Alignment, Assignment, Read & Technique

GREENVILLE, N.C. – After spending the last three seasons as a special teams analyst at SMU, Daric Riley came to ECU in January to work with the safeties, and he's been busy helping implement a new defensive scheme ever since.

Defensive coordinator David Blackwell joined the Pirates about a month earlier and quickly began the transition to a faster, more attacking style. Riley, who played his college ball at Charleston Southern and has extensive coaching experience in the secondary, boils what he's trying to do down to four things.

"If you can break it down to alignment, assignment, read and technique, you're going to win a lot of football games," he said.

Before SMU, Riley coached special teams and outside linebackers at UAB in 2014 and at Jacksonville (Ala.) State in 2013. He led the secondary at Newberry (S.C.) College in 2011-12 after four years as a graduate assistant at Clemson.

The players he has to work with at ECU, at both the safety positions and at nickelback, have helped the transition go as smoothly as possible.

Marcus Holton, Jr., is holding down the field safety spot, which is called the Pirate safety in the new scheme, with true freshman Daniel Charles pushing him. Charles also swings over to the free safety, or boundary safety position, joining Davondre Robinson, Nolan Johnson and Rowe Mellott.

Holton is making the move to safety after previously playing on the corner. The senior came to ECU as a junior college transfer last year and saw action in eight games, including three starts. Eleven of his 13 stops came against American Athletic Conference opponents. He had four tackles in the Purple-Gold Game.

"The adjustment was a little hard at first during the spring when I first did the switch, but coach Riley helped me a lot with the scheme and I picked it up fast," Holton said. "It's a whole lot different and more attacking, but as a secondary player you've still got to be able to move around and make quick decisions."

Devon Sutton, Tim Irvin and Myles Berry play at nickelback, splitting their time at practice between Riley, cornerbacks coach Brandon Lynch and Blackwell. They work on coverage and man schemes with Riley and Lynch, and defending the run with Blackwell, who also is in charge of the linebackers.

"That's kind of how the nickels have been fit in," Riley said. "They're being group-coached, buddy-coached by all of us, really."

Sutton, a senior, is the team's leading returning tackler, having totaled 68 (31 solo) last year as he played in all 12 games with 10 starts. He tied a career-best with 10 stops against BYU, and also finished the season with 5.5 tackles for loss, one sack, one forced fumble and three pass breakups.

He said the transition has been seamless for him.

"We're not only a faster defense, we're a lot faster defense than we were all-around last year, from the defensive line to the safeties to the linebackers," Sutton said. "Everybody's playing extremely fast, and that's not just physically, it's mentally. We're making calls fast and we're making checks fast. "

"Devon and Marcus have been great," Riley said. "They're great leaders and great individuals. Just by being good people, they fall right in line with what we're trying to do. And really, there hasn't been one player on either side of the ball who has been negative in any way. They're all thirsty and hungry to learn, so that's been really helpful for all of us."

Irvin, a junior who was named All-AAC by Phil Steel's College Football Preview Magazine, should vie for more conference honors after the season. Injuries limited him to six games last year, but he still finished with 29 tackles (20 solo). He sat out in 2016 after transferring from Auburn, where he opened his true freshman season in 2015 as a starter in the nickel package.

Berry, Johnson and Charles are freshmen and joined the program in the spring, Charles as an invited walk-on. Charles had four tackles (one for loss) in the Purple-Gold Game, while Johnson had two tackles in the game and was named the "Top Defensive Newcomer" at the end of spring practice. Berry had two tackles in the spring finale, one of which was a 7-yard sack.

•The Pirates had a slightly abbreviated workout Friday morning at the Cliff Moore Practice Facility, going in helmets ahead of their first scrimmage Saturday on Bagwell Field inside Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

"Today was simply a situational football day," head coach Scottie Montgomery said. "We started backed up, then we moved to the strike zone, then we moved to the red zone, then we moved to goal line going in, and then we talked about situations in overtime. Today was the day where we nailed down some key details going into tomorrow."

Practice ended on a lighter note with a punt-catching contest between the offensive and defensive lines. Garrett McGhin showed off the hands of a former first baseman in baseball and gave the offense a 2-1 lead after a 3-2 win over Bennett Boateng in the third round, but Michael Swift tied it up for the defense with a 3-2 win over Fernando Frye in the fourth and final round.

It went to a tiebreaker between offensive line coach Don Mahoney and defensive line coach Rod Wright. Mahoney caught all three of his punts before Wright dropped his first to give the win to the offense.

The defense had to do an across-the-field-and-back sprint for earning runner-up status.

"We always do that at the end of this day of camp to kind of get people relaxed a little bit," Montgomery said. "It was good to see all the coaches participate in the gassers."

- Joe Corley

Players Mentioned

Myles Berry

Bennett Boateng

Daniel Charles

Fernando Frye

Marcus Holton, Jr.

Tim Irvin

Nolan Johnson

Garrett McGhin

Rowe Mellott

Davondre Robinson

Devon Sutton

Michael Swift

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