Joseph was a college coach in Louisiana for the past few years, and is from the state and had relationships with most all of those kids for a couple of years. Raiola was coaching for the Bears. I say it is pretty premature to really comment or have an opinion on Raiola's recruiting chops
In addition to the building of relationships with kids prior to them signing with NU.
It seems obvious the majority of kids recruited during the first 4 years of the Frost/Austin OL coaching regime, as an overall group, there has been little development.
With the exception of Jaimes, Farniok and Jurgens, overall identifying legitimate D1 OL and then developing them has been a major negative. Farniok appears to have improved a lot since he left NU. Jaimes is on the Chargers roster, and Jurgens had the physical tools, but likely will improve a lot at the next level.
The overall makeup of the OLmen has a lot of kids who have been here 2-3 years now and have not shown much improvement. Teddy, maybe Corcoran and maybe 1-2 more will hopefully improve with the coaching change.
The others like Hixson, Williams, Anthony, Lutovsky, Benhart, Piper, Banks need to take big steps forward to indicate what Raiola does actually works. And I'm not saying it will or won't show in their overall performance. I'd like the overall unit to at least be adequate without holes all over the OL.
NU rose to the top of college football through through recruiting and then developing OL into dominant types. Unless and until NU can prove they have a coach(es) in place who can accelerate their development it will be hard to define what level of coach Raiola is.
There's a lot of raw material, both in size and experience for NU to make a lot improvement over the next couple years. I'd still just as soon see NU recruit those 6'3"-6'4" OL types that already have good feet, and then increase their size, strength, agility, and technique.
Feel free to agree or disagree.
I think the OL and unknowns within that group appear to be the weakest part of the team.