We need to put Henry Roberts picture on a milk carton. Where the fuck is he? We could have used a decent RG. I love Nick, but he is our future center
He's a second year player. LIFPO. This board has gone full retard considering how well our OL played this year. We're only losing one guy from that unit. Calm the fuck down.
Outside of Bama the OL did perform very well this year. The Bama game has been hashed to death but there is another lurking weakness/threat which has not been discussed: injuries.
UW's 2016 OL had 4.5 competent players. Harris gets a .5 because he wasn't physically ready yet. However the dropoff after those 5 players was immense and UW was very lucky not to sustain any injuries to the starters. The line would have looked very vulnerable with Kirkland at tackle instead of Adams or McGary or with Brostek at guard instead of Eldrenkamp. Can't expect the same luck next season.
You really need 7 competent OL with at least 2-3 of those being elite to be a championship contender. You need the left side of the line to dominate. And you need at least one backup on the interior and one backup on the outside.
Yes we only lose Eldrenkamp. But that loss is from a dangerously shorthanded group. We don't need just one player to step up- we need two or three. I don't see that happening with the current roster. The numbers are thin and among those thin numbers there are even fewer guys who were highly recruited or even lauded as having underrated size and athleticism. Unlike at other positions this staff doesn't have a good record of churning out diamonds in the rough at OL that weren't freakishly huge and/or athletic as recruits.
Brostek never panned out despite three years and a redshirt under this staff. Neither have James, Kirkland, John Turner, Sosebee, or Burleson yet. Strausser has a lot to prove next year. Between this group, Wattenberg, and Roberts we need two-three players to step up.
And Trevor Walker, Brandon Beaver, Brandon Lewis, Ezekiel Turner, Austin Joyner, and Jordan Miller haven't panned out yet either. Yet that's not a knock on Lake at all, because his unit has proved itself as fantastic, guys take time to develop, and the game of college football dictates that there will always be a handful of guys that don't live up to expectations. Does that same story not hold for Strausser too?
I also don't understand this "we only have 4.5 competent players" remark. Guys like Kirkland, Brostek, and Sosebee all looked like perfectly adequate backup linemen to me. Come next year if none of Kirkland, Sosebee, Roberts, Wattenberg, Turner, or Hilbers do a solid job of replacing Eldrenkamp, then yeah, there'll be reason for concern. And if a starter goes down with an injury and none of our backups can adequately replace him, then yeah, that's a problem. But none of that shit has happened, and nothing we've seen suggests that Strausser is incapable of stocking the OL unit with backups who can produce if called upon.
Finally, the fact that no one on our OL was injured this year is not a lucky coincidence. It's the product of a conditioning staff that knows how to train players to withstand the brutal grind of a season, and an OL coach who teaches the proper technique to avoid untimely injuries.