We have a talent problem. Mullen spent his first two years in Starkville trying to recruit cleanly. We're paying for it now. This last recruiting class is how you compete at Starkville. You're still not going to have classes rated like LSU and Bama, but a few diamonds in the rough (as in 3*'s that turn into 5*s, not 2*s that become solid contributors), and a few misses or some attrition on their part, and you have a team that can compete talent wise.
But the first two classes that were solely his responsibility were Croomish. With good coaching, you can get to the middle tier of the SEC. Good enough to get to bowl games, beat the Vandy's, UK's, Ole Miss's, and good programs on a particularly down year, but not good enough to compete for division championships or be one of the top five teams in the conference. I was hopeful that redshirting so many players would make a difference, and it helps, but the reality is, the players we need to compete don't need to redshirt. LSU had two freshman OL holding their own last night. Not sure if they were true freshmen or redshirt freshmen, but most likely nobody we have on the OL is going to be as good as them. You will have some latebloomers, but for the most part, players that are going to be really good are pretty good by their second year in the program and outside of QB and OL, will have the ability to be solid contributors as true freshmen.
Against A&M, our DL was consistently pushed 2 to 3 yards off the line of scrimmage, and even on the few plays where our defensive players were disciplined and stayed in position to contain the qb, they were too slow to stop him from simply out running them to the sideline. We had plenty of coaching issues too, but I'm not sure how you coach around problems like that.
Unfortunately, the way you get the type of talent we need without going on probation is by either just getting lucky and having a few studs with ties to the school, or by consistently winning so that the top players believe they can push it over the top. Mullen can still do this but he's hurt himself by handicapping himself with another two years where it will be a struggle to just get to 7 wins.
The Second issue that was made clear yesterday is we don't know how to handle a 17ing blitz. Is it that our receivers are just not athletic enough to get open fast enough on a hot route? Or does Russell not recognize the blitz? Or is he just not confident enough to release it quickly? Or is this a coaching problem? I'd really like somebody to explain what was going on here.
Lots of other wtf's to discuss from yesterday, but I think they've mostly been covered in other posts.
But the first two classes that were solely his responsibility were Croomish. With good coaching, you can get to the middle tier of the SEC. Good enough to get to bowl games, beat the Vandy's, UK's, Ole Miss's, and good programs on a particularly down year, but not good enough to compete for division championships or be one of the top five teams in the conference. I was hopeful that redshirting so many players would make a difference, and it helps, but the reality is, the players we need to compete don't need to redshirt. LSU had two freshman OL holding their own last night. Not sure if they were true freshmen or redshirt freshmen, but most likely nobody we have on the OL is going to be as good as them. You will have some latebloomers, but for the most part, players that are going to be really good are pretty good by their second year in the program and outside of QB and OL, will have the ability to be solid contributors as true freshmen.
Against A&M, our DL was consistently pushed 2 to 3 yards off the line of scrimmage, and even on the few plays where our defensive players were disciplined and stayed in position to contain the qb, they were too slow to stop him from simply out running them to the sideline. We had plenty of coaching issues too, but I'm not sure how you coach around problems like that.
Unfortunately, the way you get the type of talent we need without going on probation is by either just getting lucky and having a few studs with ties to the school, or by consistently winning so that the top players believe they can push it over the top. Mullen can still do this but he's hurt himself by handicapping himself with another two years where it will be a struggle to just get to 7 wins.
The Second issue that was made clear yesterday is we don't know how to handle a 17ing blitz. Is it that our receivers are just not athletic enough to get open fast enough on a hot route? Or does Russell not recognize the blitz? Or is he just not confident enough to release it quickly? Or is this a coaching problem? I'd really like somebody to explain what was going on here.
Lots of other wtf's to discuss from yesterday, but I think they've mostly been covered in other posts.
