Chest,
What the takeaway from this year is that if you want to compete at a high level you can’t have holes on your roster.
The ILB hole was fatal …
The WRs were questionable all year largely because of the rotation
For as much arm talent that Eason has, he can be maddeningly inconsistent. Without elaborating, there are some things I heard that really made a lot of things make a ton of sense. I hope he has all the success he wants at the NFL level … but don’t be shocked if his NFL career looks a lot like Locker’s.
I’m so tired of hearing how this team couldn’t compete because of holes on the roster. They had a double digit lead on Cal, Oregon and Utah and pissed it away. They flat out quit and didn’t show up vs Stanford(4-8) and Colorado(5-7). Even despite the glaring weaknesses this team at worst should have been 10-2.
Even our amazing 2016 playoff team was starting Brosteck on OL and then true freshman Nick Harris(who you called a lump of poo emoji), we were starting Psalm Wooching all year and Conor O’Brien.
The difference? In 2016 we had a ton of upper tier/upper class talent to make up for the holes. John Ross/Myles Gaskin/Mcgary/Adams/Pettis hid some of our warts on offense, Jones/King/Baker/Victor/Gaines/Qualls hid the holes on defense.
This year we had as many holes as we’ve always had but I don’t think our top tier talent was there. For this team to be successful we needed Keith Taylor/Eason/Ahmed/Wellington to take a big jump. Taylor/Eason/Ahmed were fine but not great. Wellington was terrible.
The only game changer this year on defense was Molden. It wasn’t just that Manu/Wellington sucked it was that we had nobody else have a first team all conference caliber season besides Molden on defense. On offense only Hunter Bryant was a game changer. Harris was good too and Adams made it based on name.