Perhaps D’Marion Alexander’s top four prompted Arizona State to take action. About a week after the three-star defensive lineman narrowed his schools down to the quartet of Minnesota, TCU, Texas Tech and Kansas, the Sun Devils jumped in.
“It was definitely surprising,” Alexander said. “I just made my list and then a school offers me that I really like. It kind of changed the scenario a bit.”
Alexander -- a 6-foot-4, 210-pound junior from China Spring, Texas -- admitted that the Sun Devils and, in particular, newly-hired defensive line coach Robert Rodriguez have made such quick headway in his recruitment that he’s had to expand his top four to a top five that includes ASU.
Rodriguez, who was hired by Herm Edwards in early February following Jamar Cain’s departure to Oklahoma came to Tempe after a five-year stint as the Minnesota Vikings’ assistant defensive line coach.
On the recruiting trail, Rodriguez preaches talent development. He’s an NFL coach with the knowledge that can potentially build any of his students into the type of player NFL teams covet.
“It’s very big for me,” Alexander said of Rodriguez’s NFL background. “That’s a big thing for me to have a person like him -- because he just came from the NFL and he sees potential in me. That’s really cool.”
Yet, the Texas native was quick to note that he and Rodriguez haven’t delved into too much about the Vikings or the NFL, given the fresh timeline of the offer. Regardless, it’s been Rodriguez, the family man, that has drawn rave reviews from Alexander.
“We text every day. Like, today, he sent me a video of him playing with his kids outside in the yard,” Alexander said. “He really cares about my family and how everyone was doing
“I’m a big family guy so if coaches treat me like family, I’ll feel at home. As long as it feels like home to me, I think we’ll have a great relationship.”
Last season playing both outside linebacker and defensive end for China Spring High School, Alexander posted 44 tackles, a dozen tackles for loss, two sacks and a blocked punt.
The Sun Devils haven’t been shy about their desire to track down defensive linemen who could be mistaken at times for basketball players. ASU seeks out lengthy athletes coming off the edge. For recruiting, it boils down to a simple principle: You can’t add inches with a college weight program.
Therefore the Sun Devils have gone searching for tall recruits to play in their front four. and most of the prospects in that mold, co-defensive coordinator Antonio Pierce previoulsy said, were going to require the Sun Devils to leave their California and Arizona footprint and seek players in other regions of the country. Pierce may have well been talking about the 6-foot-4 Alexander.
“Coach Rodriguez said that he liked that I was very lengthy, that I can run (fast) for my size. He just thinks I can get bigger and once I get bigger, it’s going to be over,” Alexander quipped. “I don’t know if people notice, but I’m a strong guy. I don’t look like it, but I can really move some people, some big guys.”
When Pierce and Marvin Lewis assumed the responsibility of heading the Sun Devil defense, one of their first orders of business was to do away with the 3-3-5 defense and plug in a four-down scheme. One of the main effects Pierce hoped to gain was the ability to tell big defensive linemen they could come off the edge to harass opposing signal callers, instead of trying to achieve that objective mainly coming up the middle.
It was going to be a significant element in their recruiting approach, Pierce explained to illustrate to recruits how they could fit into this scheme.
But ASU hasn’t played a game purely with this alignment yet (albeit showing some flashes of in in the Sun Bowl), so while Alexander stated he planned to watch film on ASU’s defense from last season, the coaches have emphasized the changes on the horizon.
While the COVID-19 Pandemic renders any talk of an official visit moot, Alexander was able to previously take unofficials to Texas, TCU and Baylor before the recruiting dead period was extended. Nonetheless, that doesn’t seem like it’ll slow him down.
While Alexander doesn’t plan to graduate until May of next year, he said he wants to commit “sooner than later.”
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