Surprisingly little fuss was made over the Lions’ first- and second-round picks being college teammates, but Jarrad Davis and Teez Tabor on Tuesday told the Detroit Free Press‘ Dave Birkett that having each other around is greatly helping their transition to the NFL.

“It’s been awesome,” Davis said. “Me and him are close teammates in Florida, we’re still close teammates here. Nothing changed with that. It’s almost a peace of mind to know that somebody you’ve been with for the past couple years is here with you doing the same thing. It makes it a lot easier.”

Though Tabor was careful to say he and Davis weren’t trying to import the Florida Gators’ culture to Detroit, he was effusive about how playing in a unit with a lot of cohesion helped the both of them.

“We had great coaches at Florida, great teammates at Florida who just, we established the culture there,” Tabor told Birkett. “And that culture was really, we wanted to play real good defense.”

With the departure of DeAndre Levy, the Lions defense desperately needs both bar-setting ability and tone-setting leadership. Davis and Tabor would add varying degrees of both by themselves—but together, they might be able to do more to improve the Lions defense, faster.

That’s great news for anyone who wants to see big improvement on that side of the ball in 2017.