Anderson certainly looks the part on film. I would say Santos has the ability, but from everything ive heard he is struggling a bit with the defense and playing a little slow....thinking too much instead of reacting, but has gotten better this fall. If he starts playing fast like hes capable of, he has been comapred to David as far as having a nose for the ball. We win the UCLA game with Lavonte David and probably give up 200 yards less. The defense was in position to make the tackles we just havent found the playmakers like LD was. I think we are just a couple players away, the secondary is fine, we just need a David and SUH type penetrator on the dline and we would probably go undefeated thru the Big 10 fairly easily IMO.
Compton being unable to cover Franklin single handedly lost us that game, im not saying its his fault, he shouldnt have been put in that position, we just dont have anyone else to be the MIKE when were in DIME and teams will take advantage of that matchup all day long. One step behind is the diference between a tackle for a loss and a big gainer, and obviously the tackling was piss poor once we got to the right spot. The defense will still be good imo, UCLA just attacked us at our biggest weakness...LB, so we have to give credit to them for being smart enough to exploit our weakness to perfection.
I always thought we just have to try and manage the LB spot this year, and then we "should" be pretty good there for the forseeable future, not accounting for injuries or transfers. Rose takes over for Compton, and that will be a good upgrade IMO, then come in the really athletic young LBs. Coaches have alot of work to do coaching up all these guys thou, just hope atleast 2 or 3 of em are smart enough to pick it up faster then the others.
Compton will prove to be servicable thru the season and im glad we have him this year, but i will be happy to see all 3 seniors go. BO will be forced to play the young talented guys, and they will just have to learn from their mistakes as LD did, atleat LD was fast enough to make up for his mistakes.