Waiting for His Chance : Lyndon Earley Has Dual Role at SDSU

San Diego State cornerback Lyndon Earley sat and waited last year.

He waited at practice while the first two teams scrimmaged.

He sat and listened as his roommate, Sean Harper, complained about the rigors of being on the scout team, whose role is to prepare the starting team for opponents.

All the while, Earley would have been satisfied even with a starting job on the scout team. But the redshirt freshman knew he would eventually get his chance.

Last Saturday against Wyoming, Earley got his chance--and made the most of it. With 1:33 remaining in the game, Earley stripped the ball from Cowboy receiver James Loving and recovered it on the SDSU seven-yard line. The play ended a Wyoming scoring threat and allowed SDSU to hold on for a 31-24 victory.

Earley has played a dual role for the Aztecs this season. One week he might start at outside linebacker, as he did against Wyoming and Stanford. The next week, he may be the fifth cornerback. Either way, Early is just happy to be playing.

“It’s probably harder on (Earley) physically, technique-wise, to make the change from cornerback to linebacker than it is mentally,” said Tim McConnell, Aztec defensive coordinator. “The techniques are entirely different. The circumstances and the situations that arise . . . are entirely different. It is like asking a kid to play two entirely different positions.”

Earley said the redshirt year helped him mature.

“In previous years it might have been difficult, but Coach (Denny) Stolz tells us that we each have a role on the team. In practice you may be second- or third-string, but if you get in the game, you’re first string because you are the one who is in there.

“I know my role. I know that I’m the third corner to come in. When you’re young, you might say ‘How come I started last week, but don’t get to start this week?’ But Coach Stolz really emphasizes that you have a particular role no matter what string you are.”

Earley said his biggest problem in switching from cornerback to outside linebacker is playing the run.

“Against Stanford, I didn’t do a good job of containing the run,” said Earley, who is 6-foot 1-inch and 170 pounds. “I didn’t have the strength. They would come straight up through the hole, a certain gap that I had, and I wouldn’t fill it because I’m not the linebacker type.”

Using one player at two different positions is nothing new to the Aztec defense. Randy Kirk shuttles between right and left outside linebacker. Richard Brown alternates as a linebacker and defensive lineman. And Mike Wilder has played strong safety, outside linebacker and, for the first time last Saturday, inside linebacker.

“I think you have to do it in this league,” McConnell said. “If you don’t (change the players around) you are putting kids in a postion where they don’t have a chance to be successful. There is such a variety of offensive attacks in this league, you have to be able to adjust your defense accordingly.

“The only reason (Earley) is able to survive in there is because he is a good learner. He’s extremely bright. But that’s a lot to ask of a kid. I’m sure we wouldn’t be able to do it with some people.”

Earley is also a member of the kickoff return team. After he was pushed around against Colorado, he said he decided to concentrate on building his strength.

“Against Colorado, a guy really made my day hard,” Earley said. “I tried to take every angle I could against him but he kept knocking me down.

“I felt that I should be able to play a lot better than that. You can’t do anything on the ground. I made up my mind that week, because we had a bye, that this time, I would get my strength up.”

The week after the Colorado game, Dave Ohton, the Aztecs’ conditioning coach, was surprised to find Earley spending so much time in the weight room.

“He looked at me once and said, ‘You came in here twice in the same week?’ ” Earley said. But it was the added strength that may have aided him against Wyoming, Earley said. Saturday he had nine tackles and forced two fumbles. On Wyoming’s first series, Earley stripped the ball from Cowboy receiver Anthony Sargent, and Aztec Mike Wilder recovered on the SDSU two.

Before the forced fumbled late in the game, Earley was beat by Loving, who caught an eight-yard pass for a first down. Earley looked to the sidelines and saw Stolz glaring at him.

“I looked at Coach Stolz and we had eye-to-eye contact and it was like he was saying ‘You know they are picking on you, come on and make the play.’ ”

Four plays later, Earley did, pulling the ball out of Loving’s grasp.

“When (Loving) caught it, I came over his shoulder and got my hand in,” Earley said. “I felt the tip of the ball and got a real good grip on it and I gave it a good jerk. I felt the ball flip out, I looked up in the air and it rolled right into my hands.

“When I got up, the first thing I did was look over at (Stolz) and say ‘I did it, I did it.’ ”

Earley learned the technique for stripping the ball from defensive secondary Coach Ron Mims. It was Mims who first informed Earley that he would be used occasionally at outside linebacker.

“At first I said, ‘I have to get into these trenches with the linemen?’ ” Earley said. “But Coach McConnell showed me how to adjust to it.

“At linebacker, you have to read running backs. It seems when you are at corner position, it is just you and the running back and nothing else to worry about but covering him. But when you are in there at the backer postion, you have to watch the lineman coming at you. The biggest part was being able to key from the inside, rather than the outside.”

The pressure is on for Earley, who knows that a big mistake could end the Aztecs’ bid for the Western Athletic Conference championship.

After he was beat by Loving on Wyoming’s last drive, Earley said he nearly broke down and cried.

“Every time we see the Holiday Bowl commercial, everybody stops what they are doing and turns to the TV,” he said. “We keep hearing the Holiday Bowl song in our head. So we can taste it. It’s a game, but it is more important. It is more important because we have more to lose . . . the championship is in our sights.”