We can talk about all the other positions, but if this is not better we are still not going to be good. The offensive line has been awful now for years. Yes, we have fine quarterbacks, but if we suffer another year of multiple injuries at the position, due to lack of offensive line protection, we will sputter offensively yet again. For yet another year we go in hoping, and believing, that it will be better. In the past such belief was mostly rooted in "well it couldn't be worse than the year before" only to see it once again be as bad, if not worse.
What has baffled me, and I guess this is my biggest question, is why has our offensive line has been so abysmal for so long? We recruited players well enough, certainly higher ranked players than many schools who fielded at least mediocre offensive line. For the last few years I would have begged for mere mediocrity at the position. Mediocrity would have been a huge improvement.
The easy answer, of course, is coaching. I accept that coaching is a part of the answer, probably a big part, maybe the entire part. After all, we watched players actually get worse as they gained experience in our system. That's not supposed to happen.
But I seek a deeper answer. Accepting that it was coaching, what exactly were our well paid coaches doing so incredibly wrong? They seemed to consistently take good players and make them mediocre, and take mediocre players and make them awful. What exactly in the way of conditioning, or drills, or teaching of technique, or scheme, or something else, managed to create such perverse transformations?
And with the answers to that question comes the question of what exactly our new coaches are doing different that will produce different results?
What has baffled me, and I guess this is my biggest question, is why has our offensive line has been so abysmal for so long? We recruited players well enough, certainly higher ranked players than many schools who fielded at least mediocre offensive line. For the last few years I would have begged for mere mediocrity at the position. Mediocrity would have been a huge improvement.
The easy answer, of course, is coaching. I accept that coaching is a part of the answer, probably a big part, maybe the entire part. After all, we watched players actually get worse as they gained experience in our system. That's not supposed to happen.
But I seek a deeper answer. Accepting that it was coaching, what exactly were our well paid coaches doing so incredibly wrong? They seemed to consistently take good players and make them mediocre, and take mediocre players and make them awful. What exactly in the way of conditioning, or drills, or teaching of technique, or scheme, or something else, managed to create such perverse transformations?
And with the answers to that question comes the question of what exactly our new coaches are doing different that will produce different results?
