Ty Benefield wants all “the smoke.”
That is the first thing the tape shows, and it is the first thing he will tell you. Benefield wants the smoke. He practices like somebody is trying to take his job, then plays like he already took yours. That is how he shows up on Saturdays. Get him on a snap, and he comes back harder. Start him slow and the second half gets louder. Call it competitiveness.
He calls it something else.
“Kind of like Jason Voorhees,” Benefield said, referencing the character in the Friday the 13th movies, “when I’m dead, I come back alive stronger.”
That is the player LSU brought to Baton Rouge this past winter, a 6-3, 216-pound senior safety from Altadena, Calif., by way of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Boise State, wearing No. 2 and chasing a place in LSU’s “DBU” history.
He arrived as one of the top safeties in the transfer portal after three years as a Bronco: 41 games, 33 starts, 235 tackles, 18 tackles for loss, five interceptions, and two forced fumbles. First-team All-Mountain West. Mountain West Championship Game MVP. A College Football Playoff résumé.
The highlight clip fans associated with Benefield was his encounter with Jeremiyah Love. The Notre Dame back fumbled only once in his entire college career; Benefield was the one who knocked it loose.
“What makes me feared by those best players is that even if they get me on a rep, I’m going to come back harder,” he said. “I feel like I proved that at Ole Miss (earlier this season). I started kind of slow, but that turned me up even more to come in that second half and do some big things.”
He is quick to transfer the credit to his teammates. Pressure does not get home without the front. Big snaps do not appear without teammates putting him in them. The X-factor, in his words, is simply coming back.
That habit did not start in the SEC. It started in a competitive house in Canada.
Benefield grew up in Vancouver, the son of Daved Benefield, nicknamed Buck Sr., who played 13 seasons in the CFL, spent 1996 with the San Francisco 49ers, won a Grey Cup in 2000, and once set a CFL record with five sacks in a game.
Ty’s mom, AJ, was an athlete too. His sister, Addy, plays volleyball at the University of Washington. The house was loud and competitive with sports and with arguments that later turned into camaraderie.
“There was a lot of competition in that family,” Benefield said. “Dad used to go outside with us and do drills on the field, or we’d go to the gym and lift weights with him. Looking back, I’m so thankful for that because it made me who I am today.”
His mom was the other half of it. Not just the rides and the stands. She is the person he could talk to about anything, sports included, and know she would understand.
The urgency came from his father and never left.
“That’s been preached to me my whole life by my father,” Benefield said. “He used to always tell me about a sense of urgency. I kind of took that with me. Then at my first school (Boise State), that was also preached, and they just built those habits. I’m thankful I had that taught to me as a little kid.”
The name Buck came from his father, too. Daved was the original Buck, the name coming from his play on the field being “crazy buck wild.” Ty was known as Young Buck for years. When COVID shut sports down in Canada, he asked to move to California and chase the smoke, beginning a new chapter where people started calling him Buck.
That move put him on a California high school field, then on a Boise State defense that won Mountain West titles and reached the College Football Playoff. When it came time to pick a new school in the transfer portal, the list was real. A handful of elite schools out west, Michigan, where his position coach had gone, and LSU.
“That was a really difficult decision to make,” Benefield said. “I had a lot of opportunities coming my way, thank God for that. But what really made LSU appealing to me was the coaching staff, the amazing culture that surrounds Baton Rouge, that winning culture, the competition week in and week out, and ‘DBU.’ I wanted to be the next defensive back that people looked at as a legend here at LSU.”
He also emphasized wanting the smoke, and he’s doing that by playing against the best of the best in the best conference in the nation, as he calls the SEC “The Baby NFL.”
Louisiana was a different world from the West Coast. The weather hit first. Then the people. Then the standard: football here is not a Saturday hobby, it’s a lifestyle.
“On the West Coast people are kind, too, but Southern hospitality is different,” he said. “Football out here is everything, and that’s amazing to have. It’s a blessing and a burden, because you’ve got crazy fans who say whatever. But when it’s good, they’re like your best friend, and they love you.”
He had prayed for the other half of that bargain, seeing his name on someone else’s back. When it happened – a fan wore jersey No. 2 in the stands on a Saturday, it made him work more.
“Growing up, I never thought I’d have people wearing my jersey,” Benefield said. “It makes me go even harder, knowing people believe in me and put their faith in me.”
What television misses about his position is a lot more than fans realize. Safeties, in his telling, are closer to quarterbacks than highlight videos suggest. Last line of defense. Everything can ride on one read.
“You have to be absolutely dialed into everything,” he said.
That is the on-field version of Buck: range, tenacity, and the willingness to be the one who cannot blink. The practice version is the same player with the volume turned up. Teammates see it. Coaches see it. He does not treat a Tuesday like a light day.
Off the field, he is almost the opposite. He likes to keep it chill when he is listening to Nirvana as well as some Steve Lacy. He also loves to play video games and hang out with family; he loves to be a “goofball,” in his words. He will also tell you there are days he wants to be with nobody at all. On those days, he likes to sit outside in the sun, eat candy and ice cream, and chill.
The contrast is the point. The kid who likes to sit still is the same one who treats a lost rep like unfinished business. The Canadian who learned urgency from a CFL pass rusher is the same one now playing in front of a stadium he could hear in his head long before he signed.
Benefield did not come to LSU just to be another name on the roster; he came to become one of the greats. “DBU” is not a title you inherit. It is a standard you have to meet on the next snap, then the one after that. That is the bet he made when he picked Baton Rouge: that an elite year here is how you stop being a visitor in the room and start being part of history.