http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/video.../99907326/

Fast at Linebacker ? That's an encouraging change.

Yep...speed kills in today's game...

(04-02-2017 11:48 AM)stinkfist Wrote:  Yep...speed kills in today's game...

speed has always killed. yesterdays game too.

(04-02-2017 11:54 AM)Reggie Favre Wrote:  

(04-02-2017 11:48 AM)stinkfist Wrote:  Yep...speed kills in today's game...

speed has always killed. yesterdays game too.

Not arguing that point...one could debate we haven't had that lately or we didn't coach it properly...

For decades we put our fastest guys and superior athletes on defense....which is why we were known as as a tough defensive opponent without much "O" (Remember 6-0, 3-0, 0-3 in succession, and those are scores, not games won or lost)

Stayed that way til The Hat changed our philosophy, I say, for good. (and FOR the good)

Pappy Buttermilk tried to go back to the "old USM", and you see what happened (among other things)..

We've been recruiting speedy wide receivers lately, not LB's, but looks like, as of now, Hopson is trying to even things out. We shall see..

I'm sure we've been trying to get fast linebackers. Problem is everybody else is too.

well, we did purty good in the LB business til about 10 years ago....although Collins was an outlier (and no, nugget, I'm not calling Collins a LIAR )...so while you are correct we didn't STOP looking for speedy LB's, it looked to me defense didn't seem to be the priority our offense began to be.

But who knows?

You can only sign so many players per year, and the Johnson hire killed about 3 years of recruiting in one stroke between those who never came, those who were already here and bailed, and the aftermath of an 0-fer.

(04-02-2017 07:22 PM)HarborPointe Wrote:  You can only sign so many players per year, and the Johnson hire killed about 3 years of recruiting in one stroke between those who never came, those who were already here and bailed, and the aftermath of an 0-fer.

I mean it's not like you have to make a choice between fast receivers or fast linebackers. Everybody is looking for both. Also not like there are very many kids that could play both. There are only 1 or 2 kids a year that the staff has to make a decision about letting them play offense or defense. We've had some good luck with skill players on offense lately. But I think that's just because there are more of them these days. Not as many great linebackers. And most go to P5 schools.

(04-02-2017 08:02 PM)Eagle9 Wrote:  I mean it's not like you have to make a choice between fast receivers or fast linebackers. Everybody is looking for both. Also not like there are very many kids that could play both. There are only 1 or 2 kids a year that the staff has to make a decision about letting them play offense or defense. We've had some good luck with skill players on offense lately. But I think that's just because there are more of them these days. Not as many great linebackers. And most go to P5 schools.

Makes sense....but I think you'd agree we made a living on "tweeners" (like Adalius Thomas) and 'cruitin' 6-1 210 lb 'backers, with speed, and hoping they'd become 6-2 225 with speed.

Bama, Auburn and LSU gets 'em at 6-3 235 already...we had to "make them"....and I just did not see that kind of athlete being recruited the last 10 years or so..

but maybe I'm wrong, (as usual, my wife would say..)

(04-02-2017 08:02 PM)Eagle9 Wrote:  I mean it's not like you have to make a choice between fast receivers or fast linebackers. Everybody is looking for both. Also not like there are very many kids that could play both. There are only 1 or 2 kids a year that the staff has to make a decision about letting them play offense or defense. We've had some good luck with skill players on offense lately. But I think that's just because there are more of them these days. Not as many great linebackers. And most go to P5 schools.

You kinda do have to make a choice if you're looking to load up one side of the ball in the hopes of being competitive quickly, and you stand a much better chance of winning 50-49 these days than 3-0.

To the Beaver's point, being that we're more in the project business than the slam-dunk blue chip business, we have to sign multiple guys in a given position in the hopes one will be the guy we need him to be. Just to give a simplistic hypothetical, Texas A&M gets their 5-star RB, checks off that box, and moves on to signing a DE, whereas we're signing 2 or 3 RBs and putting off that additional DE until next year.

(04-02-2017 09:18 PM)eaglebeaver Wrote:  

(04-02-2017 08:02 PM)Eagle9 Wrote:  I mean it's not like you have to make a choice between fast receivers or fast linebackers. Everybody is looking for both. Also not like there are very many kids that could play both. There are only 1 or 2 kids a year that the staff has to make a decision about letting them play offense or defense. We've had some good luck with skill players on offense lately. But I think that's just because there are more of them these days. Not as many great linebackers. And most go to P5 schools.

Makes sense....but I think you'd agree we made a living on "tweeners" (like Adalius Thomas) and 'cruitin' 6-1 210 lb 'backers, with speed, and hoping they'd become 6-2 225 with speed.

Bama, Auburn and LSU gets 'em at 6-3 235 already...we had to "make them"....and I just did not see that kind of athlete being recruited the last 10 years or so..

but maybe I'm wrong, (as usual, my wife would say..)

We did just sign the GPOTY out of Alabama this past year. These are the type of players we used to get just for the last ten years we've lost a lot of them to the WKU type newbies. We can still pick up those type players with winning and good recruiting.