Come and Take It wrote:
On offense Gilbert, Johnson, and Gottschalk are gone. Acker, Joyner, Pope, and Scott on defense. That's 7 of 22 starters. That's quite a bit.
Fair point, but let's be honest, only a few of those guys are impact players. Plus, and few rarely focus on this, you get 70 kids back with one more year of conditioning and experience. I mean Joyner was a 5.2 2* with offers from SMU and Sam Houston. Pope was a 5.4 2* kid with garbage offers. The guys you listed above were important guys this year, be let's not fear the sky is falling simply because those seven guys are graduating (though, losing GG stings). For me (and I think for just about everyone) it's that we're not seeing sweeping improvement in recruiting. It's not that we can't plug six of the seven holes from above.
Garrett is a given, but consider this: your leading pass catcher; your top 2 leading tacklers (one of which is now playing RB) and 3 of the top 4; starter on the OL; your best DB. All of them are gone.
In my honest opinion, those are all impact players. When you say "only a few of those guys are impact players," are you judging on a career or this year? If by year, then the only one you could feasibly say isn't is Gottschalk. Are all of their replacements equally as good? No. Is that the problem? Yes. Like Stallion says above, "we are losing better talent than we are developing."
Plugging those holes isn't the problem. Plugging them with suitable replacements is.
EDIT: Holman is gone as well. 2nd leading receiver in terms of yards. Leading receiver in yards per catch.
Yes, we are losing some seniors...but their replacements have an entire off season to practice and grow. Hopefully we will be ready in 2014.
This is also the first year for Hal Mumme's offense too...
Although I am worried about our running game...we need to be able to put at least 150-200 yards on the ground every game folks and not from our quarterback! There are some drives where we call 10 pass plays and only 1 rush play. I prefer a balanced approach in which we go 60/40 for pass/rush. Prescott may have a coming out year in 2014...hopefully better than Zach
Stallion wrote:for the last 3 years including this year we are losing better talent than we are developing. I really think we are stair-stepping down. The young players we thought would contribute especially on defense this year didn't show
I agree completely. In addition, our 2014 class will probably be the lowest rated/talented in the JJ era and insure continued stair-stepping down.
I think just about everyone on this board knows more about football recruiting than me. I was just trying to point out that only a small handful of important players are graduating (GG being the biggest). Just not sure we have an answer at QB (or RB).
I guess I'm just dumb enough to try and find some hope in all of this. My bad.
