re: PJ Woodland prediction to LSU by Sam Spiegelman

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Y’all are confusing y’all’s own blind optimism with the reality heading in to this season. Everyone, including the coaches, was concerned about CB depth. Everyday there was a thread about needing DT’s and CB’s. There were 100 threads about how bad we needed Harris to get his stuff together and become what he was supposed to be. The coaches kept recruiting CB’s until the end. It was always a concern. It wasn’t just a “things happen” or “hindsight is 20/20”. It was pretty clear.

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I feel like there’s a lot of daylight between “it was clear that we would wind up with Sage Ryan and Ashton Stamps as starting corners in 2023” and “everything looked like it would be fine.”

I mean yes.. the position was obviously a concern that the staff was trying to address until the end. But that’s not the same as saying they should have expected this many things to go against us.

If you’re going to take a hindsight look at the decisions they made over the past ~22 months, I think that’s perfectly reasonable as long as you do so while acknowledging the difference between information they had at the time vs. today.

So yeah they took a risk on Harris, and yeah right now it looks like it backfired. But what are the odds that Chestnut does whatever he did, Alexander gets hurt, Johnson goes down for the year, AND Harris doesn’t pan out? And what were the odds, given the information available at the time, that another achievable path would have worked out differently?

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The staff obviously didn’t feel comfortable with the room either, which is why they tried to add guys until the very end. They missed on some guys that could have made them better in the present and future, and here we are with one of the worst DB rooms we’ve ever had.

Again, this isn’t a “hind sight is 20/20” situation. This was always going to be bad, it’s just even worse than we could have imagined.

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I mean, I hear you. But again it turns into a question of what the staff could have / should have done differently, at the time, with the information that was available to them.

We signed the #2, #5, #8, and #15 CBs in the transfer portal. The only suggestion I’ve seen in this thread about what they should have done differently (at least for this year) is also sign #3 and #43.

I’m not really trying to get into any arguments about transfer portal recruiting ratings, but just trying to make the point - is that really the failure that it comes down to? Not getting Amos or Cypress?

Don’t get me wrong, both certainly be nice to have. But it’s tough for me to call losing Cypress a failure. Amos, sure. But I’m also not convinced Amos is the difference between “it’s going to be bad” and “it’s going to be fine” to your point about the preseason outlook for the CB group.

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That’s good to hear. Also, I read your post in an American Indian voice. Watch him tape. He heap big medicine.

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