Good article on Coen by Freddie Maggard.
- Thread starter ScrewDuke1
- Start date
Nice article but I thought it interesting while slicing and dicing up last year's offense no mention was made of the putrid O-line play. I think they have taken giant steps towards resolving O-line issues in the offseason but the best OC on the planet can't do a whole lot with that type of problem.
It makes me wonder who decided not to really work the portal last year for OL. Fans were watching various OL enter the portal and there never seemed to be any confirmation that the staff had interest. Many fans were posting the OL was a key for portal recruitment, especially after Rosenthal left early.
The staff came out of the fall with Wohlabaugh at starting tackle. It really seems like that was a huge miss that hurt the line and did damage to Wohlabaugh. Was that on Yenser or Scrang or Stoops?
Scrang is canned and the staff spends a great deal of time pursuing OL in the portal. For a staff that seems to have a good eye for talent, they did not self evaluate very well during the off season last year.
I am also starting to wonder if Cox to center was just a bad move. This fall will give insight to that. Will Burton start at center? If so, we will go into 2023 with Horsey and Cox back at guard. That suggests an experiment that failed. Not sure who to blame.
Winter 2022 they heavily recruited the Vandy left tackle in the portal, trouble was so did Bama. Why didn't they go after more? Maybe the attitude of the whole staff was we recruited these O linemen on our roster, so they should be good like the guys before them. Turned out to not be true! They didn't make that mistake this offseason!
Good question. I think they were counting on Buford to start at RT, but that didn't work out in the fall so they went with Wohly and that was a disaster. Then I think they over valued Flax at LT who had real issues, and maybe they thought they might be able to rotate Goodwin and we know how that ended. It's really a head scratcher as to why they didn't have a better handle on this early on.
My opinion, other than a weak offense line, our OC had no clue how to utilize the talent on hand, made thing to complicated. Several times in crucially important situations the play call was to late causing Levis to call time outs. Knowing the OL weaknesses but still trying to run up the middle in the red zone.
IIRC, our staff had evaluated OTs available in the portal at the time and felt that Tyler Steen (ex-Vandy) was the one tackle in the portal who could help us. At the time, Coaches Scan and Yenser were new to our staff. They evidently assessed it was not a strong year for OTs in the portal, and maybe they were also overconfident in Buford, Wohlabaugh, and Goodwin. Anyway, looking back, they were caught by surprise when Buford and Wohlabaugh couldn't get it done, and Goodwin was a nightmare. Scan is gone now, and the OL was one reason for that but not the only one.
As we look back, Dare Rosenthal's poor decision to bolt and make his move for the NFL too early triggered problems for Rosenthal and for our football team too. I think that one caught our coaches a little bit by surprise although it must not have been totally unexpected. It was one of just a few times in the Stoops era when "next man up" really didn't work out.
Iirc the pos former ol coach that was recruiting him got the offer from bama and then instantly reeled him in for bama. Or was that another recruiting trip he was on where he literally changed teams basically in the parking lot and went back in to pitch for bama.
Hopefully UK didn't pay for that round trip ticket or at least demanded he/bama pay half the price of it.
I was really surprised at the poor technique Rosenthal had when he got here from LSU. I certainly was expecting a much more finished product, but I think that illustrates just how good Schlarman was at dialing our OL lines in on the tasks and techniques of the positions in comparison . ....Dare really could have used another year in our system to improve his skill. But I wasnt surprised he left early either