I think that’s probably an excessive amount of DL recruits. The base defense was/is more of a 2-4-5. If you’re projecting off of usage needs or roster balance two is a better number than three, so your logic would point to two per year/four over two year stretches. The other problem with aiming for 5-6 over two years is how difficult it is to find good DL and how useless the utter whiffs are. I realize that’s also an argument for spreading your bets/taking your shots but that only works if there’s some plausibility with the recruit. Does taking an extra Lance Callihan/Anthony Hayes a year help? I don’t think so.
The imbalance in our recruiting has been everywhere in the front seven other than DL. In the base defense, DL/Edge/ILB are all essentially two positions in the base defense. Your logic, which I think is very sound, would suggest that in a six year stretch we should have 12 at each of those positions. In the six year 2017-2022 span we recruited 13 DL, 8 ILB, and 7 OLB. The reality is we are on target at DL, heavy on DB, heavy on offense generally, and very, very light at Edge/ILB over the last half decade plus. When you consider that LBs typically have more special teams utility than DL the disparity is even starker.
The causes of our DL shortcomings in recent year have been coaching, strength and conditioning, and retention, not recruiting. Moreover, a case can be made that performance failures have been more on the second level than in the trenches. Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, and Thomas Booker (twice) were all all-conference. The only linebacker to be all-conference in that span was Casey Toohill, and he didn’t deserve it. Given an even distribution of all-conference across the positions, you’d expect about twice as many LBs as DL. The story of our defensive decline has been as much pitiful LB play as anything.
The imbalance in our recruiting has been everywhere in the front seven other than DL. In the base defense, DL/Edge/ILB are all essentially two positions in the base defense. Your logic, which I think is very sound, would suggest that in a six year stretch we should have 12 at each of those positions. In the six year 2017-2022 span we recruited 13 DL, 8 ILB, and 7 OLB. The reality is we are on target at DL, heavy on DB, heavy on offense generally, and very, very light at Edge/ILB over the last half decade plus. When you consider that LBs typically have more special teams utility than DL the disparity is even starker.
The causes of our DL shortcomings in recent year have been coaching, strength and conditioning, and retention, not recruiting. Moreover, a case can be made that performance failures have been more on the second level than in the trenches. Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, and Thomas Booker (twice) were all all-conference. The only linebacker to be all-conference in that span was Casey Toohill, and he didn’t deserve it. Given an even distribution of all-conference across the positions, you’d expect about twice as many LBs as DL. The story of our defensive decline has been as much pitiful LB play as anything.