What should we expect from Harold Perkins with Blake Baker as DC?

Everyone's heard the news by now that Brian Kelly fired defensive coordinator, Matt House, as well as other members of the defensive coaching staff. Earlier this week, Kelly made a splash hire, poaching Blake Baker from Missouri to fill House's position.

If there's one thing we know about Baker's coaching style, it's that he loves to send pressure. His Tigers ranked third in the SEC and eighth in the country in sacks. They also ranked 9th in sack percentage, getting the opposing quarterback on the ground on over 9% of plays.

When you look at the other teams at the top of those lists such as Penn State, Texas A&M, Michigan, Florida State and Alabama, you realize how much Baker did with less talent.

I'm not knocking the players Missouri had, because they had some beasts in their front seven, but their last three recruiting classes have ranked 19th, 13th and 33rd. While their classes have still been very good, they don't necessarily compare to the talent brought in by those other programs.

The first thing that came to my mind when LSU hired Baker was, "imagine what he could do with a talent like Harold Perkins?"

Well, I've come today to try to answer that question.

We saw Perkins take a different role this season than what we saw in 2022. As a freshman, Perkins was used primarily as a pass rusher, with 163 of his 293 pass snaps coming as a rusher. We saw his raw talent as he'd go on to total 41 pressures and 10 sacks while recording a 12.9% pass rush win rate, which all ranked top-20 off linebackers with 100+ pass rush snaps.

In 2023, we saw Perkins move into more of a coverage role. He topped his 163 pass rush snaps from a year ago, totaling 166 this year, but played 260 more total snaps than his freshman year. His pass rush usage dropped from 31.7% to 21.4%.

While he played virtually the same number pass rush snaps as his freshman season, we saw Perkins' numbers drop. He recorded six sacks, 24 pressures and a 10.2% pass rush win rate in 2023. I don't think this was due to a sophomore slump or anything, I attribute this more to teams being more prepared to face him and Matt House's scheme.

With Baker taking over defensive play calling duties, I expect his numbers to jump back up. In 2023, Ty'Ron Harper played the "Harold Perkins" role for Missouri (not really, but he was their main pass rusher from the linebacker position). He rushed the passer 86 times last year and recorded 17 pressures, three sacks and a 12.5% pass rush win rate. In 2021 when Baker was LSU's linebackers coach, we saw Damone Clark finish the season with 23 pressures and six sacks in just 76 pass rush snaps.

Baker has proven he can build a scheme that allows blitzing linebackers to get home. I don't think he's ever had a guy like Harold Perkins in his career, and I'd bet a lot of money that he's going to be antsy to use him.

Let's just go out on a limb and say Perkins finishes the season with around 160 pass rush snaps since that's where he's been in his first two seasons. If that's the case, I'd imagine Perkins stats would get close to, if not be better than his freshman season stats. 10+ sacks, 40+ pressures and a 12+ percent win rate doesn't seem too unrealistic for Perkins if he's in the right system.

Obviously, Perkins will still be used in coverage as that's one of the main jobs of a linebacker, but if Baker wants to get the most out of Perkins, he needs to be getting after the quarterback more than 21% of the time. If that number can get closer to 30%, he should be in for another monster season.