Matt Brock is taking the UConn defense in a new direction

The Huskies are looking at a scheme change as Jim Mora filled one of the glaring holes on this team.

It is not normal for the defensive coordinator position to be open for two full seasons, but that was the case with UConn football, until now.

Going into a 2024 season where the expectation is movement in the right direction, Jim Mora and his staff, including new defensive coordinator Matt Brock, are providing a necessary boost to morale this offseason.

They’re showing a willingness to evolve along with the college football landscape around them.

Brock brings a new scheme which will be a departure from what the team was running previously. He’ll have full control of the defense and staff, he said. It seems clear he wasn’t hired to be an extension of Mora but to bring something new to the program.

In his first interview with local media, Brock shared that Mora’s interest in him despite their schematic differences gave him confidence about the opportunity in Storrs.

“What we do is a pretty significant difference from what they had done,” Brock said. “But [Mora’s] willingness to embrace that and get energized by it, that gave me faith.”

Mora and his staff have also made moves in the transfer portal, where much more established talent is heading to Storrs this offseason compared to last. They’ve hired a general manager and director of player personnel to continue improvement on that front and hired a new director of strength and conditioning from Mississippi State, where Brock was also working last year.

Here’s what to expect from the new DC.

Who is Matt Brock?

Matt Brock spent the last four seasons at Mississippi State, where he was promoted to defensive coordinator last season by then-head coach Zach Arnett.

Brock previously coached linebackers and special teams in Starkville under Arnett and the late Mike Leach and held similar roles at Washington State and Bowling Green before that.

At Mississippi State, Brock assumed playcalling duties during their bowl game in 2022. He comes to UConn with over a season’s worth of experience making calls for the Bulldogs. Arnett was fired with two games left in the 2023 season, making Brock a free agent.

“I think a place like UConn fits the kind of places I’ve been already,” Brock said. “You gotta do a good job of trying to evaluate and develop a unit that thrives on doing the things you can control well. You may not always be the most talented unit but you better be the hardest-playing, toughest, most physical defensive unit you can create.”

In his college days, Brock was an all-conference linebacker at Baker University, an NAIA school where he also started his coaching career as a graduate assistant. From there he spent one year as a quality control coach at Texas Tech before being promoted to inside linebackers coach.

While at Bowling Green, he was one of 56 nominees for the 2017 Broyles Award, given to the nation’s top assistant coach.

“I’ve drawn from everybody going back to my high school coach… I moved on to a college program that we were able to turn around… I worked with guys like Kliff Kingsbury, who I thought always did a good job of relating to players… Mike Leach’s consistent messaging and his expectation within the organization, I’ll always appreciate… Defensively, Zach Arnett, I worked for him the last four years… I’ve drawn from him on defensive philosophy and how to attack people.”

While a schematic change like this typically takes a few years to fully implement, Brock has indicated a willingness to work with the talent on hand.

“There’s no magic pill,” he explained. “Ultimately this is a player’s game… It’s our job to put them in a position to be successful, demand it…recruit, all those things that make a good program.”

What is the scheme?

It’s called the 3-3-5, a schematic choice that allows defenses to be “multiple” (the coaching buzzword of the decade) while having the best possible athletes on the field.

With three down linemen, three linebackers, and five defensive backs, the scheme features two hybrid positions, one at linebacker, and a nickel back or “middle safety,” as Brock called it.

“The first things that jump out to me schematically is that it's just so flexible," Brock told the Clarion Ledger in 2020. "You can get so many different looks, and it's not that complex for our players. But yet from the opposing offense's view, there's a lot there to prepare for."

Strategically, it’s a defense that makes sense for UConn in a few ways. The 3-3-5 has been known to be an answer to spread passing offenses, a concept that almost all teams use in some form.

From a recruiting standpoint, if traditional beefy tackles and taller edge rushers are being sought out by major (wealthier) programs, then some great DE/DT and DE/LB tweeners might be available for programs like UConn to recruit and offer a place to shine. A DB/LB tweener who’s either a step slow or not big enough to get a look from the top of the P4 could find a good-fit opportunity in this style of defense.

The defense has also been successful. Arnett, who brought the 3-3-5 to Mississippi State, has said that keeping offenses on their toes by mixing up the numbers on the line of scrimmage and unpredictable stunts and shifts contributed to his teams’ defensive success.

The Bulldogs’ “bend but don’t break” approach with six players in the box made them susceptible to the run but overall their defenses performed well.

Though the team finished 5-7 and 72nd in the country in overall efficiency last year, the Bulldogs were stronger defensively, ranked 49th in the country in FEI compared to an offense ranked 104th. The previous season, they finished 9-4 with the 14th-ranked defense and 14th overall ranking in FEI.

What does this mean for UConn?

Husky fans may recall a recent failed attempt to move to this defense when Randy Edsall took over in 2017 and hired Villanova’s Billy Crocker to be his defensive coordinator.

That didn’t go well, but it doesn’t mean it can’t work out for UConn this time. It should be fair to say that the shift to the 3-3-5 is not the reason things got so bad during that era…

Anyway, after a solid 2022, UConn’s front seven felt the departures of Ian Swenson and Brandon Bouyer-Randle in 2023, and Travis Jones from the year before, while the secondary suffered in part due to transfer defections. This year, Jackson Mitchell, Eric Watts, and a handful of other key contributors are moving on.

Some reinforcements have arrived, and one has to imagine Brock will lead the charge in the next portal window to add some more talent to fit his scheme.

Brock mentioned two unique positions — the hybrid linebacker and hybrid defensive back — that some players on the current roster may fit. But he’ll almost certainly want to bring in more guys to compete for playing time. No spot on the depth chart is safe.

Outlook

Changes are afoot within UConn football. Despite last year’s setback, the success of 2022 offers some hope that this coaching regime has what it takes to repair the downtrodden reputation of the program.

This offseason’s moves, including the talent added through the portal and multiple staff changes, show that the program and athletic department leadership are making sensible investments to push this in the right direction.

They have a long way back to FBS respectability but hope springs eternal as we get ready for spring football and to perhaps hear a few UConn players’ names called in the NFL Draft.