Week 1 Depth Chart out

[UMCDawg16]

What I love about this conversation concerning the "fears" of our OL is that just a few short years ago, we were worried about OL #s 1-5. Now we have a group that has fear over 7-10. Just a few things stand out to me with this that should help all y'all scaredy cats-
1 - we have 6 guys that are really good (maybe not all American but good) OL that we can count on.
2 - we have 4-5 OL under them that have not had the chance to gain experience and prove themselves as of yet. AMAZING WE HAVE QUALITY DEPTH!!!!!
3 - most everyone on this board knows that our 2 & 3 deep on the DL is legit SEC depth across those positions. All of our guys on the OL are gaining critical experience and knowledge going against that unit in practice every day. That counts for something.
4 - we are complaining most about players like carter and Thomas who are RS frost and the fact that they haven't been able to crack the starting rotation or have experience to know what they are capable of.....it's about dang time we had that much depth to finally have idiots say this!!!!
5 - we have a strong contingent that is upset because Damien was said to be a starter when Senior was obviously better, then Damien gets hurt for the year and ppl are upset because Senior may not be good enough and we have to slide Malone over and that warren is playing out of position and has not any experience at RT. If any of y'all complaining had been watching warren you would have noticed that he was used primarily almost always as an extra blocker. He is used to going against the DE and outside rush. He has great lateral movement wide reach and very good footwork. I said a couple years ago that they should have moved him to OT becAuse it was a more natural position for him. Fact is, he is a tweener for those two positions. I honestly think he will do well there.
Personally I love what we have at the OL as starters, 2 deep, and beyond. I hope we blow these first 3 games out so all of those guys can get live game experience and help to show everyone what we have and I for one think it is quality depth and future studs.

Top notch. Best post I have seen in a while. Kudos.

[Schultzy]

I just don't see how a team as deep and senior laiden as ours got overlooked by the top 25 polls ?!?!?? Hope the players carry a chip on their shoulder because of it... Win and the rankings will take care of themselves I guess.

Gotta get a win versus lsu or bama before that happens.

[joedog]

Just curious why Dak is still the place holder on kicks???

Couldn't they find someone else to be Lucy to our Charlie Brown?

[MadisonDawg]

Just curious why Dak is still the place holder on kicks???

Couldn't they find someone else to be Lucy to our Charlie Brown?

Only other person we tried back there during camp was bell, and the kickers preferred Dak for one reason or another.

[Todd4State]

This why they are starting a true freshman at tackle?

They have just as many 4 and 5* busts on the OL as we have 2 and 3* busts. Nature of the beast. They have had one truly elite OL season there. Several other good ones. The one they had last year that got absolutely destroyed by a mediocre OK front 7 and prettymuch got pushed around by ours? Let me keep ours pls.

Here's the thing about the OL -- VERY few of us know what is actually going on there with the "eyeball test". We use a different ideal than practically any of us played in. It's not about road grating. Coach has spelled this out already on the zone scheme.

I'll be the first to admit -- It's hard as hell to evaluate if you aren't an OL guy(I'm not). It's obvious when it's really bad -- but otherwise hard to tell. But easy to rely on what stats tell us. I just see 3-4 true "OL guys" that I've relied on for info in the past(jmoss @ 247, coach57, and 34 among a few others) here and elsewhere that are saying it will be our best OL yet under Mullen and the best depth under Mullen. Hard to argue with those guys even if we don't "see" it...

I do know -- I feel better about the 2s on the OL this year than I have at any point in the past. Based on practice reports, I wouldn't bat an eye playing Deion Calhoun after a couple of injuries -- provided we surrounded him with a little experience. People are looking at the 5 "#2s" on the depth chart and getting worried -- when in reality, it's about 8-9 guys that are going to play and play a bunch.

One thing I've noticed that the recruiting gurus consistently miss when they rate o-linemen is I suspect that they look at their weight way too much. For example, we get a guy like Cole Carter and he weighs 260-270 his senior year in high school and then they totally fail to account for the fact that we are going to get him in a good S&C program and those guys that are 250 at HS graduation are going to be 300-310 with good weight while retaining their athleticism.

They'll rate a guy like a Damien Robinson who is like 300-320 already a five star guy because he has "SEC size" already but they fail to take into account that a lot of guys like that are either already developed as much as they are going to get or are likely going to have weight issues in college.

In other words, the recruiting guys can't see projection with offensive linemen.

[Alldawg]

I thought Mullen couldn't recruit OL?

[Johnson85]

I understand what you're saying, but it's all relative to what you have in front and what expectations are... Alabama may be concerned with guys 7-10, but I'd take their 7-10 any day of the ****ing week over ours... They may not feel confident in them to make a run for a NC, but their still 4 and 5 star guys with a boat load of potential, who would likely push for starting positions on our squad. A key injury on the OL for us is WAY more devastating than a key injury on Bama's OL.

We have three solid guards, so we can lose one guard and still feel pretty good about our two starters.

We have co-starters at RT. So an injury there will leave us with basically an equivalent player.

If we lose our center, we will be hurt, but mainly because of snaps. We have a good blocker to put back there.

If we lose Clausell, I assume that'd be a pretty stiff hit, but Senior did play a game there last year.

We could lose a Guard and a RT and be almost unaffected other than lacking a sub to spell people. I would say most teams don't have that kind of margin of safety for injury on the OL.

[Johnson85]

I do know -- I feel better about the 2s on the OL this year than I have at any point in the past.

This is the first time we've had a complete set of 2s to my knowledge. If we put our two's out there, we know we'd have a good guard in Clayborne and a RT that is basically equivalent to our starter (Warren or Senior). At left Tackle, we'd have Carter, who allegedly had beat out Senior as of the spring practice, so he's presumably capable even if he'd be a good bit of drop off from Clausell. We'd have Desper at RG, who is an unknown but at least we've been getting favorable practice reports on him. The only huge hole is at center, with Muniz. I don't think we've had a year where we've had 4 capable backups on the OL.