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You can have a few Archie Mannings on your team and still not be elite level competitive.

Sterling Moore and Richard Crawford did 2 years, not 4.

But you're right -- a few strong players mixed in can help a team win some games, enough to reach a bowl game, but we had one drafted and a handful in NFL camps. Teams start winning more consistently when they're sending more players than that to the NFL. We're headed in the right direction, but we'll win more when the depth reasonably reflects the best players. The backups won't be as good, but we have to get to the point where we have some backups who are as good as some of our recent starters.

You can see that Run 'n Shoot film room discipline really pay off...

Good question from reedfrawg. And I think it's been answered. Bottom line is that you need MORE NFL caliber to get to the next level (we have a few guys doing well and need more draft caliber . . 3-5 every year). Kind of trending that way, and I'm hoping the 2014 recruiting picks up soon (2013 ended up being much better than most, including me, were worried about). We have to get a few 4 stars and loads of high 3 stars in every class.

Then be innovative in your offense and have some damn swagger! Put all that together and we become nationally relevant again. Totally do-able.

SMUguy wrote:Sterling Moore and Richard Crawford did 2 years, not 4.

But you're right -- a few strong players mixed in can help a team win some games, enough to reach a bowl game, but we had one drafted and a handful in NFL camps. Teams start winning more consistently when they're sending more players than that to the NFL. We're headed in the right direction, but we'll win more when the depth reasonably reflects the best players. The backups won't be as good, but we have to get to the point where we have some backups who are as good as some of our recent starters.

You are right; however, we keep recruiting kids who have no other offers and/or we battle it out against Texas State or North Texas for kids. At some point SMU coaches need to realize that we need some actual talent and that we are in a new league this year. With a little more talent the NFL possibilities are greatly increased.

Margus is the perfect example of this. He didn't really do much for us other than blocking kicks until the BBVA Compass Bowl 2 years ago and it was like a light came on. And even this past year, I'm not sure he lived up to his potential until the Hawaii Bowl. Still considered a major "diamond in the rough" by NFL standards, but our highest draft pick post-DP.

But to put that all into perspective, at what point in Margus career would he have been good enough to get on the field on a quality team like TCU? At SMU he wasn't a starter until last year.

Good point. Margus was in an ideal spot at SMU, for him and for us.

TCU sucks