Last year we had a fifth year senior in Pirsig, the three jucos (Greene, Wright, and Calhoun), a third year sophomore in Weyler, a second year sophomore in Moore as the core of our offensive line.
We return four of those six. Those four should be more seasoned, better conditioned, less prone to injury, stronger, and better coached. Some of those were playing hurt and have now had clean-up surgeries- that should help.
Replacing Pirsig is a question mark, but I think they have plenty of candidates at tackles up to coming at least close to the task.
I am confident we can replace Moore with one of Olson, Schmitz, Davis or Weyler.
We had four depth guys in Mayes, Oseland, Connelly and Dovich. Three of those four return.
We return 7 of top 10. I am not convinced two of the three we lose would be starters if they stayed.
We add two redshirt frosh in Olson and Schlueter.
Previous staff and this staff both really like Olson. Olson almost had redshirt pulled last year.
Schlueter is a high end recruit offered by Wisconsin, Michigan State, Northwestern, Louisville, Iowa State before he committed way early (April of his junior year).
We add a handpicked juco by Warinner, arguably one of the top oline coaches and recruiters in all of football.
We add one of our most heralded recruits ever in Andries, and two hand-picked Fleck guys in Sassack (Big Ten and SEC offers) and Schmitz (number one ranked center in midwest).
We take the redshirt off a juco walk on with very good size.
If someone can present an objective, logical reasoned argument that doesn't conclude we will have a better, deeper, more experienced o-line, please do so.
And make sure you factor in that the tight ends assist the oline and ALL the tight ends return and we add a redshirt and three frosh and a tight end coach who was co-oline national coach of the year last year.
Plus, you have to factor in running backs can help make an oline look better and we return our top three (all physically mature and experienced), plus have a fourth that looked very solid on Saturday and we add two more frosh rbs. Fleck said the one is like Barry Sanders and Christian Okoye. The new coach has already stepped up the running backs games in 14 weeks.
Plus, you have to figure in an offensive scheme that doesn't allow the defense to out number your offensive line in the box every play has to help.
And, you have to figure the combination of Fleck and Simon will develop at least three wide receivers better than what we had last year. We lose only Woli...return all others, add bunch more, remove three red-shirts.
And, you have to factor in how much better motivated the offensive line will be by this staff. It is a position where that intangible is especially significant. The level of discipline and organization should also be going way up, two other key intangibles in o-line play.
If we can only find a qb who can complete more than 56% with better TD/INT ratio than 8 to 12 who can run better than 3 yards per carry...look out.
