Kind of an ongoing series of semi-random thoughts on the OL here. A while back I did a look at our OL recruiting. So now I'm looking at recruiting/talent from another angle:
what we recruited:
2018 - 3 including Jurgens who was a TE
2019 - 7 including Piper who was a DT
2020 - 2
2021 - 3
I won't go through and count the full number of walk-on linemen we brought in as well, but we have a few on the 2 deep (Hixson Center/OG, Miller - OT (he was a 4 star originally, though), Boerkircher, Nouile (was a scholarship player who walked on to come back to NU after his freshman year)
Out of that number, we have 4 walk-ons who have made good and are on 2-deep plus 15 scholarship guys brought in. A number of them are gone, but we've had a lot of swings and misses and a lot of places where we took a shot, but it didn't work out.
A few other numbers:
2021 - 2 of 3 > 6-8, 1 of 3 > 6-6
2020 - 2 who are 6-6
2019 - 2 at 6-4, the rest 5 of them 6-7 and taller
2018 - 1 at 6-3, 2 at 6-4,
who played:
2018 - Jurgens 6-4
2019 - Benhart 6-9, Banks a bit 6-7, Piper 6-4
2020 - Corcoran 6-6
2021 - 1 6-9
walk-ons who played - Hixson 6-4, Nouile 6-4, Miller 6-6, Boerkircher 6-6
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A few thoughts:
-- We ask a lot of our OT's (or did with what we tried to run the past few years), so we spent a ton of scholarships trying to find the TE to OT conversion types who could pass block but also move to pull and block downfield, and who can knock defensive linemen off the line.
-- that really didn't really work out for us. We ended up with 1 OT who may have what it takes to play that way (
Prochazka), out of the huge number we brought in
-- rules of the game reward taller offensive linemen with long arms, BUT, guys still need to be able to play the game with the bulk, power, leverage, and explosion to move defenders
-- Lot of teams (even Bama) are running with offensive lines that are shorter than what we recruited.
-- The walk-ons who've played have been shorter (to be fair Nouili has freakish long arms for his height).
-- More than ever OL play is about the right people in the right scheme, but it's pretty clear we've either been unable to find the talent to run the scheme or haven't been running a scheme that is going to work with the OL
I think in general we have the talent to do a lot of good things on the OLine, but we need to put them in positions where they can succeed...
And, maybe a bit controversial, I think we need to build toward a scheme where our few recruiting advantages can work for us. We can pull in a ton of quality walk-ons. Some who are very athletic and have good bulk -- sure, if they were 6-8, they would never be a walk-on, but can we figure out ways to use them?
I think so -- and I think some of the names we're hearing about are to figure out how to be more creative with that kind of talent. Davis (speculation at this point still) uses shorter offensive linemen all the time. Raiola was a 6-2 linemen who made it to the NFL.
Sure we want a guy like Prochazka to play LT, but if we can't figure out a way to get Corcoran to play, we have some serious flaws in our plan, IMO
