The former Ohio State linebacker will play a central role in Washington’s revamped defense.
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The little dot is hard to miss. At first glance, it looks like a banana sticker on the back of linebacker Sonny Styles’s helmet. But so many of the Washington Commanders’ hopes for this season depend on that speck of green and all that comes with it.
The dot — which Styles wore at Ohio State and now dons in Ashburn, Virginia — means he is the one defender with a speaker in his helmet, into which coaches call formations. It means he must organize his 10 teammates on the field, telling them where to be, where to run and what to look for when the ball is snapped.
The responsibility is enormous — especially when given to a rookie. Washington drafted Styles seventh overall in part because of his maturity, the constant sense that the game never seems to be going too fast for him.
“He has a demeanor that is very much in control,” Coach Dan Quinn said Tuesday as the team opened its three-day minicamp.
Much of the Commanders’ optimism about their defense is based on their confidence in Styles. They imagine him racing from one side of the field to the other, stopping running backs and knocking away passes. The team also will rely on his ability to take the words shouted into his helmet speaker and convey them to the rest of the defense.
Quinn has raved about Styles’s performance through the offseason program and now into this week’s minicamp, saying Styles has “hit all the marks that you can hit at this time of year.” The coaches, he said, love the way Styles has instinctively attacked in the team drills.
But the Commanders have essentially been operating glorified walk-throughs. Players wear shorts and don’t have pads. No hitting is allowed. It’s more a teaching time than a football time.
With a new defensive coordinator running a new defense — new schemes, new formations, new language and calls — the Commanders are placing a lot on Styles’s shoulders before they have even gone to training camp. He’s not concerned about the pressure.
“I have high expectations for myself, so expectations from other people don’t really bother me,” he said — almost as if he expected to have the green dot even before he was drafted.
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Styles said Daronte Jones, the new coordinator, is teaching his defense well, making it easy for everyone to understand. He added that the formations coming through the helmet speaker aren’t too complex and that he hasn’t struggled to convey everything.
“We’re all communicating within the play,” Styles explained. “There’s so much going on, but [I’ve] just got to make sure we’re on the same page when the ball stops, [so] we play fast.”
Styles has been practicing by watching tape, running through different calls and matching them to what he sees on the screen. He doesn’t act as if any of this is too much for him as he tries to adapt to being an NFL player.
Then again, he is the son of a former NFL player — Lorenzo Styles, a fellow linebacker who won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams. Much of Sonny Styles’s ability to handle so many things at once has been attributed to his father’s influence.
“My dad’s an even-keel kind of guy,” Styles said. “As I’ve got older, I’ve become a little bit more like that.”
He smiled a bit.
“But no, you get between the lines, especially when the bullets start flying, [and you] get a little excited,” Styles continued. “I think you’ve got to play linebacker that way — with that violent mindset.”
The violence will come in late July when the training camp shoulder pads are donned and the hitting and tackling begin. Quinn said he is looking forward to the way linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr. will coach him then.
“Man, we are pumped” with Styles, Quinn said.
The green dot, it seems, will stay on Styles’s helmet. The Commanders need it to be there. They need to know he can be the relentless, versatile and smart player they drafted. Their new defense almost depends upon it.
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