With lone exception, ASU’s defensive backfield remains unsettled

JONESBORO -- During last week's in-house media day, a relatively innocuous question was posed to Arkansas State defensive coordinator Rob Harley about improvement across a defense with lots of new personnel.

The answer began rather generically.

"It's [consistency] every play and right now, we have to build a consistent mentality. We can't be Whack-A-Mole," he said. "It can't be, this play two groups are really good and one group's not, and then the next play it's this group and we're trying to plug leaks. It can't be."

But what Harley said next was revealing.

"We know the defensive backfield is a position on every team at every level [that] has no help behind them, and that group's got to be at…