This theme has been hit hard related to the LBs and DL situation in other threads, but really CBJ's comments about "loving our 22", means he's not that crazy about the other 63 from an overall depth standpoint...including comments about the OL, RBs, and WRs. It seems like we have depth at only the DB, QB, and Placekicking positions.
If you don't really look at it...I think the common assumption is that this program was on an upward trajectory under BKs leadership and that the new staff has been given the keys to a great car. The implied assumption is then that if we "stumble" this year (and I believe that many would say going even 8-4 is stumbling)....that it's because:
a) BK is a god-like coach and all of our success is due to him
b) CBJ dropped the ball and isn't going to be able to replicate the greatness of BK.
I think the real reason will be that BK did a very poor job 'building the program' w/ upgraded recruiting that capitalized on the increased fan support, national media attention, and on-field success. It's been pointed out that over this 3 full recruiting classes...he only recruited 4 scholarship LBs.
The other thing that's killing depth is the apparant lack of difference makers in the class he signed after the great season of 2 years ago. I know it's early and some players will hopefully still develop...but when you look at that class when it signed, we had 25 commitments after the Orange Bowl made up of (using Rivals) 2 4*, 7 3*, and 16 2* players. For a variety of reasons though, 8 of those players are already no longer w/ the team or never made it to school (D. Bracy, A. Clyborn, Dismuke, R. Harris, E.Horne, M. James, J. Jones, and T. Marvin). That's signficantly more "attrition" than either of his first 2 classes and the departures included 4 of the 3* guys.
Looking at it another way..that class will produce only a single starter..Bomar. The only other guys who appear to be potential impact players this year are C. Williams..and maybe M. Taylor or Stepp. It's shaping up to be a poor class that is closer to high end MAC level talent than BCS Bowl level talent. It's surprising in that this was BK's 3rd year, he had a consistent staff, and unprecented program success. It's either due to bad luck/breaks, poor character/fit evaluations, poor talent evaluations..or lazy recruiting.
It is what it is...but it's annoying to have listened to BK throw barbs about UC's C-USA level "mind set", when it appears he delivered a C-USA level recruiting year in his 3rd year.
"8 of those players are already no longer w/ the team or never made it to school (D. Bracy, A. Clyborn, Dismuke, R. Harris, E.Horne, M. James, J. Jones, and T. Marvin). That's signficantly more "attrition" than either of his first 2 classes and the departures included 4 of the 3* guys"
The above is probably a good reason.
The more I think about it the more I wonder if BK's plan all along was to make the most exciting offense he could at the expense of defense so he could showcase his offensive play creation/coordination. He knew that time was running out for Weis and if he could at least show he could develop a team with an exciting offense it would make him that much more attractive to Notre Dame.
So he recruited offensive players and athletes with offense in mind and the plan worked even better because he was able to have a good defense for a couple of years with Dantonio's recruits.
What superfly said + relying on guys to fill holes who had problems and left other programs like Dorian Davis and the former ND qb. Getting beat out at the last minute for guys like Preston Brown didn't help.
The last staff struggled to bring in actual BCS defensive personnel that did not have risks associated with them.
MD over recruited/developed Defense, BK did the same thing with Offense, and hopefully CBJ can balance it out somehow.
We do need more bigger and more athletic DE and LBs to win a National Championship. If we can get a couple of the 2nd
string LBs to play like Manalac or a Corey Smith we might be OK this year.
I think it's too early to call the defensive 2009 class a bust. I'd say there has been quite a few circumstances, more than anything, with Clybourne being injured, and Marvin, Horne and Harris not making it academically. Dismuke also had a falling out, and Malik James gave up early. All these guys were fairly highly regarded - certainly better than "MAC talent". I guess your point is, "What's the difference? They won't help anyway."
Just about all the remainders were redshirted, so basically we have a lot of freshmen lining up. During the Spring game, I saw a lot of potential from Saddler, Hilty and McClellan, all making some good plays vs. the first team offense. Meador apparently made a move during camp. Paxson - he's light yet, but is athletic, and we'll see what he does in the future. Numbers are way down, I realize. But, any of these guys, in addition to the ones you mentioned, can help us down the road.
I wonder more about the 2007 class. Frey, Hughes and Trigg figure to be factors. But, supposedly decent prospects - Delisi and Thompson, both three stars - haven't helped to date (granted Alex is injured, but hasn't been a factor before either). Even that's somewhat understandable, as Dantonio bailed and left BK with about nothing in the way of commits.
2008 class was good, but still light on LBs. Maybe 2009 could have been better, but still early.
The thing that really annoys me is, that, we lose all these players, but always seem to end up with 15-20 player classes. Doesn't quite add up, it seems.
i agree with a few things that have been said:
1) Recruiting was probably skewed in favor of the offense since the offense was more highly touted.
2) Losing eight players in a class hurts the depth badly but how accountable for the attrition are the coaches? Horne/J.Jones/Marvin didn't even make it to campus. Clyburn suffered career ending injuries. Harris and Bracy couldn't cut it academically. Dismuke and James booked it for more PT. How much of that is on the old staff?
3) This class is currently going to produce 2 starters (O'Donnell and Bomar) but Williams got injured last season otherwise he might have already locked down a position. On top of that, a number of players are going to receive significantly more p/t, which, for a class entering it's second year that had numerous r/s, as BJ pointed out, is not out of the ordinary, at least imo.
Things i disagree with:
1) The previous coaching staff only signed 4 LBs in their previous two classes. Do you know for a fact that the target was not higher? i feel that the coaching staff probably swung and missed on more than a few targets. That's how recruiting goes sometimes. Would you have preferred that they fill out the LB quota with less recruits or go for the best prospects available?
2) i think there was probably a little more turnover than most remember. William Inge replaced Hinton as LB coach and Tresey was terminated and replaced by Diaco, changing systems. i don't know how much of that affected the recruiting, but it couldn't have helped.
Finally...
(08-26-2010 12:56 PM)mbl95 Wrote: [ -> ]It is what it is...but it's annoying to have listened to BK throw barbs about UC's C-USA level "mind set", when it appears he delivered a C-USA level recruiting year in his 3rd year.
You want to rush to judgement, go right ahead but i think it's stupid to call this recruiting class CUSA level without even seeing the majority of them on the field.
BTW: Regardless of how you feel about this recruiting class, alot of ppl agree/d with BKs sentiment that the University/AD thinks in MAC/CUSA terms.
(08-26-2010 01:42 PM)BJUnklFkr Wrote: [ -> ]The thing that really annoys me is, that, we lose all these players, but always seem to end up with 15-20 player classes. Doesn't quite add up, it seems.
Im not sure about other programs but as of late we seem to bring in a lot of transfers and promote walk-ons with schollies.
These factors could off-set the need for a large class.
And with the attrition from those players form the 09 class, only Harris, Marvin, Clybourne and potentially Bracy were at positions of need with the other 4 being db's and wr's.
But on another subject, wasn't Bracy still on campus trying to make grades? Same with J. Jones? Those might not be total losses in the end.
What worries me a bit so far is that the current recruiting resembles the recruiting under BM(k). Lots of offense and skill players and very little D. And only one guy on D coming in so far with size.
I guess we'll just have to see if and when our backups have to take the field. Maybe the situation is not as dire as it seems from Coach Jones' comments? Maybe he's just trying to motivate some of the backups to compete harder? I thought we were royally screwed when Curtis Young got hurt and we were going to have to rely on some 2 star freshman named Walter Stewart to fill in for him. Maybe we have some guys that can play if given the opportunity to run with the first string? Maybe we can scheme to hide some of our more obvious weaknesses so that other teams aren't able to exploit us?
Scheming to hide a thin and inexperienced front 7 ain't easy. Especially when facing run first conference foes with big o-lines like Pitt, WVU, UConn, Rutgers and USF.
(08-26-2010 02:13 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote: [ -> ]What worries me a bit so far is that the current recruiting resembles the recruiting under BM(k). Lots of offense and skill players and very little D. And only one guy on D coming in so far with size.
I gotta agree with that. As badly as we need LBs, we so far have 0 (1 assuming Temple converts).
Out of our 85 scholarships how many are currently used on D that are not former walk ons? Lack of numbers might start to hurt on special teams as well.
(08-26-2010 02:04 PM)eroc Wrote: [ -> ]1) The previous coaching staff only signed 4 LBs in their previous two classes. Do you know for a fact that the target was not higher? i feel that the coaching staff probably swung and missed on more than a few targets. That's how recruiting goes sometimes. Would you have preferred that they fill out the LB quota with less recruits or go for the best prospects available?
My point is that "target" is irrelevant...it's who you sign. Sure you "swing and miss" all the time in recruiting. If 1 year you go for some guys and lose out, you typically balance it out the next year. If you swing and miss 2 years in a row...then you almost certainly have to balance it out the 3rd year. The facts say that BK signed only 4 LBs over 3 full recruiting classes (Thompson, Delisisi, Shaffer, and Bomar) who made it to their first practice as Freshman. BK is the type of guy who projects himself as being the all knowing CEO/Wizard of what it takes to win. Stories out of ND ..have him literally doing sit-down meetings w/ NBC to negotiate changing the number of TV timeouts from four 2.5 minute breaks to 5 2 minute breaks because it will help his offense. He also personally selected the picture for this year's ND media guide due to some personal vision he had on what he wanted to project as NDs image. Does it take a wizard to know that if you want 2-deep depth at the LB position you need at least 10-12 LBs on scholarship to field a team?? Hey...I loved BK and can't thank him enough for what he did for this program. I honestly think he thinks so highly of himself, that he thought he could keep pulling "Barwin" moves out of his hat and deal with the situation. Whether he could have sustained the success going forward here will never be answered. But "yes", if you can't get who you want...you have to at least get some "next best" guys for a position like LB. I'd love to hear him answer why they did what they did.
(08-26-2010 02:04 PM)eroc Wrote: [ -> ]You want to rush to judgement, go right ahead but i think it's stupid to call this recruiting class CUSA level without even seeing the majority of them on the field.
I might be stupid.......and I certainly don't want to be right. I hope Hilty, McLellan, Meador, etc...rise up and surprise everyone in the country...and are unbelievable talents over the next 3 years. The current head coach and position coaches;however, have been consistent and vocal over the past 3 weeks about the lack of depth. So my post was not trying make a personal statement that I believe our 2nd teamers are bad.....I was accepting that the current coaching staff seems to think we're not where this program needs to be to consistently complete for BE championships as it relates to 2 deep depth. My point in the post was that if you look at the current 2 deep...and if you would have expected BK's 3rd recruiting year to be signficantly better than his first....that a possible explanation for our situation is that we really have a weak sophomre/Redshirt freshman class and that we missed a great opportunity to leverage the Orange Bowl season's success that year to significantly "upgrade" the talent. Nobody hopes I'm stupid more than me.
(08-26-2010 02:25 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote: [ -> ]Scheming to hide a thin and inexperienced front 7 ain't easy. Especially when facing run first conference foes with big o-lines like Pitt, WVU, UConn, Rutgers and USF.
Obiously if we have injuries to multiple guys in our front 7 then we're in trouble. If we can get keep guys healthy I think we'll be ok in the middle. Hughes and Wolfe, both over 300 lbs., are big guys with plenty of experience and should solidify things for us in the middle. I wish we were a little bigger at MLB no doubt but both Bomar and JK are great from side to side and if they attack the line of scrimmage they'll be just fine. Stewart is obviously a player as well. Obviously the guys behind them are a big question mark right now. There are a lot of teams out there, though, that will have some big problems if they see starters go down. I wish we had more proven depth in our front seven, no doubt, but maybe some guys will emerge over the course of the season as is typically the case.
I just did a quick scan of the roster. Taking out the current walk-ons, former walk-ons that got a scholarship award in the last year, and guys out with injury, it looks like UC has only 30 scholarship defensive players. I could even be off one or two one way or the other. Good Lord.
(08-26-2010 04:04 PM)mbl95 Wrote: [ -> ]The facts say that BK signed only 4 LBs over 3 full recruiting classes (Thompson, Delisisi, Shaffer, and Bomar) who made it to their first practice as Freshman.
With all due respect, mbl95, i'm not interested in getting into semantic games nor am i interested in getting into some kind of posting pissing match so this post are my last words on this matter. .
These are the following players who were listed as linebackers that were offered scholarships and signed LOIs.
Alex Delisi, Ricardo Thompson, Randy Martinez, JK Schaeffer, Angel Clyburn, Tristan Marvin, Maalik Bomar
Linebackers that transferred in under BK:
Dorian Davis
Other LB personnel:
D. Jones, Robby Armstrong, Colin McCafferty
Finally, both Solomon Tentman and Preston Brown verballed to BK, not Coach Butch. While Brown didn't sign his LOI, he conceivably could have stayed with Dominique had BK stayed.
Add it all up, you have 11 LB prospects that signed LOIs, and 2 in the 2010 class that verballed to BK. Take away Randy Martinez who made the switch to offense, and you still have 10 LBs with 2 other prospects. Obviously everything needed to go right in order for all parties to make it to campus and be productive and, obviously, a lot of that didn't happen. Part of the blame goes to BK for it, but alot of it is on the players and some of it is just tough circumstances (ergo injury).
(08-26-2010 04:04 PM)mbl95 Wrote: [ -> ]My point in the post was that if you look at the current 2 deep...and if you would have expected BK's 3rd recruiting year to be signficantly better than his first....that a possible explanation for our situation is that we really have a weak sophomre/Redshirt freshman class and that we missed a great opportunity to leverage the Orange Bowl season's success that year to significantly "upgrade" the talent.
i disagree again. That season was the first season in recent memory where we played BCS level competition and had significant consistent success. How much of a bang do you expect off of a season that doesn't involve an NC win?
(08-26-2010 04:04 PM)mbl95 Wrote: [ -> ]I was accepting that the current coaching staff seems to think we're not where this program needs to be to consistently complete for BE championships as it relates to 2 deep depth.
Fair enough but that's probably more reflective of the JR/SR/RS.JR/RS.SR classes rather than the R/S Frosh/Sophs. it's pretty rare, at least imo, for guys that fit the latter category to beat out guys in the former category if for no other reason than physical maturity and experience. While i hope we get there, currently we aren't a program that recruits super studs who can walk of the dais after receiving their diplomas and walk straight on to the 2 deep.
It does seem that we've had an inordinate amount of bad luck with guys we've recruited to play linebacker the last 4-5 years. Remember when we were doing cartwheels when Freddie Lenix signed with us? Heck, we even tried to bring in some immediate help this year with Robert Martin and even he turned out to be ineligible. The staff is really going to have to step up the LB recruiting this year and make sure they are quality character guys that aren't going to have any academic concerns. Obviously anything can happen but at this point we need to really make sure we can bring in guys who'll be able to play because of the darth of bodies at that position.