Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Reasons why this recruiting class means Texas will play for a title in two years

1. Upgrade along the D-line. Best class of defensive linemen in the Mack Brown era, for sure. DEs of both the quick end and power end variety. DTs of the Lamarr Houston and the Roy Miller variety. Look for at least three of these guys to crack the two-deep by the end of the year.

2. Upgrade at linebacker. The loss of Norton hurt Texas this year as it forced Muckelroy to play middle LB with only E. Acho and K. Robinson on the strong and weak side spots. The two deep had Acho and Robinson backing up each other with Earnest backing up Muckelroy--4 players covering 6 spots. With Norton and Earnest back next year the MLB spot is covered, but look for Tariq Allen to make a move backing up Keenan Robinson and one of Hicks, Benson, and Tevin Jackson to back up Emmanuel Acho. Of the 3 Tevin Jackson may have the most potential as MLB someday. In the recent past Texas has tried to cross-train their LBs anyway, so it's not a huge distinction.

3. Upgrade at WR, assuming this group has more Quan Cosby-s (Cosbies?) and fewer Phillip Paynes and George Walkers. Mike Davis and Darius White are likely to get in the rotation immediately, pushing guys like Chiles and Kirkendoll. Eventually Chris Jones might be the best of the group. Harris is gravy and Terrell will have to put on weight to play TE (hopefully more Jermichael Finley and less Dan Buckner).

4. The OL from 2009's class should be matured in two years with the two from this class providing quality depth. The line from this past year was the worst in the last five years and they still got to the title game.

5. Kept the best athlete in Oklahoma out of OU's hands. Who knows where he plays, but it doesn't really matter.

5 comments:

Ojo Rojo said...

'Bout fucking time, though I can't really talk.

Definitely a strong class that filled needs. The best thing about it for me was how easy it appeared to be for Mack. He didn't sweat a single recruit. 25 visits, 25 commits.

Snake Diggity said...

1. Agree, although 2002's DL could rival it in terms of signing day hype/rankings. In hindsight, '02 doesn't look as good, but at the time, Pickryl was a 5* DE, Wright was a 5* DT, and Studdard, Janszen, Pittman, Dibbles, and Martin were all considered DL prospects.

2. I think Muschamp has a hard-on for linebackers. Hicks and Jackson will both be on the 2 deep next year, with Earnest as the backup in the middle, and Norton, Robinson, and Acho starting. Being able to redshirt a guy as good as Benson is big time.

3. Davis and White will be the most highly rated WR recruits we've had since Roy and BJ. Quan was a 5* but was downgraded b/c of his time away. Chiles was considered a QB. All of the other guys were 2nd tier (with the exception of maybe Hales). It'll be intresting to see if they let them get into the mix. I think Goodwin and Mal have earned their spots, but as the 2nd and 3rd options. If any of the freshmen are as good as Roy was his 1st year, they need to be out there.

4. As Mack himself said, we should have taken 1 more OL this year. Of our non-seniors, only 1 (Snow) has seen any PT of note. If the guys we took last year pan out, we'll be fine, but I would have liked to have seen one more.

5. Yep. We pwned OU in recruiting this year. I'm starting to believe there's a chance OU's on the slow, steady, decline back to where they should be.

Agree with Ojo, Mack Daddy is in Yoda mode. Dude is just smooth and has the machine on cruise control. This is the 1st year I've ever looked at the in-state guys we didn't get and said "meh". Other than maybe Greg Daniels, I wouldn't trade any of our dudes for one we missed.

Rimas Kurtinaitis said...

Definitely cannot afford the attition in last year's OL class that they've had in recent years. Alternating years of 4 to 5 and 2 to 3 OL is okay as long as you hit on 30% studs and 80% contributors with less than 15% outright attition. (I pulled those numbers out of my rear, but I got to them by thinking you want your OL to always be a mix of two or three consecutive classes so you're never faced with starting over completely. If you take 7 guys every two years and 5 are solid contributors, that's 71%. So you want to hit on between 5 and 6 guys out of your 7 over two years. You'd like to count on 2-3 NFL prospects on your OL at a program like Texas, about 30% of your 7. You can't afford to lose more than 2 out of those 7 or you will have a year of practically no depth and/or starting over.)

No team signed a player that made me wish Texas had really gotten them instead, but it certainly would have been nice to find a LT somewhere. TAMU might have found two.

And Ojo, one post per financial quarter doesn't really get you out of the glass house.

Rimas Kurtinaitis said...

Just heard that Tariq Allen has blown up and looks more like a DT than a LB now. Heard that Norton put on a bunch of bad weight as well (270 lbs). Hicks and Jackson will both be on the two deep for sure if that's the case. Unlike last year when you had a 4 man rotation this year I think there could be a 7 man rotation.

Rimas Kurtinaitis said...

Also, hearing that Walters is still not healed makes the OL next year all the more precarious. Need for Ashcraft, Porter, and Kelly to all be "Texas good" out of the gate.