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Big four linebackers anchor Auburn’s defense

AUBURN | Travis Williams is in a enviable position as he begins his second year as Auburn’s linebacker coach. He returns an experienced and talented position group that can stack up to just about any set of linebackers in the country.

Senior Tre’ Williams and juniors Deshaun Davis and Darrell Williams return with 34 starts between them. Junior Montavious Atkinson has played in 22 games with one start over the last two seasons.

“I feel like we have really good depth at linebacker,” Davis said. “He can rotate those four guys any kind of way he wants to and however he wants to put them on the field and we won't lose sleep at all because we know they're going to go execute and play hard for the defense.”

Davis and Buck Jeff Holland team up on a tackle in the A-Day game.
Davis and Buck Jeff Holland team up on a tackle in the A-Day game. (Robin Conn/AuburnSports.com)

The Tigers essentially have four starters at a position that often just has two players on the field at one time with the defense playing with a nickel around 80 percent of the snaps.

“For instance, God forbid if me and Deshaun were to get injured or anything, we could still have confidence in those two guys. That's what I really like about it,” Tre’ Williams said. “We can put anybody together. You can put me and Monte, me and Deshaun, me and Darrell, Darrell and Monte. You can put anybody together and the defense will not change.”

Atkinson has the least experience of the quartet but may be the most improved linebacker from this spring.

“This year he’s kind of taking himself to another level of having a better IQ of the game, reacting to different things more cause he knows the defense more than he did last year. He should be able to contribute more,” Darrell Williams said.

The depth and experience has given the whole group the confidence that they can be even better this fall.

“We really are just building on the great things we accomplished last year, we just want to take that next step, take everything to another level,” Darrell Williams said. “That was just one year under coach T-Will. You can see his enthusiasm on being an even better coach than what he was. What can we do to get to the next level?”

And that confidence doesn’t stop with the linebacker position. It’s a mentality that has spread to the entire defense.

“Of course, the standards are supposed to be high,” Davis said. “Last year’s defense is last year’s defense. We have a lot of guys back that played really good football for our defense last year, so we want to build on last year. We don’t want to be anything like last year’s defense. We want to be better.”

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