Alabama Football: LSU's John Chavis Is Going To Show Bama How To Slow Auburn

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer) Kevin Steele is the defensive coordinator at Clemson right now, but prior to that, he was in that role at Alabama. I was fortunate enough to make friends with him and I'm only telling you this because when you get to know Kevin Steele, you begin to know a little more about John Chavis, LSU's defensive coordinator.

Being a member of Phillip Fulmer's staff was a kiss of death with me ever wanting to like Chavis, but you had to admire his work, at Tennessee and now at LSU so when Kevin would talk about Chavis, I listened.

Kevin and John are best friends, not just fellow coaches, but real best friends. They vacation together, call each other frequently, talk shop and know each other like brothers.

John Chavis is old school SEC. He's been there, done that, seen it all in all his years of coaching and being a defensive coordinator. Kevin says he's great a keying on an offense's best player and making them as much a non factor as possible.

If I know this, so does everybody on Alabama's staff.

And don't think for a minute that he doesn't run his defense like Kirby wants to run ours. He has been working on ways of slowing down Auburn for weeks now and Chavis knows as well as anyone to slow Auburn down, you have to slow down Cam Newton.

John Chavis will show us what he's come up this weekend, and Alabama will get to see what parts worked and what parts didn't. It's like getting a great blueprint laid out for you.

LSU has the size and speed of our defense and in many ways, mirrors it more than you would like to admit. It will be the best defense Auburn has faced so far this year.

So we get the best "cheat sheet" on what one of the great minds in the SEC has come up with and we get to see the results.

Nick Saban and Kirby Smart should send John Chavis a few rack of ribs from Dreamland for the help.

If LSU does indeed slow down the Auburn offense and Cam Newton, then Auburn must change a lot of schemes to keep Alabama from playing "follow the leader". That means more work on disguise and less work on other things.

So thank you John Chavis.