Bruce Feldman on Judging OL talent

[Goodman 3,273]

3 minutes ago, futureman said:

haha I forgot about him.  he won’t be in the TE rotation next year?

He was looking very good at TE. We'll have to see how he recovers, tough break for him while trying to learn a position.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Goodman

[Newy25 7,703]

9 hours ago, futureman said:

you sure use lots of words to say not much of anything.  who the hell doesn’t “want to” be good?  of course he wanted to be good.  who wouldn’t?  he probably didn’t “want to” skull fuck the DL across from him and curb-stomp his ass into the fucking dirt on every play.  that kind of “want to” would’ve served him well. 

A lot of players come into a program and are lazy. Your spiel of thread shitting on any and all football related discussions is tiresome. 

[sushihorn 3,233]

That is an outstanding article.  Not sure how I completely missed it the first time around.

It's very easy in our society for people to gain weight, especially bad weight.  If you add in a demonstrated propensity for this in HS, it's going to take tremendous discipline to not add to it, much less shed that weight.  That discipline will have to be largely self-discipline since high-calorie crap is so easy to get.  And the bad weight itself is a yellow flag that a player MAY not have the required self-discipline.

I teach martial arts and the most important aspect but also the toughest to get right is footwork.  It's the entire foundation of the body's power but kids often waste that power or off-balance themselves trying to do too much.  Some of the key stuff from the article about technique and lack of recognition really highlight how much commitment playing OL well requires for the selfie generation.

[markstanco 12,640]

37 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

That is an outstanding article. 

When I read it a while back, my first thought was "screw it, the number of stars certainly dont seem to matter for this one position."  2.4* average in the pro bowl is amazing.  This tells you the importance of the OL coach.  More important that the OC in my opinion, because without a good O-Line we all have seen what happens.  

[sushihorn 3,233]

Agreed.  OL is the foundation.  Think about how much some of Mack's O Lines held back guys that proved their worth in the NFL.  OL coaching and S&C are key and need to work hand in hand.  Unfortunately Mack had Nunes early on and Mad Dog the whole time.  Hand + Yancy is a much better situation.  You can already see the effects.

[Burt Macklin 19,053]

Just now, sushihorn said:

Agreed.  OL is the foundation.  Think about how much some of Mack's O Lines held back guys that proved their worth in the NFL.  OL coaching and S&C are key and need to work hand in hand.  Unfortunately Mack had Nunes early on and Mad Dog the whole time.  Hand + Yancy is a much better situation.  You can already see the effects.

Hand and Yancy is a potentially elite combination. We’ve seen Yancy’s impact all over the roster the last two years, and Hand worked absolute wonders with the OL this year. It’ll be fun to watch what Hand can do once he gets some of these young guys to their third and fourth years.

[golfclap 6,903]

Yancey is the key. Just like Moffitt at LSU. The constant at LSU has been physical development. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10,372]

On 1/30/2019 at 11:25 AM, Burt Macklin said:

Hand and Yancy is a potentially elite combination. We’ve seen Yancy’s impact all over the roster the last two years, and Hand worked absolute wonders with the OL this year. It’ll be fun to watch what Hand can do once he gets some of these young guys to their third and fourth years.

Agree, I hope these two get disgustingly rich from building a pipeline of line talent at Texas.

[Chili dog 1,787]

On 12/18/2018 at 8:49 AM, Tex Pete said:

I never paid a lot of attention to OL evals until I played I knew well was being recruited. Through that I realized the OL evals by the recruiting services are absolute shit and that many college coaches are just followers.

It was easy for me to see that the player I knew would be a bust because he was obviously not a mental fit, he was pretty lazy, he had a helicopter parent who pushed most of his “drive,” he was much bigger than the players he lined up across from, and that was why he had always gained attention. His film wasn’t particularly good, but he usually dominated the guys he went up against...who were regularly 5 inches shorter and 40+ pounds lighter than he was. A few honest conversations with his coaching staff would have made him a hard pass, but lots of schools just got caught up in the chase. 

Finding great OL is about finding hard workers who are big enough (not necessarily huge), with good agility, who you can project to fit your scheme. It’s hard to do, but there’s not much more to it than that.

I think the projection part is what people struggle with the most. You can’t get caught up in the hype about a kid. 

And Wickline, who turned plenty of 2* kids into NFL players at Okie Light, quit recruiting that kid, leading the kid to sign with another school, initially. If I’m not mistaken, the kid signed with us after Wickline left. Not that I’m a huge Wickline fan, but he did have skins on the wall. 

[Chili dog 1,787]

On 1/30/2019 at 11:53 AM, golfclap said:

Yancey is the key. Just like Moffitt at LSU. The constant at LSU has been physical development. 

I agree to an extent, but we still have to have the talent. I trust Hand more than anyone we’ve had in a while to identify the right guys. But if we’re bringing in 240 lb athletes and intending to bulk them up, Yancy is absolutely essential.