Couple tweets from Brian Smith really highlight the difference between Weis picking up Willingham's pieces and where we are at now.
Hopefully it is not just spring optimism on my part, but the simple fact that we have more than competent, veteran depth at almost every position puts us in an exponentially better position than we have been in quite a while. This is my #1 reason for excitement this spring.
Spot on Ironman, the tweet is about young men being pressed into service early because of a lack of talent and player leadership not because of a lack of coaching leadership. In '97 Joey Getherall was the first true freshman to start in on an Opening Day is a couple of decades. Over the next few years more and more freshman saw early PT and not just at the skill positions but also in the beef positions. Ryan Harris was playing RT at 260 pounds in an era of 300 pouinders. Players like Dorsey Levens weren't transferring out because they couldn't crack the depth chart, they wasn't much of a depth chart.
The deciline is talent started with Vinny Cerrato's last recruiting class in 1990. It showed dramatically in '94. The last few Holtz years didn't have the depth that the Cerrato classes did. Davie got Leaked at QB which started a QB crisis hat has continued for most of the past 15 years. Willingham left holes all over.
Take a look at the size of the guys Smith mentions, himself, Neal, Allen, Ian Williams , Clausen, and Tate. Williams was the only one with Div 1 size at his position. Weighing 294 he had the size but not the strength of the 21 and 22 year old OLs he battled with. Clausen was actually older but he was pressed into service despite recovering from throwing arm surgery. He was tossed around like a rag doll behind a porous OLine and RBs that hadn't learned how to pick up a blitz. Tate had immense athletic talent but was converted to a "skill" position WR from HS RB and he lacked the skill to run anything but a fly pattern.
It's been a long time since we were so deep at so many positions and we're still not back to the depth that made a Dorsey Levens transfer but we're getting close. That is a reason for optimism.
