{"id":4653,"date":"2015-07-01T22:32:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T04:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyonation.com\/?p=4653"},"modified":"2015-07-01T22:32:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T04:32:41","slug":"position-preview-defensive-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/position-preview-defensive-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Position Preview: Defensive Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wyoming<\/a>

Wyoming defensive end Eddie Yarbrough interrupts the backfield while Utah State’s Kent Myers attempts a pass. Yarbrough is a pre-season 1st team All-MW selection. (Photo via Ryan Dorgan\/Casper Star Tribune)<\/p><\/div>\n

Position Preview: Offensive Line<\/p>\n

Games are won and lost in the trenches.\u00a0 That could really explain why our beloved Cowboys ended with a record of 4-8.\u00a0 Our defensive line, to be brief, was not as good as advertised.\u00a0 Going into 2014, we had an All-Mountain West defensive end, several returning starters along with their production. This year, we get an opportunity to build on that.<\/p>\n

Wyoming\u2019s defensive line was slow to gel in 2014.\u00a0 In the first half of the season, the entire team amassed just 4 sacks.\u00a0 We have to take into account the quality of competition for a couple of the games.\u00a0 To be fair, Michigan State and Oregon had two of the best offenses in the nation coupled with good offensive lines.\u00a0 We were also playing from behind a good portion of the time.<\/p>\n

The second half, however, the defensive line started to come together.\u00a0 In the last 6 games of the season, they more than doubled the production of the first half sack total.\u00a0 There could be a lot of\u00a0 factors.\u00a0 The competition wasn\u2019t as good, it took us a few weeks to get into true \u201cgame shape\u201d and the development of first year starters along the front four.<\/p>\n

This year gives us a lot to look forward to.\u00a0 For the second consecutive year, Eddie Yarbrough is a preseason All-Mountain West Conference player.\u00a0 Even though he only had four sacks last year, he was second on the team in tackles and was spotted flying all over the field.\u00a0 Second year starters Siaosi Hala\u2019api\u2019api and Uso Olive bring a lot of Polynesian fire to the field and we should expect to see better production from each of them.<\/p>\n

The toughest job anyone will have will be Chase Appleby, who has to fill the shoes of Patrick Mertens in the trenches.\u00a0 Appleby, who appeared in all 12 games last season, has to be able to find a way to have a bigger impact this season.\u00a0 The best thing about his game is that in limited time, he led all defensive lineman in pass break ups in the 2014 season.\u00a0 The four of these men working together should free up our linebacking core to fly around the field and make plays.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not worried about our defensive line production.\u00a0 According to CFB Matrix, we are returning 49 starts. That number is good enough for number three in the MWC. I truly believe that one of our defensive tackles, either Appleby or Olive, will be an all-conference player.\u00a0 Bringing back three starters will be huge, particularly because it\u2019ll be the second year in Coach Bohl\u2019s system. Expect big things from our front four this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Position Preview: Offensive Line Games are won and lost in the trenches.\u00a0 That could really explain why our beloved Cowboys ended with a record of 4-8.\u00a0 Our defensive line, to be brief, was not as good as advertised.\u00a0 Going into 2014, we had an All-Mountain West defensive end, several returning starters along with their production. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[687,116,214,688,513,686,31],"class_list":["post-4653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wyoblog","tag-chase-appleby","tag-eddie-yarbrough","tag-mountain-west","tag-patrick-mertens","tag-siaosi-halaapiapi","tag-uso-olive","tag-wyoming-cowboys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}