DE James Thompson Jr. could be poised for a big season
Madison — Wisconsin’s new defensive line coach Gregg Scruggs gave a brutally honest assessment of the Badgers’ defensive line room upon meeting them this winter.
“Just in case you wanted to get comfortable, understand we got some things we gotta get straight first,” he told his players. “Here is what the numbers were, here is what we have returning in the room, y'all let me know if this looks good to y’all.”
“No? Okay cool, let's go put on the cleats and get to work.”
Scruggs is right — Wisconsin’s defensive line returns experience, but not a whole lot of production. The eight linemen not named Keeanu Benton last season accounted for four sacks and 55 tackles combined.
The defensive line must fill the void opened up by Benton’s departure to the NFL, and it figures to be a group effort. Fourth-year junior defensive end James Thompson Jr., however, could be on the verge of a breakout season.
“Well, Keeanu’s not on the team anymore,” Thompson said. “Yeah Keeanu’s a great player and everything but we’re a whole new team, a whole new defensive front.”
Thompson played the third-most snaps in the defensive trenches last season, many times filling in for the injured Isaiah Mullens. Mullens will return for his sixth season in Madison, as will Rodas Johnson, who’s set to be a fifth-year senior. With new defensive coordinator Mike Tressel displaying a tendency to use two-defensive linemen formations, snaps could be at a premium. Nevertheless, Thompson has shown he’s a more-than-capable player.
Last season, Thompson didn’t emerge from fall camp a starter but played starter-level snaps. He had the second-most sacks on the defensive line behind Benton with three. He had the second-most pressures on the d-line with 13, according to Pro Football Focus. Throw in the second most tackles from a d-linemen, as well as an extremely low missed tackle rate of 3.8 percent, and you have a pretty impressive season for a player that wasn’t supposed to play nearly as much as he did.
“Every day he comes in here positive, he has a great work ethic, he’s selfless,” Johnson said of Thompson. “If he’s working on something he’s not only working on it for himself, he’s trying to help everybody else. At times it can be annoying, because it’s like ‘bro, I know,’ but he’s only doing that out of a good heart…I love the person that he is, the energy he brings and his work ethic.”
Another exciting aspect of what Thompson brings to the table is he only got better as last season wore on. He had three sacks, eight pressures and three hurries across the last four games of the season, in which he really started to heat up as a pass-rusher. He also managed to register a sack in the bowl game against Oklahoma State. If Thompson can carry over his momentum from the end of last season, he’ll be hard to keep off the field.
Thompson is also familiar with Scruggs, as the two met at Roger Bacon High School in Cincinnati when Scruggs was a coach with the Bearcats. It’s safe to say Scruggs has a soft spot for him.
“Well first of all, he’s from Cincinnati, so you know he’s a good football player,” the coach joked. “Cause I’m from Cincinnati. All good football players come from Cincinnati. I don’t wanna hear that Florida, California, Texas stuff. Ohio.”
In all seriousness, Scruggs sees the drive in the Ohio native.
“(He’s a) big, explosive athlete. Again, one of those guys that we just have to get control of, man. If I can get him to just tighten down his technique, his hands, his footwork, he’s got the chance to be a really good player for our defense,” Scruggs said. “You see the want to, the desire, the passion to be really really good. Sometimes we don’t get to see it on the outside, but I get to see it every day — I hear the questions that he asks, the way that he works. I know he wants to be great.”
The defense has had to adjust to new schematics with Tressel. The biggest change for linemen looks to be different alignments — in the Badgers’ second spring practice, linemen set up wide, outside the tackles as a five-technique.
“It’s always little details,” Thompson said. “As a 3-technique, you know, there’s not as much space as a 5-tech. Five-tech is just a tackle, maybe a tight end in there sometimes. But you’ve got so much space in a five-tech, you have to learn how to use your steps correctly…I think the biggest part of the five-tech is footwork.”
Despite the coaching and philosophy change late in his collegiate career, Thompson anticipates thriving under Tressel and Scruggs.
“We probably have a little more freedom now, we’re running five-tech now,” Thompson said. “So we’re out there with the outside backers a little bit, we’re not working no double teams, so we can go out there and get freaky.”
“I want all the sacks, I want all the TFLs. And I think in this defense that we’re in right now, it’s very set up for me to do that.”
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