The insistence of featuring small highly athletic DTs plagued the defense throughout most of Franklin’s tenure. Mustipher was an exception (never the same again after the injury), but other than him it was mostly smaller athletic DTs. That style worked very well to beat lesser competition, but if stronger conference opponents wanted to run the ball down our throats nearly every down to put us away like Michigan in 2023 or Illinois in 2021, they could do so. We always feared in big games we would start wearing down in the fourth quarter. The twitchy guys are fine if paired with a large DT.
