OL Recruiting in the Mullen era

To add to the previous comments about our OL recruiting (or lack thereof), I think one stat says it all. In 7 years of OL signees under Mullen / Hevesy, we have had exactly one draft pick that was signed by the current staff in Gabe Jackson. And while Mullen and Hevesy technically get credit for signing Jackson, he was a Croom commitment that was retained by the current staff. So in 7 years, with probably 20~25 different guys who have started games and recruited / signed by Mullen, we have basically no one who has been identified by our staff that is NFL caliber. Furthermore, I think we can all agree that there is nobody in the current starting lineup that is going to break that trend. When you compare our current success rate in landing high caliber offensive lineman with Bama, LSU, UF, A&M, etc. who each have 2 or 3 future draft picks on their OL every single season, it's no wonder why we struggle to break through against the upper tier SEC teams. Something drastic needs to change in our approach or our staff (or both), and it needs to change quickly.

Yes, Hev sucks. I gave him a pass in the past due to his fancy blocking schemes and me thinking that he could develop talent, but it's become evident that he's a terrible talent evaluator and even a worse recruiter for the obvious guys.

Jake Thomas ? Where is he?

Cole Carter ? Where is he?

Flowers ? Where is he?

Rankin? How the hell do you sign the #1 JUCO OL and he can't get on the field with an atrocious OL?

Joquell Johnson? Where the hell is he?

That center we signed from Gulf Coast? Where did he go?

Dillon Day, we didn't even offer this guy till close to signing day because we missed on someone else. That someone else he wanted more probably sucked.

Ben Beckwith was a 17ing walk on

What have you done Hev?

Where are the offensive linemen?

Jackie recruited offensive linemen like Porkchop, Thomas, Stewert, etc.

Why can't you find 17ing offensive linemen?

You can be the arrogant, know it all, rude, bad guy all you want when you produce, but when your unit sucks balls and you've offered nothing in the form of evaluation or recruiting, it's time to take a look in the mirror and evaluate things.

And again, as I said yesterday I'm not sold that we aren't playing some guys out of position.

Desper was recruited as a center out of high school- yet he gets here and I hear that he has "snapping issues". Why? And why were they not corrected in THREE years. At the very least have Dillon Day take him under his wing and help him out.

Clayborn is probably too big to play center and probably should be at guard.

Malone is taller than some of our offensive tackles- which is where he probably SHOULD be.

Warren probably belongs more at RT or blocking TE than LT. We're basically putting our most inexperienced o-line starter at one of the two most important positions on the line.

Which makes even less sense when you have Senior who is actually probably at the right position but probably should have been given a look at LT given our situation if not Malone. But what's alarming with him is he really hasn't developed since he has been at MSU.

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Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg

Yes, Hev sucks. I gave him a pass in the past due to his fancy blocking schemes and me thinking that he could develop talent, but it's become evident that he's a terrible talent evaluator and even a worse recruiter for the obvious guys.

Jake Thomas ? Where is he?

Cole Carter ? Where is he?

Flowers ? Where is he? Grades, or he'd probably be playing over Desper. At the very least, he'd probably let us move Malone to OT for Warren.

Rankin? How the hell do you sign the #1 JUCO OL and he can't get on the field with an atrocious OL?

Joquell Johnson? Where the hell is he?

That center we signed from Gulf Coast? Where did he go?

Dillon Day, we didn't even offer this guy till close to signing day because we missed on someone else. That someone else he wanted more probably sucked.
We slow played Day because he was only about 260 LBs in HS. He had to get his weight up.
Ben Beckwith was a 17ing walk on

What have you done Hev?

Where are the offensive linemen?

Jackie recruited offensive linemen like Porkchop, Thomas, Stewert, etc.

Why can't you find 17ing offensive linemen?

You can be the arrogant, know it all, rude, bad guy all you want when you produce, but when your unit sucks balls and you've offered nothing in the form of evaluation or recruiting, it's time to take a look in the mirror and evaluate things.

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"OL recruiting in the Mullen era"


http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDUxWDU0MA...znw~~60_35.JPG

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha his hands may be too small but that turd ain't.

For me the question is- is it bad recruiting on Hevesey's part or is it bad coaching and development on Hevesey's part? It's probably some of both, but Thomas and Desper were fairly highly rated out of high school.

And I haven't really seen a lot of progression of our o-linemen throughout their careers as a whole.

It is both....he can't evaluate talent and he can't coach up the players we've got

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Originally Posted by InTheIttaBenaHotSun

It is both....he can't evaluate talent and he can't coach up the players we've got

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In other words, we need a new OL coach. But Mullen probably won't agree, and we will witness the same ineptness next year.

I'm afraid so...

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Originally Posted by NCDawg

In other words, we need a new OL coach. But Mullen probably won't agree, and we will witness the same ineptness next year.

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And we will continue to see head scratching play calling like Dak up the middle on goal line against the best DL in the country.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

For me the question is- is it bad recruiting on Hevesey's part or is it bad coaching and development on Hevesey's part? It's probably some of both, but Thomas and Desper were fairly highly rated out of high school.

And I haven't really seen a lot of progression of our o-linemen throughout their careers as a whole.

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Neither Thomas nor Desper had any other SEC offers except for maybe from Ole Miss, who is in a pretty dire situation on the OL themselves. I distinctly remember the recruitment of Thomas, and our staff basically was ready to move on if he didn't pull the trigger before the end of the summer. There was talk he might even be stuck with USM if he didn't go ahead and commit when he did. Our staff liked him, but not enough to hold a spot for him until signing day. It ended up being a moot point with him anyway due to the neck injury. Desper was a guy we liked but still flew under the radar due to the measurables not being there. Again, no other major offers and I think he was only a 3 star.

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Originally Posted by Todd4State

For me the question is- is it bad recruiting on Hevesey's part or is it bad coaching and development on Hevesey's part? It's probably some of both, but Thomas and Desper were fairly highly rated out of high school.

And I haven't really seen a lot of progression of our o-linemen throughout their careers as a whole.

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It's so hard to tell with offensive linemen because along with QB, it's just the hardest position to project. Hell, you'd think your top rated JUCO tackle would be ready to step on the field and be serviceable. No way they could have screwed up developing him; obviously everybody was just wrong about his ability. And you look at development, Dillon Day and Ben Beckwith seemed to have pretty clearly maximized their talent. Clausell is a player that was pretty good compared to his rating, so that looks like a good job, but he ended up with good measurables so who's to say whether he could have been developed better (I think he reached close to his potential but really don't know). Robinson obviously didn't live up to his rating, but I think he was just misevaluated; he didn't have anything except for size. Malone and Clayborne are like Clausell; they've ended up pretty good compared to their rating, but both seem like they should be better at this point (especially compared to their early production).

I'm sure we could do a better job of development, but I really think the main problem is recruiting. I say that b/c we more or less take leftovers and do well with them provided we're not playing Bama or LSU. We've basically had three years now in Mullen's tenure where a glaring weakness on the OL has derailed our season. Hopefully having Dak will result in "derailed" meaning 8 wins this year instead of 7. If we're not going to be able to recruit better, we're going to have to dedicate some more scholarships to Olinemen and hope that we get lucky with more guys that aren't highly rated coming out of high school.

I think we are doing what we can to maximize the talent of the guys we have. The problem is that for 95% of the guys we sign, "serviceable" or "slightly above average" is their ceiling. Look at Blaine Clausell. Dude was a 4 year starter at Left Tackle in the SEC West, and he wasn't even drafted. All of our lineman are system guys that basically can't get it done against the elite DL's in this league. OL is hard to project, but everybody knows guys like Jovon Patterson and Rod Taylor can play, so why aren't we landing them? We've signed NFL type talent at literally every other position on the field under Mullen, yet none on the OL except for one Croom holdover. Why?

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Originally Posted by HSVDawg

I think we are doing what we can to maximize the talent of the guys we have. The problem is that for 95% of the guys we sign, "serviceable" or "slightly above average" is their ceiling. Look at Blaine Clausell. Dude was a 4 year starter at Left Tackle in the SEC West, and he wasn't even drafted. All of our lineman are system guys that basically can't get it done against the elite DL's in this league. OL is hard to project, but everybody knows guys like Jovon Patterson and Rod Taylor can play, so why aren't we landing them? We've signed NFL type talent at literally every other position on the field under Mullen, yet none on the OL except for one Croom holdover. Why?

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this. something has to change

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Originally Posted by HSVDawg

I think we are doing what we can to maximize the talent of the guys we have. The problem is that for 95% of the guys we sign, "serviceable" or "slightly above average" is their ceiling. Look at Blaine Clausell. Dude was a 4 year starter at Left Tackle in the SEC West, and he wasn't even drafted. All of our lineman are system guys that basically can't get it done against the elite DL's in this league. OL is hard to project, but everybody knows guys like Jovon Patterson and Rod Taylor can play, so why aren't we landing them? We've signed NFL type talent at literally every other position on the field under Mullen, yet none on the OL except for one Croom holdover. Why?

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If we're being honest we haven't had a NFL QB or WR either. That changes this year but let's not act like besides RB we've had guys going left & right off our offenses to the NFL.

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Originally Posted by HSVDawg

I think we are doing what we can to maximize the talent of the guys we have. The problem is that for 95% of the guys we sign, "serviceable" or "slightly above average" is their ceiling. Look at Blaine Clausell. Dude was a 4 year starter at Left Tackle in the SEC West, and he wasn't even drafted. All of our lineman are system guys that basically can't get it done against the elite DL's in this league. OL is hard to project, but everybody knows guys like Jovon Patterson and Rod Taylor can play, so why aren't we landing them? We've signed NFL type talent at literally every other position on the field under Mullen, yet none on the OL except for one Croom holdover. Why?

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This is pretty interesting. After this year (assuming Bear goes), we will have had draft picks at QB, WR, RB, DL (plenty of those too), LB, and CB and by the looks of it will continue to have additional DL, LB, and CB in the future get drafted. How in the hell have we not even gotten lucky and had one guy that was dominant on the OL? Malone looked like that guy 2 years ago. Not sure what happened but I thought he was a mid round guy. Now I'm not sure he gets drafted.

But up until this year, how many Mullen offensive recruits have been drafted? Ballard and Robinson? Is that it? Not a good track record on that side of the ball, especially when you look at the success of the defensive side.

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Originally Posted by War Machine Dawg

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Yep, our staff should actually be given props for at least spotting him and offering, even last minute. No other P5 conference school was interested.

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Originally Posted by Johnson85

It's so hard to tell with offensive linemen because along with QB, it's just the hardest position to project. Hell, you'd think your top rated JUCO tackle would be ready to step on the field and be serviceable. No way they could have screwed up developing him; obviously everybody was just wrong about his ability. And you look at development, Dillon Day and Ben Beckwith seemed to have pretty clearly maximized their talent. Clausell is a player that was pretty good compared to his rating, so that looks like a good job, but he ended up with good measurables so who's to say whether he could have been developed better (I think he reached close to his potential but really don't know). Robinson obviously didn't live up to his rating, but I think he was just misevaluated; he didn't have anything except for size. Malone and Clayborne are like Clausell; they've ended up pretty good compared to their rating, but both seem like they should be better at this point (especially compared to their early production).

I'm sure we could do a better job of development, but I really think the main problem is recruiting. I say that b/c we more or less take leftovers and do well with them provided we're not playing Bama or LSU. We've basically had three years now in Mullen's tenure where a glaring weakness on the OL has derailed our season. Hopefully having Dak will result in "derailed" meaning 8 wins this year instead of 7. If we're not going to be able to recruit better, we're going to have to dedicate some more scholarships to Olinemen and hope that we get lucky with more guys that aren't highly rated coming out of high school.

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I really don't give a flying flip what Damien Robinson was rated out of HS because when all was said and done we were the only SEC school still offering. That's the only reason we got him. It did prop up the ranking of that class though for whatever that was worth.

Hev is a problem, has 17ed up some that we should have gotten and is the main reason that one hasn't committed yet.