How many O-Lineman should you sign every year?

[Jack Lambert]

Just curious.

[Tbonewannabe]

Just curious.

All of the good ones.******

[HSVDawg]

Minimum of 5 in my opinion. Outside of the 5-star guys, they are the hardest position to project at the next level. You sign 5 hoping that 2 or 3 will pan out. If you hit on only 2 out of 5 every year for 5 years, you still have an OL that is 8 deep with 2 guys you can redshirt and play if injuries hit and not be in too bad of shape. And from a historical standpoint, absolutely nobody hits on more than 50% of the 2-star through 4-star types. And at that position, 2-star and 3-star guys are about as likely to pan out as 4-star guys.

[ATTILLA THE DOG]

Minimum of 5 in my opinion. Outside of the 5-star guys, they are the hardest position to project at the next level. You sign 5 hoping that 2 or 3 will pan out. If you hit on only 2 out of 5 every year for 5 years, you still have an OL that is 8 deep with 2 guys you can redshirt and play if injuries hit and not be in too bad of shape. And from a historical standpoint, absolutely nobody hits on more than 50% of the 2-star through 4-star types. And at that position, 2-star and 3-star guys are about as likely to pan out as 4-star guys.

yep 5 a year and hope 60% pan out,they make up 22% of your starting lineup

[1bigdawg]

I would say 4HS and 1 JUCO if there is a great one available.

[Pinto]

6. 4 high school for sure. Other 2 spots are juco if a definite need if not 2 more high school

[Homedawg]

6. 4 high school for sure. Other 2 spots are juco if a definite need if not 2 more high school

6 just doesn't work w the numbers. Not every year.

[Jack Lambert]

Not counting TE's we have two committed. We have 13 total all commitments. How many total can we sign this year?

[Johnson85]

If you look at 24 starting positions (11, plus kicker, plus punter), OL are roughly 1/5 of your starters, so a good starting point would be 1/5 of your signees. Obviously you don't sign a kicker and punter every year, but you also have more "starting positions" based on the ability to go multiple.

If you're signing 5 OL a year and then redshirting the vast majority of them, you're going to end up processing a lot of OL, but we end up processing a decent amount of OL even though we have trouble fielding a complete OL, so I'm not sure you'd have to really get aggressive with it.

But certainly, it seems like anything less than 4 HS OL should be the exception, not the rule like it is at MSU. Not sure if that is really what you see if you look at other schools though.

[starkvegasdawg]

All the one and two stars we can poach from Holy Cross and Prairie View.

[Todd4State]

Depends on the numbers but in a typical year five from high school.

[1bigdawg]

If recruiting OLs was not such a crap shoot, 3 would be plenty. You need at least 15 linemen on your roster, at least 12 of which are not true freshmen.

Right now, we have 12 and that is enough, although rumor is one may transfer. Of course, we may get a transfer also...

Next year, we should still have enough, but we have 5 Juniors. That means we need to sign 5 this year to keep enough on the roster.

[HSVDawg]

If you look at 24 starting positions (11, plus kicker, plus punter), OL are roughly 1/5 of your starters, so a good starting point would be 1/5 of your signees. Obviously you don't sign a kicker and punter every year, but you also have more "starting positions" based on the ability to go multiple.

If you're signing 5 OL a year and then redshirting the vast majority of them, you're going to end up processing a lot of OL, but we end up processing a decent amount of OL even though we have trouble fielding a complete OL, so I'm not sure you'd have to really get aggressive with it.

But certainly, it seems like anything less than 4 HS OL should be the exception, not the rule like it is at MSU. Not sure if that is really what you see if you look at other schools though.

I would actually argue that we don't "process" many OL at all. At least not in the traditional sense. Most of the guys we've lost recently were either injury related (Jake Thomas) or grades casualties (Kent Flowers). We have very few guys transferring out to Jackson State or whereever because they can't hack it. We hang on to guys like Eric Lawson, Damien Robinson, and Archie Muniz for their entire careers.

[msbulldog]

Minimum of 5 in my opinion. Outside of the 5-star guys, they are the hardest position to project at the next level. You sign 5 hoping that 2 or 3 will pan out. If you hit on only 2 out of 5 every year for 5 years, you still have an OL that is 8 deep with 2 guys you can redshirt and play if injuries hit and not be in too bad of shape. And from a historical standpoint, absolutely nobody hits on more than 50% of the 2-star through 4-star types. And at that position, 2-star and 3-star guys are about as likely to pan out as 4-star guys.

Absolutely nailed it HSV, you have done your homework. You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to HSVDawg again.
At this point, though for us I think we need to sign every 290 lb, bacon smelling, breathing high school player out there. We are way behind the curve on lineman. We should sign Dolla Bill's teammate just to make Bill comfortable.

[Johnson85]

I would actually argue that we don't "process" many OL at all. At least not in the traditional sense. Most of the guys we've lost recently were either injury related (Jake Thomas) or grades casualties (Kent Flowers). We have very few guys transferring out to Jackson State or whereever because they can't hack it. We hang on to guys like Eric Lawson, Damien Robinson, and Archie Muniz for their entire careers.

You're right. We don't process any that I'm aware of the way other schools do. I just meant we have attrition that would negate the need to process players.

[HSVDawg]

You're right. We don't process any that I'm aware of the way other schools do. I just meant we have attrition that would negate the need to process players.

Well I would agree that the attrition negates the need, but we are still thin at OL just about every year it seems. We have a lot of guys who are dead weight and just tying up scholarships. Just because we don't have to process them for the numbers to work doesn't mean we don't need to sign more / better OL. It's actually high attrition at other positions and multiple misses on the recruiting trail at all positions that put us in situations where we don't have to process players, because we are way under the 85 limit. That's not an ideal scenario at all.