There is no dressing up what the 2025 Spartan defense actually was. Eighteen sacks all season. Barely four tackles for loss per game. A fourth-down stop rate that ranked among the worst in the country. A secondary that allowed 28 or more points in seven straight games. And defensive coordinator Derrick Odum who did not survive the fallout.
Whatever comes next had a low bar to clear. What San Jose State actually built this offseason aims a lot higher than that.
Filimoeatu the disciple becomes Filimoeatu the coordinator
Bojay Filimoeatu is not a new face in
this building. He first arrived at SJSU in 2017 as a linebackers coach under Odum. With one position coach short on staff back then, Filimoeatu handed his outside backers to a graduate assistant named Josh Irvin because he trusted him to run the room. That trust runs both directions now. Nearly a decade later, Irvin is still coaching outside linebackers under Filimoeatu and says the two “finish each other’s sentences.”
That kind of continuity matters, because Filimoeatu is not walking into this job as an outsider trying to install a foreign system in one offseason. He is a product of this program and the coaches around him already speak his language.
Brian Norwood, brought in to rebuild the secondary, also called the new staff’s alignment with head coach Ken Niumatalolo no coincidence.
“Our staff and our community right now just feels a lot like home,” Norwood said.
Filimoeatu’s guiding phrase for the unit has become something close to a mantra across every position group interviewed this offseason: dominate the details. “If you can’t walk through something, you can’t do it full speed.” It’s a line defensive line coach Al Lapuaho and Irvin have both since echoed almost word for word in our summer series on the Spartan position groups.
A scheme built on multiplicity not doctrine
Filimoeatu’s time at Utah State exposed him to a defensive infrastructure built around disguise and multiple fronts and his years coaching alongside Odum gave him a close look at what a defense wedded to one scheme looks like over the long run.
Odum’s version of this defense leaned heavily on a 3-4 base, one front, one shape, dressed up differently week to week but still the same foundation underneath. Filimoeatu is not building his first year around that same commitment.
The early signs point to a defensive front asked to disguise its gaps and shift its looks snap to snap rather than settle into one identifiable shape, a coordinator betting on unpredictability over doctrine.
That shift shows up plainly at the position level. A defensive line married to one front tends to have players locked into one job. A defensive line built on multiplicity gets asked to hold a gap one series and shoot into a different one the next. The scheme is not asking players to memorize one system so much as it is asking them to trust a process that changes by design.
It starts with Solomone Langi and the chaos in the middle
At the center of that rebuilt front sits Solomone Langi; the nose guard now in his second year with the program and affectionately known around the building as “Solo.” Langi has watched the scheme evolve from the inside and does not see his individual job changing much, so much as the whole unit’s temperament.
“I don’t think there’s been too much of a difference for me in my job on the defensive side,” said Langi. “But I think this year will naturally have lot more physicality to it and a lot more blitzing, so I’m excited.”
That aggression traces back to the coaching philosophy shaping the interior line day-to-day.
“Coach Bojay likes to keep them guessing,” said Langi. “As a D-line we can hold the gaps, but also we can move into other gaps to scheme it up and give them different looks at different times.”
Ask Langi what his own job actually is on a snap-by-snap basis and he does not overcomplicate it. “My job is just to cause chaos in the middle. Plug up gaps and make sure the O-line doesn’t get off too smoothly into our backfield.”
That approach gets an early test against USC and a Trojans front that outweighs almost everyone SJSU will face this year. And Langi is not shrinking from it.
“I’m excited because the bigger guys have to bend because I’m shorter. I can use that leverage to push or pull or both. I’m definitely excited to see how we compete against them this year.”
The personnel bet across all three levels
Langi is not the whole story up front.
Lapuaho’s room now includes Ian Shewell, a portal surprise who measured taller than advertised, Jeremiah Tuiileila at speed edge and freshmen like Bronx Letuligasenoa who arrived with Power Four offers.
Behind them, Irvin’s outside linebacker room runs through third-year starter Ethan Powell, Naseri Danielson and Weber State transfer Aizik Mahuka.
On the back end, Norwood inherited a secondary in genuine disrepair and rebuilt it around long athletic transfers Maliki Crawford, Brian Dukes Jr., Jonathan Watts and converted safety Tuli Tagovailoa-Amosa.
Langi sees the difference in mentality more than in personnel rankings.
“I think we’re a lot more as a team,” said Langi. “I think last year we had a lot more individuals, but I think this year a lot of the boys are locked in and the coaches aren’t letting anything slide.”
Langi’s also not shy about the room’s own belief in itself.
“I’m just confident in our defensive line group. We have much more depth. Each rotation is a whole other group and we’re just ready to go, fresh legs and honestly, anyone can play.”
What bowl eligibility actually requires
None of this guarantees anything by itself.
A defense that allowed 32.5 points per game in conference play last season does not fix itself on continuity and buzzwords alone.
SJSU’s defense also does not need to be phenomenal to change its season. It can be ordinary, which in itself is a big step forward from last season.
A defense that simply stops bleeding points in bunches, gets off the field on third and fourth down and occasionally turns takeaways back into a weapon gives an offense breaking in a new starting quarterback a real chance to win at least six games.
If Filimoeatu’s staff and a deeper, more physical front led by Langi can get this unit to just average, San Jose State has a path back to bowl eligibility, at the least.
And it runs directly through the defense they spent the entire offseason rebuilding from the ground up.
