Well, "results" show far & wide they're just not very good linemen (at all). As someone posted a couple of months ago here, recruiting star ratings for skilled positions are much more accurate than for the big ugly dudes. It makes good sense to me.
Offensive line star ratings
- Thread starter Pennsyhusker
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Well, "results" show far & wide they're just not very good linemen (at all). As someone posted a couple of months ago here, recruiting star ratings for skilled positions are much more accurate than for the big ugly dudes. It makes good sense to me.
Exactly my point. I don't think the past coaching staff did a good job developing players, but come on. I don't think they were so awful that Farmer and Foster go from being very good prospects to being very mediocre just because of the coaching they got. You can see it in their agility, their footwork, their speed, their stability.... or the lack thereof. They just don't have fundamental athleticism. Period. So I am not blaming Frost or Riley or being impatient. I am just making an observation that I think is obvious to any impartial observer.
"So we all heard about the gains in the weight room this off season and reasoned that this line will now be good. But they are, once again, awful. "
You pointed out pretty obviously there's a disconnect between football ability and several things kids can be rated on with an arbitrary star system.
Great gains in the weight room this past off season can be one of them. And its pretty plain that your assessment is in the now, and not about the future. Which is sort of at odds with the rest of your post about building kids from a smaller more athletic size. Those guys being very nearly graduated, its hard to say exactly what screwed them up, but likely the real answer is they are better than we are giving them credit for but very inconsistent, and having a couple of staffs did them no favors either.
The whole NFL "workout warrior draft pick bust" is a pretty regular occurrence. While great gains in the weight room is often a trait of good football players, just because some snuffy makes gains in the weight room doesn't mean he's about to be a good football player ten minutes later. Correlation is not causation.
This happens alot on this board. "Bunch will be a more than serviceable backup because he's a great fit for Frost's system and he can run! He never would have been all that good under Riley!".
Two weeks after camp, folks sorta learned the hard way that just because Bunch has a skillset fit for Frost's offense, doesn't mean he's actually very good at using it. People have a bad habit of assuming that if you need a certain skillset at a position, and you go out and find that skillset in a person, that person will automagically blossom into a good to dominant player (often in an unreasonable amount of time) because "fit". Fit is not the only thing that matters.
We don't assume that when we buy a hammer or a tv or a car, but we do football players. Everything on Amazon has star rankings too
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In general I agree with your statements. I think its possible to take a bunch of lower rated or walk on guys and build them into a pretty decent line. Harder to make Deion Sanders out of a walk on at the skill positions.
My main beef with folks is that very few folks seems to want to wait the requisite time for the building to take place. You can more or less throw out a given transition class which is all Frost has had so far and I thought he did a good job with it and his first real class won't even be on campus for another year. So realistically, we're talking 3 years from now before you start pulling undersized TE's out of the oven as athletic OT's, which is nearly 4 years after he stepped on campus to coach this team.
Lot of patience required to back up some of the talk on this board. We'll see who's a walker and who's a talker pretty quick
My main beef with folks is that very few folks seems to want to wait the requisite time for the building to take place. You can more or less throw out a given transition class which is all Frost has had so far and I thought he did a good job with it and his first real class won't even be on campus for another year. So realistically, we're talking 3 years from now before you start pulling undersized TE's out of the oven as athletic OT's, which is nearly 4 years after he stepped on campus to coach this team.
Lot of patience required to back up some of the talk on this board. We'll see who's a walker and who's a talker pretty quick
If 3 different coaching staffs believed that these players were talented, they probably have talent. The Seniors learned from Barney and Garrison, Cav, and now Austin. It's not easy to build trust and confidence along with a complete understanding of the system when the system and coaches are always changing.
This - and different systems need different skills, and players may fit better or worse in different systems.
There's been no consistency in recruiting, coaching or development at this point although the Barney/Garrison style was more similar to Austin than Cav's.
That said, the OL hasn't been all bad this year. Against Troy they were facing an aggressive defensive front without a full set of options to make the defense pay (i.e., limited QB play both running and passing) and a set of WR's and TEs who don't think it's important to block right now... people tend to blame the OL for a myriad of problems that can be caused by anyone on the field.
People need to be patient here. For this year, I the OL can be competent, but it won't do everything Austin/Frost wants for a couple of years
Huh? Of course my "assessment" is in the now. But you are reading too much into it as you seek to sniff out people who do not have your savvy football acumen. All I am saying is that the upperclassman on our line lack talent. You can disagree with that and claim that they are still underdeveloped, but I stand by my observation. I think those guys are just not that talented and never will be. And I think they were overrated coming out of high school. Nowhere did I say that I do not like our underclassman or that Frost will be unable to build a good line eventually. In fact, my emphasis on recruiting "project" players that you build into good lineman shows, contrary to your incorrect claim, that I am counseling patience. How does my criticism of the talent level of three seniors translate into me being "impatient" and"wanting results now"???? You are sniffing for an issue that is not there."So we all heard about the gains in the weight room this off season and reasoned that this line will now be good. But they are, once again, awful. "
You pointed out pretty obviously there's a disconnect between football ability and several things kids can be rated on with an arbitrary star system.
Great gains in the weight room this past off season can be one of them. And its pretty plain that your assessment is in the now, and not about the future. Which is sort of at odds with the rest of your post about building kids from a smaller more athletic size. Those guys being very nearly graduated, its hard to say exactly what screwed them up, but likely the real answer is they are better than we are giving them credit for but very inconsistent, and having a couple of staffs did them no favors either.
The whole NFL "workout warrior draft pick bust" is a pretty regular occurrence. While great gains in the weight room is often a trait of good football players, just because some snuffy makes gains in the weight room doesn't mean he's about to be a good football player ten minutes later. Correlation is not causation.
This happens alot on this board. "Bunch will be a more than serviceable backup because he's a great fit for Frost's system and he can run! He never would have been all that good under Riley!".
Two weeks after camp, folks sorta learned the hard way that just because Bunch has a skillset fit for Frost's offense, doesn't mean he's actually very good at using it. People have a bad habit of assuming that if you need a certain skillset at a position, and you go out and find that skillset in a person, that person will automagically blossom into a good to dominant player (often in an unreasonable amount of time) because "fit". Fit is not the only thing that matters.
We don't assume that when we buy a hammer or a tv or a car, but we do football players. Everything on Amazon has star rankings too
Wilson is an interesting thing I don't get. He looks like he is putting in the conditioning work but yet completely blows up playing about 20 snaps. You can't really play a kid much if he is gassed halfway into the 2nd drive.
I don't get why they don't at minimum play Farmer at center, Farinok at RG and Conrad at RT. You would still have to constantly give help to the RT but it would be better than having to help at RT AND having a center who can't snap and block at the same time.
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