Tony Gibson: "Our Standard On Defense Has Been Established"
NC State defensive coordinator Tony Gibson met with the media to discuss his defense and the start of spring practice.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the interview.
“I see a lot of guys eager to learn. There’s a lot of guys we’re counting on who haven’t been in that role.”
“I like what I see right now. We’re getting great effort.”
“It’s been great. [Davin Vann] has done a great job all winter long and in workouts... then you have Devon Betty who has helped him with that kind of stuff... Boykin, Aydan White. We have some vets to help him out, but he’s taken that lead role.”
“It’s good to see him be in that leadership role.”
“Corner is a competition right now. We have three guys we feel really good about and working some other guys in. We have to find out who is going to be in that two-deep.”
“Linebacker, losing two starters there, there will be a lot of competition.”
“We have competition all over the place... safety, nickel. We have a lot of holes to fill and feel like we’ve done a great job recruiting our needs.”
“Sean is very smart. He’s a physical player, so let’s put him in a position to do what he does best, and what he does best is tackle people... he gives us a little experience in the box. He’s done it a little at free safety but now he’s doing it everyday.”
“Our standard on defense has been established since 2020 when we took over. They know our expectations. We’re going to play a certain way or they aren’t going to play for us. They need to transfer and get out of here if they aren’t going to play physical and fast.”
“My goal is we’re going to be better next year than we were last year.”
“I said last year I expected the 2023 defense to be just as good and at the end of the year we were.”
“We’ll keep getting better. Where we’re different is in the back-end. I think we have more depth in our back-end than we’ve ever had.”
“Bishop, Terrente has moved to safety, Zack Myers has done a good job. Brody Barnhardt and Daemon Fagan... it’s those guys time to step up and win a job.”
“The good thing with Brandon is he’s very smart. He’s football savvy. He can play corner, nickel... he can do some good things for us.”
“What I like about [Devon Marshall] is he can play nickel, he can play corner... Villanova’s defensive staff was here last year with us and spent three or four days learning our scheme, ran a lot of our stuff. When he went in the portal the first call we got was from their coordinator who said here’s a guy who fits what you do and we’ll help all we can to get him to you guys.”
“You get friends in this profession, guys you trust, guys who run similar stuff and you want to learn from each other.”
“It gives more teams an opportunity. You don’t have to be perfect... the ultimate goal is all we want to be in that playoff, get a piece of that pie, and see what happens.”