Who steps up in the defensive backfield for Clemson football?
The 2020 Clemson football team is one of the favorites to win the National Championship for a reason, but the Tigers have some inexperience in the secondary.
For the first time in quite a while, Clemson will be looking to replace three starters from the previous year’s defensive backfield. Both starting safeties- Tanner Muse and K’Von Wallace– as well as a starting cornerback in A.J. Terrell are all gone. When you add in the fact that spectacular Nickel/SAM Isaiah Simmons has also moved on to the NFL, you can easily see why there may be a few concerns heading into the 2020 Clemson football season.
Despite the relative lack of inexperience, though, there is plenty of talent in this Clemson football defensive backfield.
It’s ‘next man up’ for the Clemson football DBs
First, let’s begin with the returners. Many underestimate or simply forget about Derion Kendrick returning to fill his role one of the starting cornerbacks.
Kendrick showed his mentality and pure-coverage ability during the 2019 season and he’s going to be tasked with becoming the Tigers’ top coverage option this time around. There’s no reason to believe he won’t excel.
Kendrick is extremely athletic, shows great physicality and takes pride in shutting wide receivers down. In my opinion, he has the ability to turn into that ‘Mackensie Alexander‘ type corner who absolutely shuts down his man all day long when the Tigers take the field.
Alongside Kendrick, Nolan Turner will return and will take over one of the starting spots at safety. Turner played starter-level reps last year and now he’ll be tasked with becoming a leader on the backend of the defense.
And then there’s the competition for the final two starting spots.
At one cornerback spot, we’re going to see a three-man battle between Mario Goodrich, Andrew Booth Jr. and Sheridan Jones. All three of these guys were highly-rated prospects entering the Clemson football program and will provide good depth at the position no matter who wins out the starter role.
At the safety spot, it seems that sophomore Lannden Zanders has the inside-track, but he’ll battle with the likes of Joseph Charleston and Ray Thornton during fall camp.
And, finally, we’ve got some talented incomers. At safety, Clemson has 4-star RJ Mickens and 3-star Tyler Venables- the son of Defensive Coordinator Brent Venables. At corner, the Tigers are bringing in 5-star Fred Davis- who drove rave reviews in the spring- as well as 4-star Malcolm Greene.
The overarching conclusion? While there may be some inexperience in the secondary, there’s no reason to believe that the Tigers won’t have answers with the amount of talent and depth that they’ll have at their disposal this upcoming season.