PatDooleySucks;n239074 said:
You think Kelvin Taylor is a backup on every other team in the SEC? You don't think Adam Lane is starting to turn heads? You don't think that moving Powell out of the RB position to slot WR has something to do with Depth? You don't think McGriff was possibly the biggest game changer we got in the last recruiting cycle?
As to the QBs, they were both highly touted and nationally recruited. They suffered under the last regime that everyone on this board agrees was detrimental to their ability to develop. Now they are under a new regime that has nothing but an amazing track record with offenses and QBs.
The OL is a mess but with some luck avoiding injuries and good play calling, it will be serviceable this year and the experience of all the starters will serve us handsomely in the next 3-4 years. Our defense is nasty and almost unchanged from last year. It should/will keep us in all the games as long as our offense can give it some encouragement. If we were marginally better on offense last year, we would have won 11 games. Hell, even with that offense we were a play away from lsu and a play away from fsu. Nine games should be the over/under for this team.
Kelvin I'll withhold judgement on, knowing he was behind other guys and did what he could with his limited chances. Lane I'm not sold on at all. He had ONE great game, against ECU. I'm not writing him off, I just haven't seen enough to buy in that he's all that. It was ONE game, against ECU.
I also can't pass judgement on the QBs at this point. Yes, TH struggled, but he was put in the awful position of being under WM, of playing backup/starter/backup/starter to a guy who shouldn't have been on the field, etc. He's been shaky, but we have some good offensive, and QB specific, coaching available now so let's see what he can be developed into when given the chance. WG....zero starts, zero college snaps, zero. Nothing to base an opinion on here either, other than the hope that highly_recruited+new_coaches=serviceable_QB. Gotta wait and see. Flip side of not being able to say we have solid QB or not is that heading into the season I am neither comforted nor miserable, just wary and as patient as possible to see the product on the field. And keeping in mind the young and inexperienced OL in front of them. Really, you need a good QB to make a team, but even if you have a good QB, you need good players around him. Right now, on a scale of 1-10 with what we know today, I'd rate our QB situation a 2-3, our RBs a3-4, our OL a 1-2, and our WR 3-4 with Demarcus pulling that way above what the others have shown. But the X factor is the new coaching staff, what they can teach between January and August, and how well the kids (new and old) take to the teachings. I don't know how hard it is to evaluate talent, evelop a plan, and teach them to follow it in football - eight months is tight, I suspect. We'll see better offense than the last few years, but I'm thinking at best JMac and staff can get us to a level 5 on that scale. That's middle of the road. Better, but not the 8-10 we want. I hope by year two we can be at a level 7-8 on offense. That is at best, and that would be enough to be winning the East.
The other question is if the defense can stay strong. Naysayers (law) claim the new DC is a miss and prays he doesn't wreck the talent we have. Personally, I hadn't watched MSU's defense to know enough about this guy, but I know we're starting with talent, and a lot of it (nod to depth issues at LB). We should be running at a level 7-9 on defense again this year, which will keep us in a lot of games and give the offense a chance to show they can win the games for us. The question on this side of the ball, for me right now, is how do we fill that LB depth issue and how do we sustain recruiting top talent on that side of the ball? Phrased badly - not a quesion of 'how' more a question of 'will we'. The coaching on that side can only do so much damage if it is inept, as JMac will kick the DC out and hand it fully to Shannon. And even if the DC is trying to drive it off the tracks, you have Shannon in there to say 'Dude, wtf are you thinking?' should he try. We won't go that far off base on defense, it won't fall off a cliff. It will hold steady, and has the chance to improve.
We would have won 11 games last year with a marginally better offense? How about we could have lost 11 games wiht a marginally worse defense? Coaching, as pointed out earlier, is the center of all of this. Now we hope that is corrected, and it takes time for that to prove true or not. Until then, we can blather endlessly on the what-if and coulda-shoulda stuff, but the reality is we don't know crap, and we won't until they get on the field this fall and show us what we bought.
