I know you have a problem from me making you look like a fool, but get over yourself.
Now if you want to say this program hasn't brought in multiple future NFL linemen every year, yep, you nailed it. Has this program been reeling in 4 star linemen? Nope.
But that's not the assertion I was responding to, unless that's what your definition of failing to bring in solid OL talent is.
Fact is that Mac and P were able to bring in quality linemen during their tenures. Some lines were excellent, some in development. Those guys I referred to were three and four year starters and formed the core of the unit in the early 2000's. They weren't the reason the program struggled.
The only reason I brought up Tiller and Pugh was to push back on a categorical statement. Marrone was able to pull together a solid unit starting with almost nothing using transfers and freshmen and sophomores over a four year period. All that does is show it can be done pretty quickly and isn't some insurmountable task.
I'm still waiting for that to happen. Speaking of making a fool out of yourself, why don't you go make another post about how similar Babers's offensive system is to the one Marrone, ROFLMFAO--disgraceful.
Truth is, you're just mad because I correctly pegged you a long time ago as being argumentative and not very knowledgeable about football--a bad enough combination--but now it looks like we need to add delusional to the mix, as well. No matter how you try to spin it, we have not landed many highly rated OL ever, as a program.
I hate to break this to you, Go, but Coach Mac has been gone for
26 years. He fielded an offensive line in 1987 that was probably the gold standard for our program, but we didn't sustain that level of play--certainly not into the modern era of our program.
And even when our OL talent was much better than it is currently, it was overrated locally and nationally--very similarly to how you are overrating our OL talent in this thread relative to our peers. Here are some examples--a few years after the 1987 dream season, the Sporting News [I believe] picked SU as having the top OL in college football, and they went on to struggle mightily that year. And I still have nightmares from a couple years later, thinking about 1st team all american John Flannery getting abused and knocked down by Russell Maryland. I love John Flannery, I'm not knocking him. But he wasn't on the same level.
We also had OL units that didn't perform well, but had it compensated for by athletic QBs like McNabb--several years in fact where we had the skilled talent to compete with elite teams, but not the talent in the trenches [remember the Orange Bowl, against Florida, when McNabb was running for his life the entire game?].
We've had seasons where our best OL were converted TEs like Andrew Dees and Baneweicz. Why? Because even when we were recruiting at a much higher level than we are now, we still weren't landing blue chip OL talent.
Post-McNabb, things really went downhill. P struggled to field competent OLs several of his last 5 seasons. GRob--don't get me started.
It all comes down to this: we have not had consistent OL play many seasons over the last 30 [prior to that, the program stunk and so did the talent we brought in]. At the beginning of that timeframe, the OL talent was much better. We had players on those teams where second unit guys like Chuck Bull couldn't even get on the field; today, he'd be the top OL on the team. I'd kill to be landing PJ Browns now, let alone higher rated guys. But the level of play has declined precipitously since 2000,and it correlates to the talent we've brought in over that span. If you went back over those 30 years, we've had more down years than we've had good seasons of OL play.
The NFL draft results, which are abysmal, support what I'm saying. As do the lack of OL on all conference teams.
None of this can be denied by anyone who is intellectually honest. You can't dispute it, either, so you're trying to move the goal posts to a different argument about individual players and lesser rated recruits who improbably panned out to be "solid." The bottom line is that we haven't landed highly rated offensive linemen over that time with any consistency, going back 30 years. And the results follow suit.
And just to reemphasize this point, since it apparently hasn't sunken in--an OL is a unit of 5, not just individual players. Historically as a program, OL has not been our area of greatest program strength relative to the rest of our offensive talent, and even when we were much better than we are now, it wasn't generally that great.
Hopefully, this new staff can improve the situation, because it needs to change.
