Florida Gators hire former Auburn DC Ron Roberts as executive head coach for defense, co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach

[Escambia94]

Florida Gators hire former Auburn DC as executive head coach for defense, co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. Roberts is an experienced defensive coach with a year of experience as defensive coordinator at Auburn, 2 years as defensive coordinator at Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana, 11 years as a head coach at Delta State and Southeastern Louisiana, and 3 years as defensive coordinator at Baylor.

1990–1993	Houston HS (TN) (DC)
1994–1996	Burroughs HS (CA)
1997	Greensboro (DC)
1998–2002	Tusculum (DC)
2003	Texas State (DC)
2004	Mt. Whitney HS (CA)
2005–2006	Delta State (DC)
2007–2011	Delta State
2012–2017	Southeastern Louisiana
2018–2019	Louisiana (DC)
2020–2022	Baylor (DC/ILB)
2023–2024	Auburn (DC)

 

[Escambia94]

Ron Roberts is often credited as being one of the big innovators of modern defense. His 4-2-5 base defense was developed to simultaneously combat the spread offense and RPOs. Ron Roberts, Austin Armstrong, and Patrick Toney all use a defense that is multiple on the front end (six men in the box) and the back end (five defenders) with all the boundary corners and Star (cornerback/ outside linebacker hybrid) all capable of playing "creeper" and stacking the box against the run while maintaining speed necessary to fill the RPO passing lanes.

A typical Rob Roberts defense will use a heavy box (7 men) on 1st down to stop the run or short RPO, then shift to 4-1-6 (light box, 7 men in the secondary) to cut off the deep pass on 2nd or 3rd and long. Austin Armstrong's version is more aggressive with the pass rush, which did not work out well with weak linebackers. This year the Gators went heavy with linebackers.