And while that may have been good enough for most everyone else, it wasn’t good enough for the only person who mattered—Balestracci himself.

“He was the top linebacker in the league his freshman year,” Everett says. “But he has constantly worked to get better and contribute more to the team. He wasn’t satisfied with success, and that’s the type of attitude good teams and good leaders need to have.”

But while the motivation was there, the keys to unlocking his full technical and athletic potential did not lie within. The work of two defensive coaches and the introduction of a strength-and-conditioning coach, however, unlocked the doors to Balestracci’s full potential.

“I think coach Bruce Tall, who was the linebacker coach-defensive coordinator the first two years I was here, made the transition for me from safety in high school to linebacker in college,” Balestracci says. “He taught me the nuances of film, just fundamental techniques like how to take blocks, how to get off blocks.”

And for a dominant player who had never crunched film before, taking that first step in watching game video made Balestracci that much more likely to be in the right place right off the snap, instead of sniffing the play out based on just his instincts.

“I came in having never watched game film,” Balestracci says. “[Now] I’ll bring back film and watch it at night just to be as prepared as I can be for the other team. When you line up on Saturday’s you can anticipate stuff and it makes it that much easier to be in that place.”

The summer after Tall’s departure, the introduction of a strength-and-conditioning coach took the skills Balestracci had honed during his first two years and made their implementation that much more deadly.

Balestracci matriculated at 230 pounds, solid and well-built but physically capable of maintaining a larger frame.

“We got a strength coach after my sophomore season and that was huge,” Balestracci says. “We were all in good shape, we were all getting stronger, but the gains we’ve made with the strength coach have been a lot bigger…twenty pounds later, I think I’m a lot faster than when I showed up.”

With the skills assembled and the body honed, a finishing polish was all that was left to be applied.

Linebacker coach John Butler was more than happy to provide the final touch-ups.

“Whereas I was doing pretty well my first three years, [Butler] came in this past off-season and sat down with me and said, ‘You do this well, you do that well, but if you improve yourself here you’re going to be that much better,’” Balestracci says. “‘You’re going to be that much more of a complete player.’ And we worked on pass-rush moves and trying to make the huge play instead of just making regular plays, on putting yourself in position to make those huge momentum changing plays.

“He’s brought me to that next level where I make very few mistakes and I play at a very high level and I’m making all the plays that I need to.”

Talk about an understatement.

Sure, he could have stopped progressing, stopped learning when he was at the top of the heap three seasons ago. But to do that would have been contrary to everything Balestracci has ever known.