GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- As one reporter wrapped up an interview with Florida junior defensive tackle Kyree Campbell and walked away, another walked up with a camera placed firmly atop a tripod. He paused for a moment, extended the tripod legs and flicked on a light above his setup, then asked his first question.

"What do you think the identity of this defense is going to be?"

Campbell swung his head around 45 degrees to the left and locked eyes.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, making sure he heard the question right. Then he continued. "Fast... Physical... Aggressive..."

He hung on each word, belaboring the point almost as if to say, 'Are you serious, man? Did you not watch us last year?'

After all, anyone that watched the Gators last fall would immediately recognize that defensive coordinator Todd Grantham had brought that style of football to Gainesville. Florida racked up 37 sacks, something it had only done twice previously in the decade.

Grantham ended games with blitzes -- hello Donovan Stiner's sack of Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald to seal an emotional and confidence-boosting win over coach Dan Mullen's previous team. He sent anyone and everyone after the quarterback. Didn't seem to matter when.

But ask any national pundit (shoot, even most local ones) about the Florida defense's prospects this fall and you'll quickly hear a name tossed out. Jachai Polite. Can the Gators replace his 11 sacks and six forced fumbles? Will they be the same without his elite pass-rushing presence off the edge?

To most of those within the Florida football facilities the answers come quick. There's almost a giddiness about the possibilities.

Enter Louisville graduate transfer Jonathan Greenard, the man who will immediately step into Polite's spot. There are plenty of question marks about how he might fit the role. A bit bigger than Polite, might he also see some pass-rush snaps from an inside role?

"Buy a ticket," Grantham says with a wisp of a wry grin. "We'll see."

Polite's not the only guy who contributed to UF's hard-nosed, aggressive defense last fall, though. As we wrote here, one of the biggest questions for the defense is whether the Gators can replace Chauncey Gardner-Johnson or Vosean Joseph in that regard, both terrific blitzers in their own right.

We posed that exact question to Grantham on Thursday. No hesitation.

"Yes," he said, that wry grin turning into a full-on smile. That's it. No elaboration. No need, really.

The message? Players change but the system stays the same. And believe it or not, the Gators seem pretty confident the end result might even improve this fall. There's a sense within the building that the defense is faster across the board and the talent level runs deeper this fall as certain positions of weakness have been tended to.

Then there's the fact that Florida players know what they're getting into this time around. Not that the coaches didn't warn them last year, but sometimes you just don't know until you know.

"They came in 'fast, physical and aggressive,'" linebacker James Houston said. "They ingrained it in our brain. We knew when we stepped on the field we had to be fast, physical and aggressive.

"(But) last year a lot of people weren't really too sure of the defense. They kind of knew what they were doing but they still had that little bit of doubt. I think this year's going to change that. That doubt side of your mind (is gone). You're just playing fast and free because you know what you're doing."

It didn't click right away for the Gators. Florida had just three sacks in its first two games of the season, against the likes of Charleston Southern and Kentucky. Kentucky ran all over Florida and even snapped a 31-game losing streak in the series against that supposed fast, physical and aggressive defense.

But finally it clicked. The Gators racked up 17 sacks in their next four games and the light fully came on during that stretch.

"Tennessee, we lit 'em up," Houston said. "We definitely lit 'em up. I think the quarterback came out, he got hurt. The other quarterback definitely didn't want to finish the game. That was definitely the game that I saw it."

Sure enough, despite having just one sack in the game against the Volunteers, it was Tedarrell Slaton's crushing hit on UT quarterback Jarrett Guarantano just before half that seemed to light the fire. The hit helped force an underthrow to an open Marquez Callaway in the end zone, a play that might have kept the game closer before halftime otherwise.

Instead, Florida blew out Tennessee as it ripped off a five-game winning streak that included wins against No. 23 Mississippi State and No. 5 LSU.

That hit and the ensuing understanding of just what 'fast, physical and aggressive' could look like introduced the kind of hunger Grantham was looking for in his unit.

"It's exciting," Houston said. "It's exciting because you get to see somebody else quit and tap out. You know for yourself you would never do that, so you make somebody else do that, that's just like icing on the cake."

Florida's seeming theme on defense as fall camp starts up again and the Gators get ready for the 2019 campaign?

Forget about Polite. Forget about Gardner-Johnson. Forget about Joseph.

Those guys were great, but the machine keeps rolling. Fast, physical, aggressive is here to stay. Confidence thick in his voice, Campbell laughed as he finished his answer before that camera light flicked off.

"I'll tell you this," he said. "This defense is coming at you real fast."