The Eastern football team retained almost all of its starters on defense from the 2018 season.

Unlike the offense, which is replacing nine of 11 starters, the defensive unit is welcoming back eight of its starters from a year ago.

The secondary remains largely unchanged for the Eastern defense with defensive backs Mark Williams, Raymond Crittenden and Izaiah Gulley returning.

The linebacking unit returns mainstays Dytarious Johnson and Joe Caputo from a season ago, so the defense looks very familiar to what it did a year ago almost across the board, except for one area: the defensive line.

Eastern’s four-man defensive line is replacing three of its starters from last season.

Defensive ends Josh Price and Levi Watson, who were third and fifth on the team in tackles, respectively, both graduated. Taylon Shepard, the defensive tackle who spent last season beside all-conference tackle Terrell Greer, also graduated.

Eastern is losing two dynamic pass rushers who had a knack for finding the ball carrier in Price and Watson, and a run-stopping force in Shephard.

That leaves Greer, the preseason all-conference bowling ball (he stands at just 5 foot 10 but weighs 305 pounds) of a defensive tackle, as the only returning starter to that unit.

The defense, particularly the pass rush in 2018, struggled mightily throughout the season, and by the end of the schedule, Eastern’s defense ranked second-to-last in the conference.

That is why replacing three starters on the defensive line may not be as scary as it sounds for Eastern because the replacements are pretty confident in themselves, and they certainly are not concerned with talking about the 2018 season.

Redshirt-sophomore Austin Johnson is taking over one of the vacant defensive end positions for Eastern.

In 2018 he played in just four games and took a redshirt season. D’Mitri George, another redshirt-sophomore, will occupy the other defensive tackle spot for Eastern this season. He played in all 11 games in 2018, making two starts.

Ronell Deo, who played in six games for Eastern last season, will move to the interior to play alongside Greer.

That gives Eastern a defensive line of Austin Johnson, Deo, Greer and George, rotating at tackle, and Dytarious Johnson playing an end/linebacker hybrid position.

Sophomore Skylar Mayes will also be in the rotation with freshmen Cameron Leach and Charlie Brooks.

“I feel like the new unit, we’re definitely confident,” Austin Johnson said. “Even with our (second unit) coming in we have a lot of guys that can do something, we have a lot of young guys that can play.”

George echoed what Johnson said, saying that a strong offseason put in by the returning players and strong coaching of the new guys has all the units of the defensive line looking good.

“I think (defensive line coach Deonte Gibson) has done a good job of developing (the younger players) quickly, but not too quickly, because I feel like once the (first unit) moves off the field the (second unit) is ready to step up and we don’t want to step down at any type of level,” George said.

The new defensive line already has one game under its belt to assess where it is at, a 24-10 loss to Chattanooga Aug. 29.

The defense, largely thanks to a strong showing from Greer, held Chattanooga to just 94 yards rushing, a great sign moving forward considering how weak Eastern’s run defense was last season.

“Terrell was a force and his statistics did not speak to the type of game he had,” Cushing said. “He was dominant in his matchups, he was a force in the backfield, he was the reason that our run defense was so sound. Not because he was making the plays, but because he was knocking people off, he was moving the line of scrimmage the other way and everyone else was showing up and doing their job.”

The Eastern defense did surrender a couple of large passing plays to Chattanooga in the loss, which Cushing said was the result of the pass rush not getting to the quarterback quick enough. This lead Cushing to say that the defensive line in week one did “OK.”S

“They need to do better and I think they know that; I think that’s what they’re hungry for,” Cushing said. “I think we were fairly consistent, it’s just those couple of plays didn’t affect him enough where maybe that ball is a little behind and the guy trailing him can make that tackle.”

Hungry the defensive line is indeed, and hungry it is to bring a quarterback down for a sack, especially.

Dating back to 2018, it has been three games since Eastern has recorded a sack.

And while sacks do not tell the whole story of defensive line production, Eastern still wants to put a quarterback on his back.

“Last season, we can’t really go off that, it’s a new game, new team and so moving forward that is one of our biggest goals right now is to get that first sack going,” Austin Johnson said. “Luckily it’s only game two of the season so we have a long way to go before we can make (a sack) happen, hopefully it’s going to happen this Saturday.”

Eastern plays Indiana on the road Saturday at 2 p.m. The defensive line starters for that game are Austin Johnson, Terrell Greer and Dytarious Johnson.

JJ Bullock can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].