The Buckeyes had to replace a lot of NFL talent on defense last year…and they did it by plugging in even more NFL talent. Uncanny, Urban Meyer is clearly one of the best recruiters/evaluators in the business.
Another interesting note is how happy Ohio State seems to be to allow all of their players to head off to the NFL early. Oklahoma for instance, they regularly convince their juniors to come back for their senior years…somehow. Ohio State, not so much. You have to have a good system in place to allow you to survive that kind of turnover and the Buckeyes seem to have such a system.
Clemson turns over their roster on defense effectively as well, but they also redshirt a lot, makes me wonder what their redshirts get up to that makes them so effective when they get on the field. They seem better prepped than your typical freshmen that spent the year goofing off, playing on scout team, and beefing up their bodies for the college football grind.
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This one has been on my list of books to get to for a while, haven’t read it yet. Normally a fierce rivalry can bring out the best in a team but these two squads probably spoiled multiple national championships for each other over this period. The main reason Bo Schembechler never won a national title at Michigan is a few key losses to Woody Hayes and the Buckeyes.
Urban Meyer’s penchant for not trying to persuade players to stay another year is just part of his overall recruiting strategy. He can sit down in four or five star recruit’s living room and tell them with complete candor that he is not going to impede from moving on to the NFL early. Which, you know, is something a lot of recruits want to hear.
The downside of having massive turnover is obvious of course, but if you’re confident in your ability to keep recruiting high-level talent early on, it creates a reinforcing cycle of having more high-end recruits wanting to sign on.
Also, on the cornerbacks playing man all the time, I frequently hear from former college defensive backs that its actually a boon to be in man coverage the entire game. Switching in and out of it, in their view, is much harder because its tougher to develop a rhythm and read on the guy you’re covering. So yeah, you need athletic guys to do it, but I think just leaving them in man is just Urban’s way of making it easier on the corners.
Totally agree on the recruiting strategy, I’m just saying that not everyone does it that way without fear that they’ll get killed by turnover.
That makes sense about man, and I think today’s pattern-matching stuff takes a few years for guys to be able to execute on a team-wide level well enough to shut opponents down. TCU’s success implementing it from year to year is one of the things that has set Patterson apart from his peers.
Of course in the article I’m also noting that it makes it much easier to cycle in new talent all the time if you’re just asking them to play man rather than knowing how to trade off receivers in different calls.
1) Yeah. You have to be very confident in your recruiting ability to head down that road.
2) Right, I get that man coverage makes it easier on rotating guys in and out. I was just mentioning that there was probably an additional reason for that strategy as well.
Oh yeah, I bet you’re right also.