Quote:
Originally Posted by BishopMVP
Yeah, but 2013 was a looong time ago in college football terms. ND lost a 2013 & a 2014 recruit that both went top 10 this past draft and had 2 OT's recruited in 2016 & one in 2017 starting Saturday night (Kraemer at Guard) and they played well enough vs a Michigan front 7 that has 2-3 studs. It definitely is weird & surprising that Harbaugh has struggled to recruit/develop OL.
Fwiw, I also think ND's front 7 & defense are better than people are giving them credit for, especially if Khalid Kareem can play at that level off the edge and complement Coney/Tillery & Hayes in creating pressure. It wasn't like Michigan looked as bad and vanilla as, say, Florida State's O did.
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My thinking (as to the relevance of the article) goes kinda like this:
- Freshman OL that are truly ready to play a lot at a high level are pretty rare.
-- A decent or better OL is usually one that has relatively stability over time, where you aren't replacing them en masse.
-- the problems in 2018 follow issues year after year after year, and at no point really (starting with the great OL class collapse of 2013) have they ever been solid long enough to get some any stability. And that class was one that was supposed to kind of let them rebuild the OL.
It other words, they kinda suck now because they've sucked for quite a while. It's probably the position where that sort of thing can most take on its own ... gravitational force (if you get what I'm trying to say)