[Goose]

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.

I do agree with you totally that the good OLs in college football are populated by "old men". Freshmen/Sophomores (18/19 year olds mostly) just aren't physically mature/strong enough to compete with "upperclassmen". Most "really good" teams have a mixture of 21-23 year olds, with more on the older end. Of course there are exceptions, but in general that is the case.

I would like to know why you are so certain that TT doesn't in general value mature players and doesn't want to do the things necessary to keep them. Given how poorly the OL has played in the past two years I would guess that retaining upperclassman has not been a priority. You say that TT believes his assistants can identify and recruit OL that can be developed into good college players. You identify that belief as arrogant and ignorant. Since the job description of his assistants is to do exactly those things (which you believe they cannot) should they be replaced forthwith? If TT is so misguided in believing they can in fact do their job should he meet the same fate? It seems to me that is the only possible logical conclusion of your evaluation.

Benching a "proven" fifth year lineman has been discussed on this board a bit. I guess the question is whether his replacement(s) are "worse". If so, that is another "error" by TT. If not, why shouldn't he play the best players? Right now we are all endorsing replacing the junior Daniels with the freshman Brown, at least to evaluate which player is more effective. Why is that different? In both cases the answer may not be immediately obvious or a simple "yes/no".

[Goose]

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.

I do agree with you totally that the good OLs in college football are populated by "old men". Freshmen/Sophomores (18/19 year olds mostly) just aren't physically mature/strong enough to compete with "upperclassmen". Most "really good" teams have a mixture of 21-23 year olds, with more on the older end. Of course there are exceptions, but in general that is the case.

I would like to know why you are so certain that TT doesn't in general value mature players and doesn't want to do the things necessary to keep them. Given how poorly the OL has played in the past two years I would guess that retaining upperclassman has not been a priority. You say that TT believes his assistants can identify and recruit OL that can be developed into good college players. You identify that belief as arrogant and ignorant. Since the job description of his assistants is to do exactly those things (which you believe they cannot) should they be replaced forthwith? If TT is so misguided in believing they can in fact do their job should he meet the same fate? It seems to me that is the only possible logical conclusion of your evaluation.

Benching a "proven" fifth year lineman has been discussed on this board a bit. I guess the question is whether his replacement(s) are "worse". If so, that is another "error" by TT. If not, why shouldn't he play the best players? Right now we are all endorsing replacing the junior Daniels with the freshman Brown, at least to evaluate which player is more effective. Why is that different? In both cases the answer may not be immediately obvious or a simple "yes/no".