Joe Rudolph - Offensive Line Coach
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ulukinatme
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Not impressed yet. He had some pretty good talent to work with, but the interior of the OL has been worse than last year. I miss Heistand.
rtrn2glory
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Yep.
I thought the hire was solid at the beginning, but when you regress instead of improve it shows the latter. Not calling for his head like Parker quite yet, but another year of this and that will change. Our interior OL is as bad as I've seen it in awhile. I think it's been mentioned already, but we need to think about the possibility of moving Fisher inside, but I also don't like the idea of having two new tackles next year.
I thought the hire was solid at the beginning, but when you regress instead of improve it shows the latter. Not calling for his head like Parker quite yet, but another year of this and that will change. Our interior OL is as bad as I've seen it in awhile. I think it's been mentioned already, but we need to think about the possibility of moving Fisher inside, but I also don't like the idea of having two new tackles next year.
Giddyup
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Yeah. I miss losing to Marshall and Stanford too.
IRISHDODGER
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Let’s see ND beat WF & Stanford COMFORTABLY before assuming those days are behind us.
Old Man Mike
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Unless you're going to emphasize LOTS of pulling OLine (which we once did but now not), you do lots of interior double team blocking with the faith that the OLine will either stone or collapse the whole side. That was the strength of folks like Q, or Tommy, or Josh --- they were just more powerful than the opponent (Q had it all, but both Tommy and Josh had the brute power.) When you think of our current guards, do you think of brute power, pushing and collapsing whole sides of the DLine as they slant in? If not that, do you think of excellent foot talent to jump out and pull fast across the LOS to lead a back? Seems to me that your guards should be able to do one or the other at an elite level, and then your playcaller call that kind of offense. IE folks with better all-field offensive minds might be able to give better insight as to what we are trying to do --- i.e. do we have a "philosophy"? Does it match our OLine skills?
Katzenboyer
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Yeah, I haven't been impressed. I don't like the "fit" and I don't like how it feels like he predominantly recruits (going back to his days with Wisconsin) "lighter" offensive lineman.
ulukinatme
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How was that Harry's fault? He's easily been the most consistent and productive of the OL coaches we've had over the last 20 years. A lot of Marshall and Stanford have to do with too much youth and inexperience on offense. You can't field half a platoon of freshmen and sophomores and expect to be successful every game, underclassmen make mistakes and often aren't quite ready. BK and Long left the cupboard empty and we reaped the rewards in those games.
There are 2 new starters with little experience at guard (one of whom had been playing hurt apparently) and your most experienced player who should have been leading the charge based on experience was/is too small and got blown up on a regular basis. So the interior players are/were a combination of not that good and not that experienced. Nobody is gonna have a consistently good o line with that going on.
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Irish du Nord
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Rocco has shown power on some plays but not consistently. I think another problem is how often guys look lost on a relatively veteran line. If it’s still happening frequently in game 10, I think that’s some failing of the coach
Giddyup
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I mean our avg yards per carry is up from last year and we have two sucky defenses left. Estimae already has more yards than he did last year.
Against Marshall our rb’s avg 3.0 yds per carry. Our oline sucked but if you guys want to live in fantasy Harry land be my guest.
PutuporShutup
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There's one common denominator issue with the run game and oline from last year to this year. We could find out this weekend, but that common denominator I do not believe will be playing.
Seriously though, for some reason Brown and Zeke have played through some of the worst play i've seen from people at their position. They clearly know what they are supposed to do, just can't physically do it.
anarin
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Louisville stacked the box and played a lot of man coverage if I remember correctly (which coincidentally was the same game plan that Clemson had). I wouldn't put the oline as the biggest reason for the loss, I'd put it on Parker's playcalling, Hartman's turnovers and the fact that Louisville damn near ran for 200 yards on the defense.
IRISHDODGER
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Correct. If there’s not a counter or threat of a counter to ‘pin & pull’ or ’duo’ than the boxes will continue to be loaded w/ a DT/NG lined up directly the center. With Correl out I suspect they’ll still try to overpower his replacement. Hopefully Kristofic/Craig are up to the task.
PutuporShutup
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I'm a glutton for punishment. Re watched 4th quarter vs clemson focusing on Craig. Craig may have played better than I've ever seen Zeke play vs a good D. I'm just dumbfounded they've rolled with Zeke for this long. I'm not sure that Craig made a mistake, he definitely didn't get blown up.
With that said, the pressure Clemson did get came from LBs blitzing and our RBs did TERRIBLE. Pyne and Estime gave up multiple pressures each, and fisher. Fisher gave up multiple pressures.
One other note, Hartman played bad, but as we all know, Parker does not put the QB in a spot to succeed often. He had a few good play calls but they were always at the wrong time vs the wrong look. The fourth quarter play calling vs clemson is exactly what you would call if we were UP 2 scores (until the last drive or two in panic mode).
With that said, the pressure Clemson did get came from LBs blitzing and our RBs did TERRIBLE. Pyne and Estime gave up multiple pressures each, and fisher. Fisher gave up multiple pressures.
One other note, Hartman played bad, but as we all know, Parker does not put the QB in a spot to succeed often. He had a few good play calls but they were always at the wrong time vs the wrong look. The fourth quarter play calling vs clemson is exactly what you would call if we were UP 2 scores (until the last drive or two in panic mode).
Irish du Nord
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Why are we continuing to use RB as assigned blockers. Let them block as needed, don’t task Gibran Payne with an interior DLineman.
Dizzyphil
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And the development underclass linemen..... I mean yesterday's performance was pretty damn good for first-time / Bowl game starts
stpeteirish
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Craig has been really impressive. Lowest rated recruit in his class.
Rankings often wrong on OLine. Player development way more important.
Rankings often wrong on OLine. Player development way more important.
ColinKSU
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I was actually thinking about this while I watched Justin Frye’s booty cheeks line at Ohio State last night.
Terry Jillery
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Scholly?
Wrong thread?
I think he might be the interior space eater on the d line we’ve all been looking for!
Pretty sure he chose to stay home and go to Kentucky and Diaco said we would have to give up the 3-4 if he didn’t commit.
ulukinatme
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Oh shit, are you joking or is that not an old video of Matt Elam???
That's a blast from a decade ago. I remember following his recruitment closely, thinking he would be the NT to replace Irish Chocolate since we couldn't seem to land one. We never landed Elam as he stayed home at UK, and it was the end of the 3-4 as a result basically. Diaco whiffed on the two most important positions in his defense, NT and MLB.
Elam was shit
That fat jersey bus riding kid they got instead never played a down. The fat kid from park tudor never played a down. And dan cage was ok a few times then dipped
ulukinatme
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Yeah, Elam played 3 seasons and got injured, never really shed the bad weight. Super 5 star flop. Don't think he had more than 10 tackles in a season. He wouldn't have saved our defense, but it's true that Diaco whiffed on all of his NT and MLB targets which is ultimately probably why he decided to slip away for a crummy UConn job instead of living with the ramifications of his failed recruiting.
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