Veteran leaders, improved tackling have co-DC Kasey Teegardin bullish on EMU’s defense
The Eagles are hoping for a big turnaround on defense so far through camp the returns are promising.
Ypsilanti — Co-defensive coordinator Kasey Teegardin doesn’t hesitate when it comes to naming the players that will restore the personality for Eastern Michigan’s defense.
Makhi Gilbert, Zach Mowchan, Bryce Llewellyn.
A defensive lineman, a linebacker, and a defensive back.
“They could go out and run a practice,” Teegardin said. “You have front, middle, and back end. And they know what the expectation is, the standard is. And I think that's the best part about it right now, is you have three really top notch individuals that are hungry and pissed off, a mindset that you want, and are playing at a fever pitch.”
That trio of returning defenders — and the rest of the defenders and coaches from EMU’s 2025 defense — have good reason to be pissed off. The Eagles started the 2025 campaign poorly on defense, with issues tackling and defending the run. On a programmatic level, the Eagles now haven’t been to a bowl game since the 2023 season. There’s a desire to turn the tide, and for the defense — now led by Teegardin and co-coordinator Tate Omli — to emerge as a force to complement the offense and special teams and push the Eagles into MAC contention.
“I think the biggest thing we're seeing is they're playing with more confidence,” Teegardin said. “We've been trying to instill that in them since we took over and so, our guys know where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there. They have a really good feel for what we're trying to do schematically. And then, again, personality wise, right? We're trying to revive the personality of the defense. Like a mindset. And I think right now for those guys, I think the confidence level they have in the personality itself and the mindset is really, really high.”
Teegardin and Omli are in charge of the Eastern Michigan defense, taking over as co-coordinators this offseason — after Chris Creighton shuffled the deck with his defensive staff following a substandard 2025 on that side of the ball.
Struggles tackling, then a dearth of healthy linebackers ultimately doomed EMU to a rushing defense that ranked dead last among FBS teams, giving up just more than 232 yards per game on the ground. The Eagles gave up 5.51 yards per carry and surrendered 29 scores on the ground.
The Eagles did finish No. 20 in pass defense, but that is also in part because of how often opposing offenses ran roughshod. The defense also struggled to get after opposing quarterbacks. The overall picture was grim.
Over the winter, Creighton promoted Teegardin and Omli into the co-DC positions, and the duo went about creating a new way of playing defense for Eastern Michigan, marrying their expertises. Teegardin is more versed coaching the box, and Omli in the backend.
In the spring, this manifested as the defense worked on exemplifying TTE, which stands for tackling, takeaways and effort.
“And our goal is that we can put them in a position where they can play as fast as they possibly can and think about those things,” Omli said in the spring. “The ball and effort, where they're not thinking too much about the call.”
That abbreviation remains, as the defense has pointedly sought to create takeaways throughout this camp. Effort is a habit that the Eagles have been steadily honing.
Tackling is something the Eagles needed to drill down on after 2025, and have done so this fall camp. Teegardin shared that the team has been tackling more than in previous seasons and in general things have been more physical and aggressive throughout camp.
And it’s gotten a positive response from the team.
“When Coach said it, it wasn't just the defensive side,” Teegardin said of Creighton explaining the regimen to the team. “The offensive side was like, let's go. It's football. We're playing football. And so there is a point in time where you've got to pull back and take care of them and we have to be the moderators. We have to be the moderators, that’s our job. But man, the response when Coach said it, I mean, seeing guys faces and excitement and you could hear the woo-hoos and all that. I was in there, it was awesome.”
Andrew Graham
As for the teaching and repping in practice, tackling has broken down into two component parts, technique and physicality.
The first half can be repped even without pads on.
“We call it pursuit tackle,” Teegardin said. “That is to put ourselves in a great position to make a contact play. So, what my leverage is, maintaining leverage, squeezing my leverage, we identify what that is, where my help is, knowing and understanding the scheme. Confidence in tackling, half of it is, OK, if I'm forcing the ball, who am I forcing it back to? He's got to trust his teammate's gonna be there to make the play and help him make the play.”
As for physicality, that’s been something the Eagles have been picking back up on. And it’s not just something that gets trained when the pads are on, though that has been when it’s most pronounced this camp.
“We have two different circuits that we do, depending on what we're wearing, but we're gonna tackle every single day in some capacity whether it's putting ourselves in position, or we are physically violent, and tackling full speed,” Teegardin said.
And is the message getting through?
“Violence at the point of attack has been a huge thing for us as far as just being great as tacklers,” Llewellyn said.
Through more than two weeks of camp, the returns have been good in Teegardin’s estimation.
“We have been tackling extremely well to this point in the open field,” Teegardin said. “Like, we have more guys making individualized one on one tackles.”
And as Eastern Michigan’s gone about this defensive renovation, it’s been supercharged in some ways by the presence of players like Gilbert, Llewellyn and Mowchan. It helps when the message is received on their end, too.
In Teegardin’s estimation, there’s not much limit to where those players can take Eastern Michigan on defense — and in turn what that could mean for the Eagles as a whole.
“There's zero plateau in those guys,” Teegardin said. “They're just not wired that way. And that's the nice thing about it, is everybody else is going to look at them and be like, ‘OK, well, I can't — that's the bar.’”
