Offensive Line and the Offense

girlknowsfootball said:
If you look closely, Tommy's production began dropping and the running game really began struggling at the same time our offensive linemen began getting injured. Farmer has a high ankle sprain, the same injury Taylor Martinez had that hampered him a half of season. David Knevel has the same. Gates is playing on a bad ankle.

Utter is the only starting offensive lineman we have healthy.

We are starting 3 walkons. Utter, Conrad, Hahn.

Out of our projected starting 5 offensive linemen going into the season, we have lost 4 to injury. Gates, Foster, Farmer, Knevel.

If you watch the offensive line in the Ohio state game, their mobility and lower body strength is significantly limited. They are consistently beat and often times even take the wrong direction to block. They are slower getting up (ankles). Conrad, a walk on, is a significant drop off from the starters in athletic ability. Whitaker is a drop off as well. He hardly saw the field until now.

Behind those 8 (gates, foster, utter, farmer, knevel, Hahn, Whittaker, Conrad) we have no guys Cav feels are well equipped enough to play right now. The question becomes, why? Why do we not have depth? Why are highly touted 4star guys like Barnett not even mentioned? The fans see that the offensive line is not blocking for the running backs to have holes. They aren't pass protecting long enough for Tommy to have time to go through his reads. Langsdorf can call any play he wants but our o-line can not protect or open up holes right now. This is why you see our backs looking so bad and Tommy's production dropping. Not to mention, Cethan Carter's injury has set the tight end spot back.

Yes Knevel is playing, but he's not healthy. We are desperate on the o-line right now. So desperate we play the injured guys over the healthy ones because even with limited mobility they are better options than the other guys on the team.

What we see is this... Barney Cotton missed in his recruiting on our Junior and Senior classes. Zack Hannon, Dwayne Johnson haven't seen the field. Paul Thurston transferred. Corey Whittaker and Davis Knevel are the only recruited scholarship upperclassmen we have that have played. Utter, Conrad, & Hahn were Walkons and many felt neither had the athletic ability to play against the top of the big 10. So Cav walked into a mess. Alex Lewis was brought in as a transfer because Cotton had missed on earlier classes as well. Think about it. Cab walks In and the cubbard was bare.

Cav has a lot of young talent on the team. Sophomores - Foster, Farmer, and Gates are all great players when healthy. They seem to be panning out and developing well. Redshirt Freshmen - Gaylord is going to be good. He needs to get tougher and needs this year to grow. He's too young right now and still learning the system. Barnett - has all the talent in the world, but the dude loves to eat and can't get his weight down to play. He's gotta get in playing shape or he's going to get pushed around out there. Decker - he was coming on strong and then missed the whole summer. It set him back tremendously. It is said he has some personal reasons for missing and needs to catch up. The coaches think he has a bright future but he's still a little young and this year he isn't quite ready. Freshmen -

Brokop, Farnoik, Raridon, and Wilson. The experts think Raridon will be a starting center within 2 years and is That good. Wilson is a good guard, good enough to be considered as a true freshman contender. Farniok is expected to beat out Knevel for the RT spot next year, because Knevel just isn't that good. He consistently gets beat. Brokop is the only one I haven't heard much about yet. He may need a couple years.

So what we're seeing right now is a beat up o-line, with very few upperclassmen contribution, playing injured because we have no soph/junior/senior depth due to the previous staff's recruiting misses/lack of development. That's not on Cav.

Next year we should have

LT - Gates, Gaylord

LG - Foster, Wilson

C - Raridon, Decker

RG - Farmer, Barnett

RT - Farniok, Knevel

Not to mention if we land a Foster Sarrell he could start immediately at tackle or guard. Some of these other highly regarded west coast tackles we're going after could be immediate contributors as well.

So all this to say. We can't blame Danny Langsdorf for play calling when there's no blocking for plays. We can't blame the Running backs or Reggie Davis when the RB is hit as he gets the handoff, before he can even look for a hole. He has no chance to do his job. We can't blame Tommy when he has to flee the pocket 1 second after the snap and has 3 guys in his face while he's trying to see the field. We literally have to play compromised players on the O-Line because there's no one else to play. All we have are freshmen and redshirt freshmen, who aren't ready yet.
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I like this post a lot. I think it's also worth noting that this staff seems committed to getting our program back on track. So much of what we've seen recently is tFR playing because of need. As such we lost a year of development and end up over and over again in this cycle of our top end talent not being where we want it. I think we as fans knew this year wasn't going to be amazing. No one expected what just occurred, but we knew our lines were questionable. I'm happy with how we've done this year, I think we can realistically finish as a 2 or 3 loss team (it'll be ugly, but i think we can do it). However, we're getting to the point where the future is looking brighter.

Our DL recruiting this year is hugely better than what we've done in recent years. The Davis twins are great, but the rest of the recruiting has been lack luster for awhile. Our OL has 2 tFR who could've started this year. We have good depth at RB and WR sticking around, we're good at LB and our secondary will still be stacked even without Gerry. We also have reason to be optimistic at QB.

This was the rough year and we've done well with what we have.

 
cm husker said:
You don't get credit for getting a .700+ program "back on track" when you ran them off the rails to begin with.
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taking a perennial 9win team, going 6-7, then being back on track for 9/10/even 11 wins is not merely "running off the rails".

Was Ohio St ran off the rails in 2011?

 
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BigRedBuster said:
I'm interested in knowing what great depth of players we have sitting on the bench that Cav is supposed to have been able to develop.
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It's been posted quite a few times. NU has 5 healthy scholarship players sitting right now. And that doesn't include 4 well regarded freshmen who are supposedly sitting because of redshirt considerations. But really, based on Cav's stated and demonstrated approach, they are likely sitting because they aren't one of the top 5 and will continue to sit until they break into that top 5.

 
Count 'Bility said:
BigRedBuster said:
I'm interested in knowing what great depth of players we have sitting on the bench that Cav is supposed to have been able to develop.
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that talent is there to win. And we're winning. We're 7-2.
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I agree. 7-2 is winning. I sure as hell didn't like this week's game....but....I'll get over it.

But, I read the very well written and researched OP that spells out our OLine problems. Then, I read posts trashing our O line coach for not having guys developed and ready to go and it's all his fault that our O line is in this predicament.

So....I have to ask....who are these guys that Cav has had a ton of time with to develop and it's all his fault and instead they are just sitting on the bench?

 
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cm husker said:
BigRedBuster said:
cm husker said:
You don't get credit for getting a .700+ program "back on track" when you ran them off the rails to begin with.
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So...it is OK to trash our coaches?
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It's definitely more acceptable to be critical of paid professionals, yes.
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Hey....I've been preached to for two years now about how horrible it is to even say a peep that is bad about Bo and company. God forbid we would ever be critical of him.

So....I thought that rule probably carried forward. Guess not???

PS....it just dawned on me. The difference is that even though Bo was paid....he wasn't professional. Is that it? You have to be both "paid" and "professional".

 
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The OP does a good job explaining what many have been saying for awhile now to those who don't get it, many morons need to read this thread. To add on to the Op's remarks about not dropping this at Langsdorfs feet I agree completely. Langsdorf has even said that the more complex Run plays have been shelved due to the issues and injuries on the O-Line.

The bare bones offense we see this year is the result of all these injuries. The future is bright for us at this spot. But we will have to wait another year or two before we see it all come together.

 
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I believe that cm husker is a great example, as stated numerous times in the context of other conversations besides just this one, of a Husker fan that just never really adapted mentally to the 85 scholarship cap change.

Under the new paradigm, your season is basically a crapshoot if you get a bad run of injuries. You just don't have enough scholarships to load that offensive line up with guys.

The OP's assessment is good. And our fan base probably isn't weighing into consideration heavily enough.

 
husker98 said:
The OP does a good job explaining what many have been saying for awhile now to those who don't get it, many morons need to read this thread. To add on to the Op's remarks about not dropping this at Langsdorfs feet I agree completely. Langsdorf has even said that the more complex Run plays have been shelved due to the issues and injuries on the O-Line.

The bare bones offense we see this year is the result of all these injuries. The future is bright for us at this spot. But we will have to wait another year or two before we see it all come together.
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But, there was an opportunity to say "let's try to fix this year and play the young guys" during the bye week. Instead, Riley and Cav tried to gamble and use walk-ons.

I understand that Riley is trying to play the long game, but I wish he would also focus on this year, because there was a strong opportunity to win at least the division. I understand the talent and depth was lacking when Riley took over, but I am sick of the talk of "wait another year or two".

 
I would bet that CM was one of us (I say us, cuz i was too) that wanted to give the real meh 2013 season a mulligan for Bo cuz of all the injuries. Funny how he dont wanna go there for this groups. so frickin double standard. Year 6 vs year 2.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
I understand the talent and depth was lacking when Riley took over, but I am sick of the talk of "wait another year or two".
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I honestly just *hate* saying this, but we weren't going to do anything in Indy with Tommy at the helm. Winning the division is much, much better than not winning the division. But this is transition football still. It's the nature of transition football.

 
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