DT Ben Frye: Duke Defense Is Young But Impressive Up the Middle
While the interrupted spring practice and offseason has had an impact on Duke’s offense, defensive tackle Ben Frye points out that the defense is also showing the effects.
“Each position, COVID has definitely stopped momentum and growth,” he said, “especially for our youngsters, guys who are trying to learn a lot of new techniques coming out of high school. I think it definitely interrupted a lot of that. As far as defense goes, it might be … we don’t have to remember a bunch of routes, but we’ve got to recognize schemes. We’ve got to know the plays. I think we’ve had a good amount of time to recognize that. We had a good camp, even though it was interrupted and different. We got the same amount of work in. We utilized the Zoom calls in the offseason.”
Duke’s defense features young players, particularly up the middle. Behind Frye are two sophomore linebackers in Rocky Shelton and Shaka Heyward. Frye has been impressed with their work through two games.
“Awesome,” he said of Heyward. “He plays a position where he’s a guy that can make a lot of staple plays. He’s the center of our defense. To have a big physical guy who can track things down, as fast as he is, as big as he is. He’s a big physical guy. He makes our jobs that much easier. Yeah, both our guys are young. I think especially this early on, they’re showing some big things, playing really mature, really aggressive. That’s all we really need. Play aggressive, everything else comes after that.”
Frye is a redshirt junior. He and senior Derrick Tangelo are the only non-freshmen among the six tackles listed on Duke’s depth chart. Redshirt freshmen Christian Rorie and DeWayne Carter are backups, with true freshen Aeneas Peebles and Gary Smith III behind them.
“We’ve got a lot of younger defensive tackles,” Frye said. “Those guys are pretty physically mature as well. They’re big physical guys. We all feel comfortable with them coming in and getting just as many reps as we are, being able to handle the job and performing just as well as us. They’re going to keep coming along as the season progresses and make big-time plays.”
