Gators discuss Trey Dean's struggle at nickel
GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Trey Dean's transition to nickel, Star from corner has not gone smoothly.
The defensive back has struggled this season and has seen his snaps diminish over the course of the last few games. He has also received a lot of heat from the fan base.
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"A lot of people don’t understand how hard that position is," cornerback CJ Henderson said. "We just try to encourage and pick him. We’re there for him. We told him to keep pushing and keep getting better."
Jeremiah Moon, Marco Wilson and Amari Burney has seen more and more reps at nickel, while Dean is sidelined.
Although the sophomore has seen his playing time diminish, the staff remains confident in his abilities.
"You look at him, his skill set really fits that position,"Florida head coach Dan Mullen said. "It’s just going to be him making sure he executes clean, more than his physical ability."
"When you look at Trey, Trey’s a very competitive guy, very passionate guy," added defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. "He’s a guy that we were able to win 10 games with as an outside player. This year we’re actually 7-2 with him as inside player. We’ve won seven games with him this year. We’ll continue to work and develop him and kind of get him in the right spot."
Dean took bad angles in the loss to Georgia last weekend, and the Bulldogs smelled blood- often targeting the young defensive back early.
According to his fellow teammates, the Star position is just a difficult position to grasp.
"Well the Star’s probably the hardest position on the field for our defense, especially," safety Donovan Stiner said. "First of all the Star sets our defense, so people have to line up based on Trey and stuff like that and he has a lot of running responsibility as well as covering. A lot of stuff to remember. He has to blitz, he has to cover, he has to fill in the runs. He has to do all type of stuff like that. So it’s a hard position. A lot of stuff to remember, and he’s a young player still learning.
"He’s growing into it and he’s getting better every week. I see he’s getting a lot of heat like you said, but I think as time goes he’s just going to continue to mature and get better and he’s the type of player that he’s a competitor so he won’t allow himself to get down. He’ll keep getting better."
Grantham, on the other hand, does not seem to agree.
"It’s not steep. It’s shorter zones, things happen quicker sometimes because you’re closer to the ball. It’s like any sport, the closer you get to the ball the quicker things happen," Grantham said. "But from a learning position, it’s not really, I mean, if you’re the flat player you have first to the flat. If you’re the hook player, you’re going to stay inside of two, so there’s concepts there that you can break it down to about three or four things and you put all your techniques into that, and then you just kind of react and play relative to what you see."
Although Stiner, Henderson and Grantham may not agree about how complicated the position is to learn, one can see that Dean is struggling.
Could this mean a change is coming moving forward?