Greg Robinson Recruiting

[CIL]

Once again...GRob and P in his later years really struggled to acquire solid depth to their classes as well as the fast twitch/explosive playmakers offenses need to place stress on opposing defenses. Outside of Mike Williams, I cant really think of one wide out we have had that force the defenses to roll coverage their way on passing downs. Lemon is going to finish his career with nice stats and is a good underneath guy, but is nowhere near the level of a Williams, Spotwood, Harrison, Johnson, Tyree, etc. He actually reminds me of a bigger Jeff Lowe.

If you go back and look at Rivals or Scout's '02, '03, '04 classes it's damn well near depressing, even sickening. Outside of Brinkley, TJax, and Anthony Smith I can't really pinpoint one player that would have started on other BE football team. While Robinson was able to upgrade the talent in a few places (forget about coaching), the depth in his classes was sorely lacking.

 

[GoSU96]

the only nuggets of hope have been groobers kids so far

BS

Not surprising from a guy that has a pittbull rottlier mix though. That in and of itself says alot.

 

[Jerry Fairchild]

Sounds egotistical but I think if Trey stayed he would have been the guy that stretched the field and he and Lemon would have been great compliments to each other, but this is a biased view.

As a recruiter I am not completely sold on Grob because he looked so much at things other than football in the process, I can speak to the kind of man he is and I am glad my son had a year with him for just the example he set as a person.

 

[cusestudent]

Pugh was GRob and you already listed him. For Jones not being any good, he's going to be drafted in the 2nd or 3rd round, that's pretty good. Don't know how it's too soon yet to evaluate any of them, some are going to be seniors and many juniors. But you are wrong, we have had a lot more talent than just Bailey. Guys make the NFL, make All conference, make AA and you don't think they are any good. Strange.

When did I ever even say Bailey was talented? He was a talented pass catcher out of the backfield, but that was about the extent of his talent. There are very few places he would have started at other than SU. What did Jones really do outside of the West Virginia game? Where was he the other five games? How many times are draft pundits wrong about kids, especially when they come out early? What has his brother done in the NFL? Who from SU has been an All-American? Last time I checked Dwight Freeney was the last one from SU to make it on that list. All-Big East? Are you seriously using that as an accomplishment considering the huge lack of talent in the conference? As of 2009 the Big East had, historically, less first round picks in the NFL draft than C-USA! In 2010 the Big East had 115 players in the NFL, the next highest was the Pac-10 with 215, that puts the other five BCS conferences ahead by at least 100 (!!!!!) players. I am willing to bet that Chan Jones would get lit up by Big Ten and SEC tackles just about every game. I love SU, but it's time to face reality. We are struggling to go .500 in the worst BCS conference by far.

 

[Marsh01]

Bottom line with Grob was he was a decent recruiter but couldnt coach his way out of a paper bag. Not really rocket science to figure out why he sucked.

 

[rosconey]

BS

Not surprising from a guy that has a pittbull rottlier mix though. That in and of itself says alot.

the type of dog i RESCUED says a lot about me-

whats not surprising is a arrogant self righteous post by you

 

[Orangetradition44]

What's bs about it? I haven't put the lists side by side but I would also suspect that GRob produced more impact players than Marrone has in similar time frames.

BS

 

[tep624]

GRob did a great job recruiting certain units - RB being one. Getting Brinkley to re-up, DC, Hogue, and Ant Bailey. I also felt he recruited fairly well on the DLine. Outside of Mike Williams, WR was mediocre at best, OL was pretty much atrocious outside of Pugh, LB was just as bad save for Smith and Hogue getting switched there. I thought he recruited DB pretty well, Holmes comes to mind immediately. GRob's recruiting issues lied with depth and overall quality. You can't build a solid team with top heavy classes year in, year out. This isn't basketball.

 

[rrlbees]

Sounds egotistical but I think if Trey stayed he would have been the guy that stretched the field and he and Lemon would have been great compliments to each other, but this is a biased view.

As a recruiter I am not completely sold on Grob because he looked so much at things other than football in the process, I can speak to the kind of man he is and I am glad my son had a year with him for just the example he set as a person.

I can only dream about a Fairchild, Lemon and a head on straight Sales. I think that trio would have meshed great on the field. If we could have found a 6'3-4 kid to mix in that would have been perfect.

 

[Scooch]

I'm going to post this both here and the thread about P's last class...

This board wildly overrates SU's talent on an annual basis. That's entrely why some of these classes look OK to you. They're all below average, hence our crappy won/lost record over the last decade.

Put another way, even when Rutgers was the worst 1-A BCS level program I've ever seen, they had Marco Battaglia. Just because SU had a handful of decent players doesn't mean the classes were good.

 

[rrlbees]

I'm going to post this both here and the thread about P's last class...

This board wildly overrates SU's talent on an annual basis. That's entrely why some of these classes look OK to you. They're all below average, hence our crappy won/lost record over the last decade.

Put another way, even when Rutgers was the worst 1-A BCS level program I've ever seen, they had Marco Battaglia. Just because SU had a handful of decent players doesn't mean the classes were good.

Exactly and why our classes have all looked the same for the past 10 years and pretty much ranked the same.

 

[Moontan]

GROB ... was the worst coach in the. Country and a complete disaster for both SU and Michigan

The whole Michigan fiasco was due to Rich Rod's love of the 3-3-5. Why GRob agreed to take that on I'll never understand, but it's inappropriate to place blame for all of the Wolverine defensive woes on his shoulders.

 

[CIL]

3-3-5 with a shitload of underclassmen.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Not surprising from a guy that has a pittbull rottlier mix though. That in and of itself says alot.

Weird post, man.

 

[billsin01]

The issue with Robinson's recruiting was the astounding lack of depth in his classes, same thing that hurt P in last few years.

Hard to comment on his depth when half of his classes were run off after the coaching change. I'm not saying this was a bad move by Marrone and co., but merely pointing out it's tough to build depth when you send 30 kids packing.

 

[billsin01]

GROB's failure wasn't so much that he didn't recruit good players, it was that he couldn't develop the players once they were on campus. We were teased by players like Andrew Robinson, Nick Chestnut, Grant Mayes, Parker Canty who "flashed" some talent as freshman but never got any better. Everyone loves Max Suter but his career highlight was setting the kickoff return yardage record as a freshman. Doug didn't necessarily bring in a team of 4 stars but he was able to squeeze a lot more talent out of Robinson's players. Guys like D'Amon Merkerson, Anthony Perkins, Andrew Lewis turned into solid contributers while Doug Houge and Derrell Smith became NFL players.

Yup. S&C in particular appeared to have been a disaster, at least the first couple years.

 

[billsin01]

Decent, but not great obviously.

But better than I recalled.

Still, it seems clear that this year in particular, Marrone has brought in a larger number of bigger, longer and faster players.

I give you a lot of credit for this post since I know it couldn't have been easy to make. But I think decent is the operative word -- people want to say his recruiting sucked and that's why we sucked. Those same people often want to say our recruiting now is awesome, hence we will be awesome. My point has always been that it's not that simple -- GRob wasn't as bad and, chances are, these recruits aren't as good as we think they are today.

The secret is in the development.

The only thing I take any issue with is the very last sentence since, while I agree with you it appears to be a good class, I really doubt anyone here knows how this one will turn out.

 

[SoBristol]

It is a truism that you don't know everything about a recruiting class until you see the results 3 years later.

That doesn't mean you can't make some judgments or can't assess how you did compared to rivals or whether Marrone is doing better in some areas and not so great in some others. Coaches always know when they find a gem (McNabb, Tim Green, Art Monk), they know whether they landed the linemen they wanted or had to reach, they know whether they won head to head battles with rivals (or with Akron). They don't have to look at "how many stars" to know whether they landed the next Rob Moore or Deleone Carter or Joe Morris (they didn't).

For sure, GROB did better in recruiting impact skill players. His guys (Carter, Hogue, Bailey, Lemon, Taj Smith, Sales) had early impact; Nassib contributed as an RF. Marrone's skill guys have done almost nothing (Gulley and who else?). The best we can say is that we don't know about Smith, West, Wales.

Marrone has done much better in touching the JUCO ranks (and Hofstra) for help, mainly in the OL and DL. GROB found Taj Smith and not much else. Marrone has brought in 3 or so every year (but no playmakers).

GROB's classes lacked depth compared to what Marrone has done. Granted, this is a harder one to prove -- as several of GROB's guys left or got run off -- and is largely based on what we will see this year in the two deep. If you look at the top 5 guys in each class, you can easily see GROB did just fine; if you look at his bottom 10, you know there were lots of misses.

GROB went more for speed (not so much size); Marrone's classes have more beef.

Overall, are the rankings a lot different? Not a lot -- but we are becoming more physical, and starting to build decent depth.

 

[billsin01]

It is a truism that you don't know everything about a recruiting class until you see the results 3 years later.

That doesn't mean you can't make some judgments or can't assess how you did compared to rivals or whether Marrone is doing better in some areas and not so great in some others. Coaches always know when they find a gem (McNabb, Tim Green, Art Monk), they know whether they landed the linemen they wanted or had to reach, they know whether they won head to head battles with rivals (or with Akron). They don't have to look at "how many stars" to know whether they landed the next Rob Moore or Deleone Carter or Joe Morris (they didn't).

For sure, GROB did better in recruiting impact skill players. His guys (Carter, Hogue, Bailey, Lemon, Taj Smith, Sales) had early impact; Nassib contributed as an RF. Marrone's skill guys have done almost nothing (Gulley and who else?). The best we can say is that we don't know about Smith, West, Wales.

Marrone has done much better in touching the JUCO ranks (and Hofstra) for help, mainly in the OL and DL. GROB found Taj Smith and not much else. Marrone has brought in 3 or so every year (but no playmakers).

GROB's classes lacked depth compared to what Marrone has done. Granted, this is a harder one to prove -- as several of GROB's guys left or got run off -- and is largely based on what we will see this year in the two deep. If you look at the top 5 guys in each class, you can easily see GROB did just fine; if you look at his bottom 10, you know there were lots of misses.

GROB went more for speed (not so much size); Marrone's classes have more beef.

Overall, are the rankings a lot different? Not a lot -- but we are becoming more physical, and starting to build decent depth.

I don't disagree with any of this. The only point I'd make is that you also have to look a bit at chicken-egg scenarios. Is Marrone short on offensive skill players because he hasn't done as good a job identifying/signing them or is he short b/c those he's signed haven't been great but he's been spending the bulk of his scholarships trying fill pretty big holes at DL/OL/LB and in the secondary? I'm not suggesting this is a simple either/or answer, but I do think our first couple classes were significantly weighted toward the defense and lines and plugging holes with the occasional juco.

But I agree. I mean, it feels like we're building depth and getting stronger. I guess my theory is that has more to do with the development and S&C focus of this staff. But, that's my theory. In the end, I think Marrone will be fine as a recruiter and GRob, while not great as a recruiter, did OK to get kids to sign on to a festering abscess of a program.

 

[Alsacs]

Have people not heard this? I think GRob was okay at recruiting and if he could have had success I believe he would have done well, but he didn't.

 

[SoBristol]

I don't disagree with any of this. The only point I'd make is that you also have to look a bit at chicken-egg scenarios. Is Marrone short on offensive skill players because he hasn't done as good a job identifying/signing them or is he short b/c those he's signed haven't been great but he's been spending the bulk of his scholarships trying fill pretty big holes at DL/OL/LB and in the secondary? I'm not suggesting this is a simple either/or answer, but I do think our first couple classes were significantly weighted toward the defense and lines and plugging holes with the occasional juco.

But I agree. I mean, it feels like we're building depth and getting stronger. I guess my theory is that has more to do with the development and S&C focus of this staff. But, that's my theory. In the end, I think Marrone will be fine as a recruiter and GRob, while not great as a recruiter, did OK to get kids to sign on to a festering abscess of a program.

Hard to know about S&C -- my observation is that Marrone has shown his stripes with his JUCO recruiting and with the guys he brought in from Hofstra. One DB, one LB, all the rest linemen, including a blocking TE (plus Weaver -- a big possession receiver). And what he hasn't brought in from JUCO ranks -- a playmaker (other than Weaver), a dual threat QB. Folks sometimes say we can't reach the JUCO ranks because so many are West Coast; Marrone has shown he can -- leaving the issue of why not a playmaker?

It seems he likes bigger backs, taller WRs, and some heft in the lines. Don't recall GROB landing any 300 lb linemen. Marrone has a list at this point (Sloan, Crume, Zian Jones, Tiller, Alexander) and some others who will soon hit that mark (Robinson, Hickey, Curtis).

Why the shortage of impact skill guys? Misjudgments (Smallwood & Timbers); not looking to JUCOs to fill that gap; and what else? Because our rivals seem to be getting their share.

 

[Fjoinkay]

I'm no expert on recruiting, not even close. But I do know that HCDM won games with GRob's players, and he probably would have won more games in 2009 if fewer players had defected. We all know those wins were not going to happen with GRob driving the bus. I'm guessing that even though GRob had a good eye or he was able to close the deal with a few solid recruits that like most things GRob the system was too lax and prone to folly.

 

[NovaOrange]

The whole Michigan fiasco was due to Rich Rod's love of the 3-3-5. Why GRob agreed to take that on I'll never understand, but it's inappropriate to place blame for all of the Wolverine defensive woes on his shoulders.

See I place a lot of blame on Robinson for the UM job simply because the defense had such terrible technique across the board. If you watched there spring practices the defense was walking through drills the whole time going over leverage and hand placement. Those things have nothing to do with the 3-3-5 that's flat out bad coaching my friend.

 

[rosconey]

for a defensive guy the great guru never thought about tackling-
at times i seriously doubted he even heard of tackle football

 

[GoSU96]

What's bs about it? I haven't put the lists side by side but I would also suspect that GRob produced more impact players than Marrone has in similar time frames.

Let's revisit the exact post.

"the only nuggets of hope have been groobers kids so far"

That is flat out, unmitigated BS. You want to back up this clown and his constant garbage crap, be my guest.​