Former Auburn DC Kevin Steele describes the challenge of defending Brock Bowers
By Keith Farner
Published:
Kevin Steele, the former Auburn defensive coordinator, has faced situations in his career like the Alabama defensive staff faces on Monday. How to defend Georgia’s star tight end Brock Bowers?
“It’s really hard,” Steele said during an appearance on “McElroy and Cubelic In the morning” on WJOX out of Birmingham, Alabama. “Now the first thing would be, now who is on the field with him. So how you defend him if he’s got another tight end out there … The plays they do out of that normally allow you to match things a little bit easier.”
Bowers has had a special season. He’s Georgia’s leading receiver with 52 catches for 846 yards and 12 TDs, and owns the UGA records for single-season receptions (52), receiving yards (846) and TDs (12) by a tight end.
The unique nature of Bowers, as Steele pointed out, is that he could be an inline tight end on one play, but he’a wide receiver on another play, then he’s in the backfield technically as a fullback on yet another.
“That makes it really hard to get the right guy on him,” Steele said. “So you get a real headache of if you’re putting the Star on him, to cover him, well he’s going to get banged around. Then you put the safety on him and now he becomes an edge blocker and he can block the safety, that’s an issue. So then you take the money backer and put him on him. Well he can force the run on him and hold up against the run, but now if he runs any kind of upfield route, or intermediate route, he can’t cover him in a foot race. So it becomes a major headache of how to get the right guy on him based on what they’re doing with him.”
Former @AuburnFootball DC @coach_ksteele joined @MacandCube to discuss @AlabamaFTBL‘s tough task of defending @Georgiafootball TE Brock Bowers in the National Championship. pic.twitter.com/GKGjshYJsO
— WJOX 94.5 FM (@WJOX945) January 7, 2022
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
