Settle down there tough guy. We are having a civilized debate. I disagree with you. Our OL is by far the weakest talent positional group on the team, and it’s not particularly close. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s good. It’s just not nearly at the level of any other positional group yet. If we want to win championships, it needs to be. Do you not remember this year consistently being unable to pickup 1st downs on 3rd and 2 or 3rd and 1? With the likes of Love and Price, the top 2 RBs in college? And that was WITH Craig and Schrauth (and Wagner), who are 100 times better than Absher and Otting? And that wasn’t even against top teams. But sure, our OL is stellar.
I want to win championships, and to do so, you need every positional group to be playing at a top level. I personally do not think the current OL is at that level needed…yet.
What wasn't civilized in my reply? I think you are wrong and we have loads of talent. It needs to mature, it needs to galvanize but all of the talent needed to win a title is in the room.
I hate ranking positions against each other because it's not a fair assessment and it's of little value. I'd rather grade every position group based on talent and production. We'd need someone to run the numbers on all of the playoff teams in the last 3 years to see how we stack up in terms of Age, Snaps played, etc.
Every ranking is a snapshot in time. We might end spring/summer/fall and feel wildly different about any of these positions.
Secondary:
Talent - A, Production - A
LB:
Talent - A/B+, Production - B+
DE:
Talent - A, Production - B
DT:
Talent - B/B+ (could be argued A-), Production - C+/B- (dependent on Onye's waiver)
QB:
Talent - A, Production - A-/B+ (this doesn't account for the drastic dropoff from starter to backup)
WR:
Talent - B+/A-, Production - B- (Faison/Greathouse anchor an otherwise very talented and unproven WR group)
TE:
Talent - A (even moreso once Premer gets here), Production - C- (players in the room have played snaps but no one has been 'the guy')
RB:
Talent - A-/B+, Production - C (Aneyas has played a big role at times. Lots of unproven talent)
OL:
Talent - A/A-, Production - C+
Knapp, Otting, Craig and Lambert all return. Craig is coming back from a second injury. All have played playoff-level except maybe Otting but I'm not fit to judge that. Jagusah will be returning from injury for the 2nd straight year but we all believe in what we saw in limited snaps. We just need him at 100%. That's a lot of snaps played between them.
Absher, at least, sets the floor of OG group. Black and Augustine are both A - rated players and both could be ready to seriously challenge for snaps. What if Black is good enough to take a Tackle position? Or Augustine? What if one of the freshman or another unexpected player has the lightbulb click on? We're not relying on that though.
In totality, we have:
Highest odds to comprise our starting 5/first 7 players:
Knapp, Craig, Lambert, Jagusah, Black, Otting, Augustine, Absher
2nd group:
Terek, Herron, Prescod, Jones and Strebig
3rd group:
Nichols, McKeogh, Merrill, Patrick, Thom and Garvin
So we have 8 players who start in pole position and we have 11 wild cards who all have a smaller chance to emerge. Given what we have elsewhere on this team, I guess there's nothing else to bitch about so we gotta find something that looks like a "weakness".
