Roach was our best player before his injury...? I'm just going to leave that one alone. Also statements like "Cook may be one of the best cover corners in the country" are completely unfounded.
As for the discussion about Ossai replacing Wheeler in dime packages and his snaps in the UGA game, I went back and found OB's deep dive for the sugar bowl. There were 64 total snaps. Wheeler and Johnson played all of them. Ossai played 53. Texas only ran dime on 17 snaps. Those are all by Alex Dunlap's count. I'm guessing that Wheeler/Johnson stayed at LB during dime, Ossai came off on most dime snaps, but stayed at DE (based on alignment, not whether he stayed standing or got into a down stance) in obvious pass rushing situations.
I guess my ultimate point is that we will need a bunch of young guys to make big leaps next year in order to improve. If any of them struggle--and it's more likely than not that at least one does--then our defense will have weaknesses. It won't be bad, but it will have exploitable issues, just like last year's unit. I'm optimistic about all of them, but I'm also realistic in my understanding that not every great HS player will smoothly transition to being a great college player. It would be different if we had 3 unproven guys competing at each spot, but we don't. We generally have one unproven guy with the potential to be a difference maker at each position and that just isn't a recipe for a great defense.
I kind of agree. Foster should be really good against the run and blitzing. I'm not sure how his cover skills will be. If he ends up being similar to PJ Locke in coverage but better against the run and when blitzing, will that be enough to be an impact player? I think BJ is great. Trust me my comment is a knock on him at all. I thought he was a top 3 player on our defense last year. But I'm also nervous that Riley could get him iso'd with some 5* receiver 20+ times next season.
If you're talking about this play from the spring game, that's McCulloch. I did find that encouraging for his Rover potential. Maybe Ossai did it too but I don't remember that. Also see abo