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[QUOTE="RF2044, post: 3059314, member: 40"]
Exactly.

Most big guys don't have great mobility.  The ones who do are highly coveted, and generally end up at the factories.  Are there exceptions -- sure, sometimes guys slip through the cracks, a la Bromley.  But for the most part, those guys are difficult to come by.

So our choice is to either recruit guys who have the size but not the athleticism, or to get tall / athletic guys and "grow" them into DTs who then play above 285+ and have mobility.  This appears to be the strategic approach that our coaching staff is taking.

And the net result is that we get guys like Slayton, McKinley Williams, and now Dawson / Munoz / etc. who have the frames to add that kind of size without losing their athleticism / speed.

That doesn't mean that the staff wouldn't take a more traditionally sized DT a la Art Jones if we could land one, but again -- there's a lot of competition for those guys.  Important to note that pound for pound, Slayton was just about as good as anybody in the conference these past two years, including those highly rated Clemson guys.  So if that's our path to landing big, athletic DTs that stack up against elite competition, then sign me up.  But we need to add them to the pipeline every year, so that they have time to develop and aren't thrown into the fires too early.
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