Goose, one of the reasons why I am becoming convinced we need the portal to field a competent OL is it is becoming clear to me Taylor fundamentally misunderstands what makes OL effective in college football and he is doomed to always have crappy OL play without a fundamental change to his personnel model. He is not dead-set on developing redshirt habits, retention dynamics, etc. that allow us to have fifth and sixth year OL, and that is a death knell in my view (and not for nothing, I have done an incredible amount of empirical research that I think is pretty compelling, if I don't say so myself). He thinks his assistants can identify and recruit OL (who if we're being real are going to overwhelmingly be 3-stars with occasional 4-stars) who they can then develop to be good college players. This is an ignorant and arrogant viewpoint. He will not have good OL without 23 year olds. Period. Fact of college football. That Taylor burns OL redshirts and doesn't bring in major transfer reinforcements and benches a proven fifth year OL proves he simply does not get it. His OL is always going to suck. The one thing I think he could do to fix it is to get jealous of what other opponents are putting out there and lean into roster management avenues that get him those 23 year olds.
Maybe the transfer portal is a difficult avenue for us (though basketball is using it) but if Taylor doesn't plumb it aggressively I have high confidence (very unfortunately/unhappily) that his OL play is not going to be good.
Maybe the transfer portal is a difficult avenue for us (though basketball is using it) but if Taylor doesn't plumb it aggressively I have high confidence (very unfortunately/unhappily) that his OL play is not going to be good.