It was embarassing. Short of getting quick commit from Alcorn Crowder and Crenshaw Dickson, I’d say not a good weekend. There are some that say we have to keep our high school class and I agree, but not many if any at all will impact next year like portal, and Junior college kids will.
what's weird, and this may be the orange and blue goggles in me talking, is that I don't feel, at least with the (projected) 2024 starters, we need vast portal upgrades, but at the spots we need to upgrade...we REALLLLY need to upgrade and hit it out the park. Like i'm ok with 4 of the projected OL returning because I DO think they'll take a leap, but the OT position opposite Barber is concerning. I'm not talking about depth, i'm talking strictly starters
You and I both!!! Just need: 1 Ol- Left Tackle 1-2 Wr with 1 being impact guy 1 Safety 1 lb 1 more DL the Wr is huge. this is as of right now. If Johnson leaves, that would be different at running back
Clemson QB from like a year ago did but he was a back up. Hunter Johnson went to Northwestern in 2021 and then transferred back in 2022
I can't really agree with you. At safety the true freshmen improved and will be the future that Mitchell wasn't. Cb was dominated by upper classmen who stayed who they were. Raymond didnt get our young guys going, and he is gone. The young LB improved. The older ones stayed who they are and will be. At edge the freshmen improved. At DT I can see why we got a new coach. We had enough bodies and talent. At receiver there was big improvement throughout the year, but the position was held back by injuries. At TE freshmen improved to overtake less talented upperclassmen. Mertz became more and more comfortable in the offense and did well even against great defenses, which he did not do at Wisconsin at all. OL was a mess, and it really is hard to tell how much was coaching and how much was talent. We just don't have any healthy, developed OT, and you can't run a passing offense that way. The Juluke-developed junior was solid in all respects with numbers similar to the more talented sophomore who refused to block and ends up in the portal. In summary most positions developed the youngsters, and those who didn't got their pink slip. We had the most freshmen playing in the country and most All-SEC freshmen. That’s appealing to recruits.
Castell got "worse" as the season went on imo, most notably his tackling. I'm not really sure of what young LB's you're referring to tbh
James. He was completely lost last year for thebit of run he got, having not played the position. That's pretty harsh on Castell. To play almost every snap for a whole season is unbelievable at a position that should be dominated by upperclassmen. Well coached or not, you just can't expect a true freshman facing a lot of different offenses to be solid every minute of every game and get stronger as the year goes on. This was an important year for so many talented young players: James, Banks, Lyons, Searcy, Collins, James, Robinson, Thornton, Castell, Jackson, Moore, Jean, Mizell, Hansen, Harris, Boardingham, Webb, and Wilson. They got their feet wet to become the core two years from now that maybe can do something.
Honestly, if Barber was not playing injured at the end of the year, we need Waites to take a huge step and be LT and do something different at RT: get Tarquin back, get another portal, hope Barber gets better, hope a freshman is lights. We need help bad at OT. Overall blitz pickup was bad all across the line and TE and RB, but stopping the edge speed rush was hard to watch, especially at the end of the season.
