COEUR d’ALENE — The coaches realized early they had a lot of smaller, quicker, faster guys on their team, and not a lot of big guys.

So rather than force-feed a standard scheme on their players, they devised a plan of attack to take advantage of the athletes they had.

The result — the Coeur d’Alene Vikings are one victory away from a second straight state 5A football championship.

The reason — while the offense, with its collection of small, quick, fast players, has gotten most of the notoriety, Coeur d’Alene has been similarly outstanding on defense this season, allowing only 14 points per game, while scoring 52.4 per game.

“I kind of like that a lot of teams don’t recognize our defense; they think we’re surprisingly fast,” Viking senior linebacker Matt Howard said. “They always underestimate us, and we always end up surprising them, how quick and fast we are.”

The defense for top-ranked Coeur d’Alene (11-0), which plays Eagle (10-1) on Friday at 6 p.m. PST at Bronco Stadium in Boise in the state title game, is led by its core of five linebackers.

Yes, five linebackers, all seniors — middle linebacker J.J. Johnson (5-foot-9, 165 pounds), Howard (6-0, 215) on the strong side, weak-side line backer Jake Cheesman (5-8, 175), and two players they call “inverts,” who can play either linebacker or safety — Joe Roletto (5-9, 170) and Keagan Dunn (5-9, 175).

Howard, who also plays left tackle on offense, represents the only real size of that group.

“How do you not underestimate kids that are 5-9 and 5-8, 165-170 pounds, playing linebacker?” Cheesman said.

The Vikings technically play a 3-5 defense, with three down linemen, five linebackers, a safety and two cornerbacks. It’s the second full season they’ve run this defense, after a couple of years using it mostly in passing situations. But they shift around so much before the snap that, in reality, it doesn’t always look like that.

Coeur d’Alene High defensive coordinator Jeff Vesser said he doesn’t have a percentage on how often the Vikings blitz, but allowed that “we’re usually sending guys the majority of the time.”

“We just try to get as many playmakers on the field as we can, and just turn them loose,” Vesser added. “I think at times it looks like chaos, but I would say it’s almost organized chaos. I think at times we benefit from the fact that teams might think we’re undisciplined, not everybody’s accounted for, but sometimes it works to our strength. We have everybody accounted for, it just looks sometimes like things are pretty chaotic ... I think it really messes up blocking schemes at times, because there’s so many guys coming from different angles.”

Roletto leads the team in sacks (five), interceptions (four) and fumble recoveries (three), and is third in tackles (65) behind Cheesman (87) and Dunn (70).

“Cheesman’s one of the smallest guys on the field, but he’s definitely the fastest and hits pretty hard,” Howard said. “Joe always makes the play, and Keagan’s just crazy. And J.J. just drills kids in the backfield. It’s pretty fun to watch.”

Roletto, Cheesman, Dunn and Howard are returning starters. Johnson was a part-time starter last year, slowed by surgery the summer before his junior year to remove bone spurs on his feet.

Johnson also plays hockey and lacrosse (he hopes to play one of those sports in college), and he said it was starting to get painful to skate and put his football cleats on. After surgery, he spent three weeks in a wheelchair, and got a late start on his junior season of football.

“I was part of a state title last year, but I was mostly special teams,” Johnson said. “It (a state title) would mean a lot more this year because I’m playing more now.”

Senior Deon Watson (defensive end) is the only other returning starter. Senior John Haines is the other defensive end, and senior Alec Hamilton is the nose guard.

Junior Reece Mahaffy is the free safety. Senior Travis Tackett is one cornerback, and seniors Bubba Duran and Slater Heckman share the other cornerback position.

Johnson is fifth on the team with 59 tackles, following Mahaffy (62). Howard is sixth with 42.

Duran and defensive back Brennen Kane each have two interceptions, and Dunn and Watson each have two fumble recoveries. Cheesman has forced three fumbles. As a team, the Vikings have 32 sacks, 12 interceptions and 15 fumble recoveries.

“I think our linemen do such a good job in the interior that we force plays to the perimeter,” said Vesser, a former defensive backs coach in his 12th season as a Viking assistant. “(The public) sees guys bouncing out to the perimeter and they see our guys running them down.”

Sometime last summer, when the linebacking core was hanging out, a friend showed them a YouTube video of a honey badger — a small, long-bodied animal shown striding through the wild, munching on snakes, mice, etc. The Vikings thought that would make a good nickname for its defense.

Watching college football in September, they noticed a certain LSU cornerback (Tyrann Mathieu, 5-8, 175) also using that nickname.

“Basically the honey badger is fearless and relentless,” Roletto said.

“He’s the most fearless animal in the animal kingdom — he just doesn’t care,” Dunn said. “I think it (the nickname) fits us really well, because we’re fearless. We don’t care if you’re big or small, we’ll come after you.”

If that’s the case, that would leave one more animal for the Vikings to devour this season — a Mustang.