D. C. Bear said:
bear2be2 said:
IowaBear said:
Hurd wasn't on the 1-11 squad. He came the following year. The guys you listed were raw. Talented sure, but very raw. None of them truly reached their potential under Rhule until year 3-4.
Hasty, Blake Lynch, Ebner were never elite players. Solid pieces sure. But never elite. The only guy you listed with elite talent was Pitre and Mims and they were what Freshman in Rhules first year?
Also, eight or nine good (mostly skill) players does not a good football team make. That team could have probably won two or three more games than it did, but it had a hard ceiling due to our lack of line talent on both sides of the football.
That offensive line, in particularly, was atrocious.
Mo Porter, Xavier Newman, Patrick Lawrence, Blake Blackmar and Sam Tecklenburg (all of whom started on the offensive line against Kansas that season) were all good enough to get a least a look by the NFL.
Newman was a true freshman, Tecklenburg was a sophomore converted tight end and Porter, Lawrence and Blackmar, while experienced in Briles system, all struggled mightily with the transition to Nixon's more conventional blocking schemes. And because of the lack of returning talent and injuries suffered in preseason, we had no depth whatsoever behind that group.
The four that returned after that 2017 season all made huge strides in future years, but the stats that year speak for themselves. We averaged 3.4 yards per rush and allowed an astronomical 38 sacks.
Our only offense that season was the handful of explosives we got every game from Mims and/or Platt (before his injury).