Summers discusses OL issues/recruiting

[BMF]

Dead-Man Walking talks about the OL. All I'm seeing is excuses.

2016 Firing Order:

1: Nord
2: Summers
3: ????

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Gator Chomps: Florida still needs to improve OL recruiting

https://www.seccountry.com/florida/gator-chomps-florida-still-needs-to-improve-ol-recruiting

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Over the last few years, depth has been the issue for Florida along the offensive line.

From 2010 to 2012, the Gators only signed two players at the position in each class and three of those six linemen transferred from Florida.

That three-year stretch of recruiting decimated Florida’s O-line depth, and it has taken four cycles to get the numbers back up.

“Numbers were just in really bad shape,” said Gators offensive line coach Mike Summers, who was hired in January of 2014.

Summers signed six linemen in that 2014 class, and Florida brought in five the year before. Those signees should have solved the problem, but didn’t.

Two of them were junior college transfers in Drew Sarvary and Trenton Brown. Sarvary suffered a career-ending injury as did Octavious Jackson, Nolan Kelleher and Roderick Johnson.

Travaris Dorsey and Trevon Young also transferred, so six of those 11 signees from 2013 and 2014 did not last with the Gators. In the last two years, nine linemen have been signed by Florida, which put the roster back up to 15.

“It’s been a long climb. A long, hard climb,” Summers said. “Losing all those guys that we lost in ’14, juniors in that group as well. There were a string of medical redshirts that came through here my first year and the year before, and it just left us so short. So we’re gradually building our way back to where we’ve at least got depth.

“Certainly we need every year to improve our talent level as we go forward, but we’re on that road, that climb back now. I think we do have some bodies to work with and some guys that are in there developing right now as we go forward. Certainly most of those guys that we’ve had in the last year, year and a half, those guys are really young and really inexperienced.”

Five underclassmen have started on the offensive line this year. That youth has been evident through the four games. The unit’s play is still problematic and inconsistent because of the lack of development and readiness of Florida’s linemen.

All 15 should return in 2017. This season as well as as spring practices and the offseason strength program will pay dividends for them next fall. However, the Gators need to continue recruiting to add talent at the position.

With true freshmen starting on the offensive line, Summers can sell early playing time to prospects.

“With recruiting right now, the players that we’re on and the players that we’re recruiting with, all those guys got talent to come in and compete for positions, and they know that,” Summers said. “I think the recruits that see what we’ve done here, and we’re not saying, ‘Hey, if you’re a freshman, when you come in here, you have to redshirt on the offensive line.’

“You have an opportunity to compete for a position and as long as coach Mac is here and as long as I’m here, the best five guys are going to go out there and play. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a senior, we’re gonna put the best five guys out there. So, certainly, young players have shown that they can come in and have an impact in our offense.”

 

[Durty South Swamp]

Sounds like a whole lot of what we've known for 5 years. And a whole lot of nothing done about it either.

 

[playzwtrux]

you'd almost have to be an idiot to be a freshman and want to come in and get your six kicked by SEC lineman your freshman year

 

[ATXGator]

you'd almost have to be an idiot to be a freshman and want to come in and get your six kicked by SEC lineman your freshman year

The freshman who is starting is probably our best OL right now

 

[MertzJay26]

To summarize:

 

[TLB]

Summers signed six linemen in that 2014 class, and Florida brought in five the year before. Those signees should have solved the problem, but didn’t.

Two of them were junior college transfers in Drew Sarvary and Trenton Brown. Sarvary suffered a career-ending injury as did Octavious Jackson, Nolan Kelleher and Roderick Johnson.

Travaris Dorsey and Trevon Young also transferred, so six of those 11 signees from 2013 and 2014 did not last with the Gators.

In the last two years, nine linemen have been signed by Florida, which put the roster back up to 15.

I don't know much about football, especially development of an OL. But how exactly does one coach up deficiencies based on transfers and injuries? It appears they have been trying to get 4-5 per class, as opposed to the 2 per class WM was bringing in.

Furthermore, the 'board experts' say it takes 3 yrs for a lineman to develop to SEC level. And we're expecting freshman and sophomores to compete effectively?

 

[Durty South Swamp]

Sorry but if a team has an obscene amount of transfers from a position group over an extended period of time, that's a coach issue, not a player issue. The staff owns these problems, and the sooner they stop making excuses for them, but instead accept them and get things fixed, the better.

 

[playzwtrux]

The freshman who is starting is probably our best OL right now

maybe, but that doesn't mean he's SEC ready

 

[TheDouglas78]

Sorry but if a team has an obscene amount of transfers from a position group over an extended period of time, that's a coach issue, not a player issue. The staff owns these problems, and the sooner they stop making excuses for them, but instead accept them and get things fixed, the better.

Durty, the transferred happened from 2013/14 which sounds like a Muschamp and coaching transition thing. Were they transferring due to the change from Muschamp or from the firing of the previous OL coach.

 

[TheDouglas78]

I don't know much about football, especially development of an OL. But how exactly does one coach up deficiencies based on transfers and injuries? It appears they have been trying to get 4-5 per class, as opposed to the 2 per class WM was bringing in.

Furthermore, the 'board experts' say it takes 3 yrs for a lineman to develop to SEC level. And we're expecting freshman and sophomores to compete effectively?

Muschamp under recruited OL... that is a problem. And it does take years for linemen to get together. We should be recruiting 8-12 downlinemen every recruiting cycle. The growth of the Linemen who have been on the roster for a couple of years, is what is concerning. Just watch how our experienced linemen didn't know how to pull against Tennessee.

 

[Uncle Rob]

Muschamp under recruited OL... that is a problem. And it does take years for linemen to get together. We should be recruiting 8-12 downlinemen every recruiting cycle. The growth of the Linemen who have been on the roster for a couple of years, is what is concerning. Just watch how our experienced linemen didn't know how to pull against Tennessee.

When you say down linemen, do you mean defensive linemen too? Because 12 players is half of an average recruiting class.

 

[TheDouglas78]

When you say down linemen, do you mean defensive linemen too? Because 12 players is half of an average recruiting class.

yes, I mean both types of Down Linemen.

 

[cover2]

Muschamp under recruited OL... that is a problem. And it does take years for linemen to get together. We should be recruiting 8-12 downlinemen every recruiting cycle. The growth of the Linemen who have been on the roster for a couple of years, is what is concerning. Just watch how our experienced linemen didn't know how to pull against Tennessee.

Bold part is a big problem, but it isn't the only problem. The high # of transfers would point to coaching mistakes, either in recruiting or development. Development, of course, is another issue. I would agree with Summers that we are just now getting a workable # of bodies at the position, but the group's overall ability to execute their assignments and help produce positive plays would seem to range from inconsistent to just plain bad. We've either missed badly with the guys we've recruited, can't develop them into efficient and dependable players, or both. Until these issues are corrected, it'll be same song, different verse.

 

[Gator Fever]

Excuses - there is no reason for Johnson and Ivey to be so mentally confused out there missing their assignments at the Guard position. Other teams have sophomores starting that seem to have the fundamentals down way better.

The one exception is Taylor who is doing really well for a True Freshman.

 

[NavetG8r]

I must not know very much about football. Everything he says in the article makes perfect sense to me. When Summers got here we had a YEUGE deficit of OLinemen. There are only so many 4-5 star Olinemen out there. We aren't going to get every one of them, and we needed about 10 more OLinemen when he got here. Transfers happen when there's a huge staff change-over. All of this combined to put him in a position to HAVE to grab any big body he could get to commit. Most of them haven't turned out to be all that talented unfortunately. Everyone keeps saying it takes time to develop down linemen because they aren't strong or mature enough to start in the SEC until they've had about 3 years of eating the right food and lifting the right way. We haven't had a full starting line-up of 3 year vets yet and won't because of all the transfers until next year or the year after that. Yet somehow Summers is the problem according to some of the experts here.

 

[EuroGator]

Sounds like a whole lot of what we've known for 5 years. And a whole lot of nothing done about it either.

You may have other ideas, but according to the article, they've been trying to recruit and train like crazy and after three years of insufficient recruiting (# of bodies) they've been trying to make up for it with increased recruiting (# of bodies) at the position(s).

From 2010 to 2012, the Gators only signed two players at the position in each class and three of those six linemen transferred from Florida.

However, we've had some pretty :crap:y luck with OL health ...and that created a perfect storm that led to last year's terrible lack of viable options.

Summers signed six linemen in that 2014 class, and Florida brought in five the year before. Those signees should have solved the problem, but didn’t.

Two of them were junior college transfers in Drew Sarvary and Trenton Brown. Sarvary suffered a career-ending injury as did Octavious Jackson, Nolan Kelleher and Roderick Johnson.

Travaris Dorsey and Trevon Young also transferred, so six of those 11 signees from 2013 and 2014 did not last with the Gators. In the last two years, nine linemen have been signed by Florida, which put the roster back up to 15.

The article implies that we finally have enough depth but we need to ratchet up the quality of the linemen (with the assumption of maintaining the proper numbers).

You can try hard at something (the opposite of doing nothing) and still fail. This is a story of all of the work to overcome three bad recruiting cycles followed by unfortunate injury and transfer circumstances.

 

[maheo30]

 

[TheDouglas78]

I must not know very much about football. Everything he says in the article makes perfect sense to me. When Summers got here we had a YEUGE deficit of OLinemen. There are only so many 4-5 star Olinemen out there. We aren't going to get every one of them, and we needed about 10 more OLinemen when he got here. Transfers happen when there's a huge staff change-over. All of this combined to put him in a position to HAVE to grab any big body he could get to commit. Most of them haven't turned out to be all that talented unfortunately. Everyone keeps saying it takes time to develop down linemen because they aren't strong or mature enough to start in the SEC until they've had about 3 years of eating the right food and lifting the right way. We haven't had a full starting line-up of 3 year vets yet and won't because of all the transfers until next year or the year after that. Yet somehow Summers is the problem according to some of the experts here.

We are in a deficit because we have three starters with 2 or less years of College on our line. That isn't on Summers. My issue is the guys in year 3 in his system, still seem to be lost in basic areas of the game.

 

[Gator Fever]

I must not know very much about football. Everything he says in the article makes perfect sense to me. When Summers got here we had a YEUGE deficit of OLinemen. There are only so many 4-5 star Olinemen out there. We aren't going to get every one of them, and we needed about 10 more OLinemen when he got here. Transfers happen when there's a huge staff change-over. All of this combined to put him in a position to HAVE to grab any big body he could get to commit. Most of them haven't turned out to be all that talented unfortunately. Everyone keeps saying it takes time to develop down linemen because they aren't strong or mature enough to start in the SEC until they've had about 3 years of eating the right food and lifting the right way. We haven't had a full starting line-up of 3 year vets yet and won't because of all the transfers until next year or the year after that. Yet somehow Summers is the problem according to some of the experts here.

Well lets look at 3 of his O lineman. One a blue chipper and the other two 3 stars which is standard for good O linemen recruits. Sophomores do well in this league many times at OL.

Johnson and Ivey are constantly missing their blocking assignments in these first few games. Johnson almost by himself shut down our running plays in the 2nd half against Tenn due to blocking the wrong guy who was already occupied etc. while allowing his responsibility to blow up the plays. Ivey has whiffed a lot also.

The exception is Taylor who is playing well for a True Freshman. Is the problem those 2 sophomores or is the problem mainly Summers and Taylor is just a natural. I tend to think it may be the latter.