In the old days, pre-2000, Knevel would be the only player on the OL with any appreciable experience as he's a returning senior. Nebraska's best teams rarely had a player start on the OL or even get appreciable playing time before their 4th year (guys like Rimmington, Shields, etc. the exception).
If things go the way they are going now, we'll have Gates, Foster, Conrad, Farmer, and Knevel as our starting 5. 4 Juniors and a Senior, and one of the oldest OLs we have had in a while. They certainly don't lack for size, except for Gates and his weight loss. They aren't necessarily considered weak guys with Farmer one of the leaders in the weight room. I really thought Knevel would be out, but he seems to be healthy and back into the swing of things. The main backups, Wilson, Farniok, Raridon, Barnett, Gaylord, and Decker are still pretty young and probably not ready to take a starting spot, but should be able to give some quality minutes.
I think that the talk of how bad our OL looks this spring is about as valid as all of the talk of how great our LBs look. Spring practice is developmental and it's really hard to do an evaluation on how a particular group is doing without having them play in a game against another opponent.
What we do know is that Gates (even with the bad performance against Tennessee) has 2 years of starting experience and we have seen him play very good football. Farmer, when healthy, looked very good last year. We all expect that Foster will be a force when he's fully healthy. That leaves Conrad, who may be playing a position for the first time, and Knevel, who should be good based on the eyeball test, but hasn't gotten it done yet. To me, Knevel's level of improvement and avoiding injury are the keys to our OL play this year.
Are we anywhere where we would like to be, of course not. However, as we all know, we're never quite as bad or as good as we might think at certain times.
As much as we would like to bag on our OL, we all know that the main problem with this team since 2010 has been defense. If we'd had average defenses over the past 6 years, we probably would have had 10 more wins and at least one conference championship.
If things go the way they are going now, we'll have Gates, Foster, Conrad, Farmer, and Knevel as our starting 5. 4 Juniors and a Senior, and one of the oldest OLs we have had in a while. They certainly don't lack for size, except for Gates and his weight loss. They aren't necessarily considered weak guys with Farmer one of the leaders in the weight room. I really thought Knevel would be out, but he seems to be healthy and back into the swing of things. The main backups, Wilson, Farniok, Raridon, Barnett, Gaylord, and Decker are still pretty young and probably not ready to take a starting spot, but should be able to give some quality minutes.
I think that the talk of how bad our OL looks this spring is about as valid as all of the talk of how great our LBs look. Spring practice is developmental and it's really hard to do an evaluation on how a particular group is doing without having them play in a game against another opponent.
What we do know is that Gates (even with the bad performance against Tennessee) has 2 years of starting experience and we have seen him play very good football. Farmer, when healthy, looked very good last year. We all expect that Foster will be a force when he's fully healthy. That leaves Conrad, who may be playing a position for the first time, and Knevel, who should be good based on the eyeball test, but hasn't gotten it done yet. To me, Knevel's level of improvement and avoiding injury are the keys to our OL play this year.
Are we anywhere where we would like to be, of course not. However, as we all know, we're never quite as bad or as good as we might think at certain times.
As much as we would like to bag on our OL, we all know that the main problem with this team since 2010 has been defense. If we'd had average defenses over the past 6 years, we probably would have had 10 more wins and at least one conference championship.
