Brandon Hicks is out on the practice field, and he misses a tackle. He misreads the play and gets caught in the wrong gap.
Last year his teammates would've just lined back up without doing anything.
Not anymore. Now, as he looks around he sees Brandon Spikes staring right into his pupils with "the look."
"It's funny because it's not really a scolding look," fellow linebacker Dustin Doe said. "It's kind of a funny look, he's looking at you with a scrunchy face, like, 'You know you messed up, right?'"
This is the new - and possibly improved - Spikes. The middle linebacker who doesn't let you make a mistake without pointing it out to you, and the one who now realizes he has to know more than just where he's suppose to be. He has to know where the 10 other defensive players are supposed to be.
The bottom line is it's going to take a lot more than his 6-foot-3, 245-pound, almost defensive lineman-like frame to get his job done. As intimidating as he is on the field to opponents, his biggest impact comes before the snap and in the locker room.
And that's a role he's finally starting to understand. Hicks called Spikes the "daddy of the defense."
"Last year, I wasn't really much as a vocal leader. I let Derrick Harvey and Tony Joiner do that because they were the older guys, but I kind of regret it now," Spikes said. "Right now it's about somebody stepping up and taking ownership of the defense. I feel like me being a junior, growing up, making a couple plays last year, it's time."
Last year Spikes was handed the starting spot. Brandon Siler left early for the NFL, and Spikes was the heir apparent. With nobody to challenge him, he didn't really have to challenge himself.
"He really didn't have to work for it," defensive coordinator Charlie Strong said. "He didn't have to beat anybody out. I'm the starter. This is my position. So if guys don't really have to work for something, then it's kind of easy for them to say, 'I'm a starter, and I don't have to work as hard. I don't really have to be a leader, I'm just going to do what I have to do.'"
Spikes' lack of leadership wasn't the only problem, however. It sounds awkward to say, but the defense needed to blame each other more. At least that's the way Doe sees it.
"Our problem, to a certain extent, was there wasn't enough finger-pointing," Doe said. "Guys would ignore guys. When a guy messed up, and instead of a guy saying, 'Come on, baby, that's your play,' a guy would just ignore it leading a guy to question himself."
Hicks and Doe said Spikes isn't the yelling type. But he has become the unquestioned leader of the defense.
"There's a lot of stuff that comes with being a middle linebacker for the University of Florida," Spikes said. "It's not just starting. You've got to be a leader. Everybody's watching you. A lot of times when the defense doesn't play well, they put it on you."
Maybe putting it all on Spikes isn't such a bad thing. At the very least, his new beard is enough to make him look like an old man.
