Is Bo Jackson worth that kind of money? He’s a pretty special player that took over a pretty good back in James Peoples. Of course now we can see what Lacy wants since Ole Miss lost.
Gerry talking about how the days of 25 person classes are over. Considering we have lost half of the class already I tend to agree with him. You find 10-15 guys you focus NIL on and if you get anyone else it’s 2-3 star development guys that you just see if you strike gold with any of them that cost little but are motivated by the chance to be part of a big program.
I’m in that same boat. I was talking to myself there as much as anyone. When he left I was pretty confused because I thought he was a decent player setup for a great 2026. The marketplace did not agree.
What is also instructive is where our players end up. If a guy leaves that you once worried about and he ends up at a shit program that is losing all of its own good players to the portal, that should be a tell that maybe losing him was not that big of a deal.
I know we have discussed this before but I would seriously only sign 1-2 wide receivers out of high school each class and rely on the portal for that position. Between the cost, bust rate and personalities of receiver I’m not sure the payback is there on freshman wide receivers.
Brooks can be a credibly good tackle with more development. Cojoe we never got to see any real playing time because of injury but Brooks can absolutely be a tackle for us at some point. Do not get confused by Flood’s total mismanagement of playing him at guard, as a freshman without any training at the position.
In case you have not noticed, we are not exactly lighting the world on fire scouting and recruiting offensive players. I’m not sure we can afford to lose anyone on offense that we want anymore.
If we only sign two portal linemen to go with our current roster we are definitely signaling a shift in allocation of roster spots to the line. Meanwhile, at defensive line a position with an equally high bust rate we are clearly stocking the roster like never before. I think I know which position I’m predicting will have more sustained success in the future.
We currently have nine scholarship linemen including Robertson. Typically we are carrying 13-15 scholarship linemen. That means we need to retain Robertson plus land both guys we have an offer to plus sign two more players to get to 13. Maybe in the portal era you can argue it’s more like a pro system and you carry less players at the position but 11 seems like a very low number for a pipeline of player development.