It seems LSU is trying to shutdown the scheme offenses that come and go like spread/wildcat. You have the success of Florida and Ole Miss and don't forget Utah, Boise, and Hawaii which basically most colleges are starting to implement some type of set in their offense with these options. Well, the only way to counter that is more speed on defense, basically convert your speed guys safeties to LBs and use LBs as DEs. So, although Jones might be getting bigger for a safety in the overall scheme if they are playing smaller guys at LBs than you have greater overall speed on the field... ie having Coleman play at LB. You are drastically increasing the overall speed of the defense without drastically decreasing the size... make bigger safeties LBs, than the LBs have a better chance of staying with spread offenses. To me to counter the spread, you need more overall speed on the field and greater arm reach ie Mingo and Sam Montgomery, LBs that can cover large portions of the field. Eventually, just like all football schemes, the spread and wildcat will go the way of the dinosaur because defenses will start to counter... then Florida will be looking for a new coach. So, to me that is the reason you seeing larger DBs... slightly increase the size of your DBs, but replace all the larger LBs with DBs. Drasically improved defense speed but barely sacrifice overall defense size. I would expect all other colleges to start to move in this direction as more teams move to spread/wildcat schemes.
