I assume that by "placeholders" that you mean they are to hold their ground occupying an OL, not pressuring the QB?
Basically, yes. Kines' DL almost acted like a mirror OL. The technique appeared to be to tie up the OL and keep them from getting to the second level (LBs). The MLB was taught to crash the gap not covered by a tackle and little else. That's one reason Matt Collins had a role in that defense; he only had about a five-yard-cubed box to have to work in. The OLBs and safety would then run to the ball. If a DT made a tackle in Kines' scheme, it was typically on an and-short situation where the RB picked the wrong gap, or some other kind of weird accident.
That's what puzzles me about the Big 12. The best teams feature the spread, yet they haven't seemed to change their schemes. OU seems to do the best against the spread, yet their D seems lackluster at times. This year they looked great against Texas Tech, and at times looked good against Florida. But they also got lit up by Ok State. Go figure...
OU claims to operate from a 4-3 base. The deal with the spread is that it puts you in nickel from the start and you never really get out of it. The only exception? Alabama stayed in base against Florida for much of the game because UA realized (correctly) that without Harvin in the game, the offense was going to compress to sort of a single- or double-wing, with Tebow getting most of the carries. Had Harvin been available, Reamer would have probably had 1/4 the snaps that he eventually got.
Anyway, OU still comes from a 4-3 look. If you're going to be a spread-defensing team above all else, you either need to base out of the 3-3-5, 4-2-5 (both are different from a standard nickel set) or one of two variants of the 3-1-3. One of those, the "1" is a rover safety. In the other, it's basically a Jack (and there's a subset now, a 3-1-2-5, which is a sort of a 3-3-5 with a Jack). The Big 12 may have to go that way soon, although QB play in that conference is about to revert to the mean.
The underlining factor in ALL of these "gimmick defenses," as some like to call them, is that YOU HAVE TO RECRUIT SPECIFICALLY FOR THEM. You can't just take a DL off the field, insert a nickel safety and say you run a 3-3-5. You have to get small at LB and look for different things in your safeties.
Saban apparently isn't buying that. It appears Alabama's immediate strategy is going to be to recruit to a 3-4 over/under and then load up on enough safeties that when UA faces a spread team, Saban will go with a four-man line and then play either nickel or dime behind that. It would have worked against Utah had (a) the nickel and dime backs done a better job in coverage, and (b) if the ILBs had been more effective. Factor B is a combination of a soft spot in UA's scheme and an ILB group that never, from the spring scrimmage forward, showed itself to be consistently capable of covering. Alabama also needs a better pass rush from both ends so it doesn't have to commit the linebacker(s) to blitzing to get ample pressure, and instead allow them to play robber coverages over the middle.
We'll see how it works, but given that the SEC will have just three spread teams next year (UF, MSU and maybe Auburn), it wouldn't help UA to reverse course just for those teams -- especially since Alabama has a strong talent edge over MSU and is about to open up a similar edge over AU.
