Samford's New DC, Scot Sloan, Looks To Excel In Year One On Chris Hatcher's Staff

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - August 22, 2025

Easing into his role wasn’t an option for Scot Sloan when he was hired as the Samford football defensive coordinator.

Sloan, a coaching veteran of more than 30 years, who spent his past two seasons as the defensive coordinator at Appalachian State, arrived in Homewood a couple of days before spring practice was set to begin. Samford head coach Chris Hatcher moved spring drills back a week so Sloan could have an opportunity to prepare. But it still was a hectic time for Sloan.

“I had one week with the defensive staff to get ready to go on the field and try to practice,” Sloan said. “So figuring out personnel, transitioning to our defense. And then also just getting the coaches up to speed was probably priority one, knowing that I had one week and then we could come practice.”

It was a unique situation but Sloan had lived it before.

“My very first job when I got hired at Georgia Military College (in 1996) as a defense coordinator, I had the weekend to get ready for spring practice,” Sloan said. “I'd been a grad assistant at Clemson, interviewed for the job on a Monday, was offered a job on like maybe Wednesday or Thursday. Then the head coach is like, can you be here Friday? You can just stay at the house with me over the weekend because we start spring ball on Monday. I had the weekend to get ready for spring practice on Monday, so it was extremely simple. Find one defense and get them to run fast and tackle and leverage and all that good stuff.”

He did a bunch more this time around but still was climbing uphill a bit when Samford kicked off fall camp.

“We certainly did not get near as much (installed) in spring practice as normal,” Sloan said. “When you got a staff that's coming back together. You got players that played in the system the year before. You can put in a lot and you put it in fast. They just kind of knock the dust off of it and get going. Here it was ground zero. We didn't get a lot of the things that maybe you want to get in by the season. Now we've had to use this time during training camp, you know, to still continue to implement brand new install.”

The good news is things have gone smoothly during fall camp. It helps that the Bulldogs can build around All-SoCon linebacker Jaden Mosley and defensive lineman Conroy Cunningham II and Fordham transfer cornerback Nahil Perkins. The defense had six sacks in the second full-scale scrimmage of fall camp with freshman Appalachian State transfer Jackson Bussey credited with three sacks, including one for safety.

“It's gone good,” Sloan said. “You know, knock on wood, we've stayed really healthy, which is the ultimate goal. Then guys have started to show a kind of a comfort in the base defense stuff. Your normal stuff that you're going to hang your hat on. And then as we expanded into different packages and things like that, different guys take on different roles. They've done a really good job of embracing it. So it's been a fun training camp to see them really kind of get their feet on the ground with what you call. Guys, I think, have a really good understanding of the entire defense, which has allowed us to then get into different package stuff.”