One of the things that annoys the fuck out of me with Doogs when it comes to recruiting is the idea of NEED. Every year you need everything and tons of talent everywhere. Okay. That's the only need and you need that every. fucking. year.
But - specific to this year, why are we not dominating up front you say? Well...
Feeling like our front 7 is lagging? Do you think we might need an upgrade?
Too bad it's not the NFL and we can't just sign free agents! Anyone got a time machine in this bitch?
The time to complain about this was 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Here's what we signed on the DL (which we knew at the time we were rotating 6 guys every game)...
2015: Jason Scrempos, Ricky McCoy
2016: Levi Onwuzurike
2017: No one.
Hmmm... so we signed 3 DTs in 3 years. Great call guys!! I guess when you rotate 6 DTs every year and your stupid fucking head coach says DT recruiting is the most important thing there is... you should probably just recruit 3 DTs in 3 years and have only 1 of them be a blue chip kid.
On the lines, as we all know, unless we get those tier I players who are injury free, (like Togiai) who we have yet to really land (Tuli was injured)... no one is going to come and play that early. And if they play early they probably won't be very effective. Remember Vita in '15? That guy ended up being a beast. In year 1 he was an out of shape guy who was massively inconsistent.
How about Outside Linebacker? Well, this KEY POSITION in our defense has been recruited mostly by taking shit-tier players that no one else wanted, local guys with some potential etc.
2015: Benning, Myles Rice, Bryce Sterk, Jusstis Warren (Jesus fucking Christ: shit olympics!)
2016: Amandre
2017: Ngata, Tryon
So, basically the talented players have developed about as predicted. Amandre is a RS-Soph, Ngata and Tryon RS-Frosh... basically what you would expect out of DDY2s
How about ILB!?! These are always the easiest body types to recruit. How'd we do in those same years?
Well, we decided to stock up on lower tier players! How's that worked out? Well, medium.
2015: Tevis, BBK, DJ Beavers, Kyler Manu
2016: Eifer, Wellington (pretty good, but Eifler left and Welly can't stay healthy and we didn't redshirt him)
2017: No one.
IN SUM:
-Pretty much the spot we recruited the best during those 3 awkward years was OLB.
-We took 2 front 7 players in 2017. Two. On a team that constantly rotates 2-3 groups of players.
-This is why we should not be in any power rankings above 10th and we will be lucky to get into the Rose Bowl.
We have one of the best coaches in the country, but...
CONCLUSION:
Recruiting is about 3-4 years down the road. Every class you need to fill every position with talented players. Players get hurt (Scrempos, Ngata, Beavers, Welly), leave (McCoy, Sterk, Eifler), switch positions (Warren), don't develop (Rice, Manu) or develop slowly unless they are top-100 type players (Levi, Benning).
It's never about one player. It's always about taking classes that cover all positions and getting a ton of talent. You never know who is going to do what, but if you get a bunch of top-300 guys and guys that Notre Dame, USC and Bama are offering you will probably be fine. We are just paying this year for our negligence in 2015-17.
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Why I am really surprised (and mildly concerned) that none of our true freshman inside lb's and interior guys haven't played more. Obviously we don't want to play them if we don't have to, but you'd hope at least one of them would pop and be on par with the jags we have behind the starters.
Reinforcements are coming, but it's another two years (2020) before we are going to really see it. How fucked will Levi feel next year being the only guy with any real experience on the interior.
One thing the TSIO guys are extremely good at is seeing who we are recruiting and how important roster management is.
I don't think we've gotten more than 3-5 guys under Pete who we expect to be big time in big games early in their careers (top-100 types or special athletes)... Budda, Trey, Taylor, Myles come to mind. That might be it. Maybe Dom Hampton.
That's why I don't expect us to be REALLY good until 2020 or 2021. Because even though I'm psyched on our 2018 class, guys like Austin Osborne and Taki Taimani are going to take 3-4 years to hit All-American levels.
fuck
Getting a higher ceiling at QB may not be enough to offset the loss of Gaskin and our two tackles. If Eason doesn't get his reads down, this could get ugly.
Same is it’s been until it’s not
And we've started fresh in the secondary before and we were in great shape. We will be again next year.
DDY, what is you take on Hilbers and Roberts thus far? They seem serviceable but obviously we need to recruit higher caliber players and not play them til their RS soph years at the earliest
This staff recruited some clear stars right away (Buddha, Trey, Rapp, Gaskin) but mostly they gambled on people that they "hoped would pan out" or were "diamonds in the rough" or whatever stupid recruiting cliche that the doogmen threw at us. Hence why we had Ricky F'ing McCoy and Justiss Warren and Kyler Manu. Fucking kill me. How can you survive in a pass-happy conference with shit pass rushers. It's fucking insane!
Most sane fans are willing to just complain (rather than call for Pete's head) because he is starting to bring in some rockstar recruiting classes (but for BUCK and perhaps LB), and of course because has made Washington Football relevant again. We are part of the national conversation.
But recruiting is still a work in progress. We need a fucking Tosh Lupoi-like guy to close the deal on Heimuli-type players.