^^^It's this, and I'm not sure why people try to make it more complicated than it is.
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Honestly, if you take away JRob (which is also a little lightning in a bottle) and Vic Ballard, Mullen's RB recruiting has been horrible compared to previous MSU coaches (including Croom).
If you can't get a good RB out of MS somewhere, you being lazy. Or you don't know how to coach them. One or the other.
You're right and I stand corrected on this one. My mistake.
ETA: I do remember being impressed with Perkins either his SO or JR years and then underwhelmed the next year. And I've seen on this board many mentions of Perkins vs. JRob and how JRob should've been starting. And if you compare Perkins to Norwood or Dixon, I don't believe he compares well. At least he doesn't to me.
Definitely part of it is on Dan. The other part is somewhat of a crap shoot. Aeris was projected to be extremely good and still has not been able to learn the system. Some of these kids might have all of the athletic ability in the world but if they can't learn the plays then you can't put them out there unless you want to get your QB killed in the process. You miss on one or two guys in consecutive classes and you have created a hole on the depth chart. It does not take but one or two mistakes in recruiting to create a problem. I think that is why you saw us sign so many backs a couple of years ago because we realized the current group was not catching on I.E. Aeris and Lee.
All I know is that if Mullen had started plugging Lee back in the offense last season, and started giving Murphy, Williams and Gibson snaps in week 1, we wouldn't have this RB issue that we now face. Good job, Dan!
Mullen and Co. haven't missed on one or two guys in consecutive classes. They've missed in four consecutive classes on at least 6 prospects. They got no everydown prospect in 2012 (signed Holloway; only other RB prospect was I guess Xavier Grindle). In 2013 they got Shumpert; no other prospect. In 2014 they got A. Williams and D. Lee. In 2015 they got N. Gibson and Alec Murhpy. If neither Gibson nor Murphy can get playing time considering the competition they are against, I don't think we should expect much out of either, even if it's only their second year on campus.
So for the second year in a row we've ended up with no legitimate SEC back when we didn't go after a JUCO back, and we didn't even use all of our 17ing scholarships. That really is worse than OLine recruiting considering how much easier it is to fill a RB position, where there are at most two positions to fill and realistically anybody good will be able to play their second year on campus compared to OL needing to fill five spots and nobody but studs being ready to play by their second year on campus.
Johnson, I really respect your opinion... you're probably the smartest con on the political board. With that said, I think you're melting prematurely. You essentially just called 2 rb's 3 games into their sophomore year and 2 rb's that haven't even stepped on the field yet busts. There's been flashes of us running the ball well with our rb's this year even though it hasn't been consistent yet. I think you see shump take over the primary ball carrier this Saturday and we get back to using Holloway as a supplement. I really think this will get us going offensively