Maybe the collective should publicly say who they are pursuing and how much they are short and go from there.
Tommi and Corcoran
- Thread starter inWV
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We've got 25 OLmen. We've been through 2 recruting cycles. If they can't find a LT in that bunch then they need to find another occupation. It's like a built in excuse for failure.
It goes back to the stupidity of penciling into two proven injury prone guys there that are supposed to miraculously make it through a season?
Combined, they couldn't even last 4 games.
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We couldn't find one better tackle for 1.5 million?
tiop
They'll get there. I love the tackles they brought in this past year but we're still going to have to be a developmental program for O linemen. Guys who can come in and start as freshmen are extremely rare and we're not likely to land those guys. Gottula will get better with playing time. Lutovsky I think is limited by his mobility.
Meanwhile, next year we lose the Center, and the entire right side of the OL. Let's start that developmen process all over again.
It just seems like that is what we have said for 10 years is they'll get there. Wish we could finally get there.
we don't have any other options
our highest rated OL recruit has never pass blocked a day in his life
The bottom line for me is that it should have never come down to your backup freshman kicker. Our freshman million dollar QB missed a wide open receiver. Our O line gave him time to throw a deep ball to the endzone and he just plain missed. I've posted it many times on here. Raiola is still a freshman and he's going to have growing pains. We saw those Friday. He's throwing too many 50/50 balls. A 50/50 ball means you hope we catch it 50% of the time. The flip side of that is that 50% of the time the defender is going to intercept it or knock it down. We had one miracle TD catch on a 50/50 ball when the DB fell down. Rhamir was WIDE open on that play on the other side of the endzone. We had one 50/50 intercepted (supposedly). Personally I still believe that ball hit the ground and was incomplete.
The hype after 3 wins was ridiculous Welcome back to earth. It's frustrating but we're going to see this with a freshman QB and the injuries at LT and Massccua's suspension.
frankly I'm more disappointed in our edge play on our D line. That was more of a problem than our offense. Nash and Ty were fine. Our edge guys got abused. IF people want to ask questions that's the place to start. WTH was the plan there and why was it such a miserable failure? You can't ask a 240 lb edge to stand up to a 320 lb OT in the run game
That is concerning but we're developing guys to step in. At least in garbage time in our first 3 games they looked promising. I posted earlier that this actually is the year that Rhule probably should win. LOTS of experience in the O line and 2 seniors on the interior of the D line. My bigger concern was how Illinois ran the ball on the edge against us and White had no answer.
Nailed it.
The optimism to start the season was that we had a solid defense returning a ton of experience that could carry a true freshman QB - led offense through inevitable growing pains.
And that the soft early season schedule could allow that to materialize.
Instead, UNI's run game shoved our defense all over the field in the first half (our depth was the difference in the second half) and likewise withered against Illinois.
If this staff expects a true freshman QB is going to bail this team out of ballgame after ballgame / win shootouts in conference play, they better think again.
Not great. You know I was at the game and haven't watched a replay to focus on the O line. It seemed like he was getting bull rushed and getting pushed back in pass pro too much. When they loop our interior wasn't picking up the guy looping behind and Lutovsky was struggling. It appeared to me that we regressed dramatically when Corcoran went down. Was that all on Gottula or was it a combination of factors? I dunno. I'm just giving my amateur view from 20,000 feet. I kept saying "run the ball". Get your O line moving forward and take some heat off of Raiola and then he would complete a 30 yard pass.... We would run it for 6 yards on first down then throw 3 passes in a row and that doesn't help young linemen at all. Granted we moved the ball through the air and I'm not sure how many of those pass plays were audibles from Raiola from run calls.
You look back at UNI and you see they ran it for 3.4 or something like that a carry and only scored what they did and think that was pretty good. It was more about how it looked and how they did it AT TIMES. Illinois took the at times thing and made it in OT when they needed to. We have to figure out some way to help our edge guys in the run game. It still comes down to the fact that IF we complete a pass or make a kick we win the game. SoOOOOO frustrating.
we all know why.
his retention was a good move by Rhule from a personnel standpoint, if not an OL recruiting/coaching/development standpoint.
now that we can hire more coaches, we probably should.
I'm not sure we brought in a single OL analyst this offseason. could be wrong.
Lutovsky has been garbage. Gottula not much better. TC has been a bust that we have to play because we've had noone else. I think at some point if talented, high rated players out of HS are coming into the position group and never getting any better, I think it points to a coaching issue.
See if Callahan will come back and mentor the O line
If we go to a bowl game and play OU he can call them ****ing hillbillies for old times sake.
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Yep. I'm liking what I see our of Jacobs as well. I was thrilled when he came on even though Aaron Jones was one of my favorite Packers of all time.
Yup. Even Emanuel Wilson looked good. That USC RB we drafted is constantly hurt.
Gottula is 3rd on the depth chart at LT. People who have rewatched the game have told me he actually wasn't terrible. One thing that goes out the window when you have to throw Gottula and Lutovsky in the game is the trust and chemistry. Those guys don't have crunch time snaps and it doesn't happen overnight. Stai used to say that even with a returning O line it took them 5-6 games to really get rolling. I'm not an O inexpert. I just know it didn't look great when Corc went down. I'll defer to people who have rewatched the game focusing on the O line. Sports Nightly tonight indicated that Gottula actually graded out okay. PFF grades would be an unbiased way to look at it.
Lutovsky is a junior and should be a solid starter by now. But he is a solid backup. Gottula is a RS frosh and has plenty of time to develop. The upside potential is there. Corcoran should never have needed to play tackle. Guard is his natural position. Unfortunately Prochazka has always been susceptible to leg injuries and will probably never play a full season. So Corcoran moved but then gets injured too.
TC can just be done period. Let the young guys play. When you have played 5 years and cannot get the snap count done get gone.
Yep. Thanks for trying, but time to move on.
We need Corcoran to come back. He can play tackle or guard and he would be a LOT better guard than Lutovsky. Play the best man this year whether it's Corc or Gottula but we need Cororan.
We can agree to disagree. It'll be nice for Corc to be gone. I'd rather a youngster get reps at this point and continue to build for the future. There is opportunity for development and it isn't like TC is a stud. I agree he should play guard, but they aren't going to put him there, so it is what it is. Similar to some of the guys on D, this team just needs a few of these Frost guys to graduate. I'm excited for the future and tired of constantly looking back.
PFF numbers show Gottula far exceeded Corcoran in productive performance.
Yeah. Live impressions while not focusing on individual linemen obviously can be wildly wrong. It’s why I replied to Kakdawg that I hadn’t rewatched the game and would defer to people who had rewatched it and focused on the O line. I still wonder if Corcoran started the game trying to play through the injury. Hill did that and it cost us on the first drive.
I bet we have some untested underclassmen who can do a lot better job filling in at guard than Corcoran. Gottula, at least Friday, proved when given the chance he could outperform the Senior, and by a wide margin.
Lutovsky is not even quite serviceable, maybe time to plug in another young one or two and see if one of them lights up when the action starts.
If Gottula is gonna be the man, by default, and IF another young one could prove to the coaches he's a more than adequate replacement, for the now weakest link in Lutovsky, NU can maybe move forward.
Maybe every position on the OLine was cut and dried before the season ever started, now that one change has been necessary, it may be time to try to fix that leaky RG position.
Jenkins, Scott, Mazz, Benhart and now Gottula have shown they CAN play good football if they get their heads screwed on right. Fixing that RG position is the next needed step. Let's do it!!
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As I watched the game, as always I have low expectations from Corcoran. So I felt Gottula filled in just fine and a mistake here or there is the same thing Corcoran has been showing us for 4-5 years.
IF we could find a young one who is as good, or hopefully better than Lutovsky, that at least gives NU a starting LT, C/LG in Jenkins next year to start with. Replacing Scott, Mazz and Benhart has to start somewhere. Maybe we get lucky in the portal again with a stud like Mazz without the issues.
Between Brix, Pyle and the other younguns, at least we have hope.
I figured one of the young kids would end up playing, just didn't think it would be four games in. Gottula got beat a couple of times, but largely held up against a solid B1G defensive front. My question is whether Mazzucca's dog house days are extended for another week.
Hard to justify Lutovsky starting if Mazz has made amends for his "issue".
Either we're trying to win games or we're not.
We're one more loss against Purdue from really beginning to reel out of control and another lost season.
Threads like this are FAR more informative than some of the postgame venting.
You're a nice guy, but those guys are all trash. Need to be given the Sanders treatment and call each one out individually by name and tell them how much they suck. Because that's going to be the only way it will get through to them. They all have good size, and judging by their star ratings out of high school, they should have the talent. But they are mentally weak and have collected bad habits instilled by their position coach.
