coaching staff and their plan moving forward. He also thinks the defense will not skip a beat from the progress they have made over the past three years despite having a change at defensive coordinator.
“Exactly who’s going to call what will be arranged in the game plan,” Freeze said of his Co-Defensive Coordinators. “I trust both of them. They have the personalities that doesn’t have ego. They want what’s best for our program, our kids. Really impressed thus far with the way they are working together.”
