Rivals article summed up in a nutshell what has been LSU's recruiting Issue

So Ed Ingram and Saadiq Charles didnt have the size, strength or toughness to make a strong impact last year as true freshmen?

On the OL, especially OT, you're not regularly going to find impact freshmen.

Cam Rob started several games at OT for Bama and as did Tunsil at Ole Miss, and they struggled.

The key to the OL recruiting is pipeline. You can't skip years or under-recruit the numbers. You can't have too many "projects". And if you do both, it takes years to recover. As we can see.

So for OTs, you have to get one every year. It will take a year to get ready, and the good ones leave after 3, and there's 2 of them. Pretty simple math.

Edit: Roger that whitefoot, corrected

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OL is probably the biggest jump in difficulty from high school to college because of the mental leap

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this I agree with. I don't think people realize that OT, and center, are the most difficult and technical positions on the field behind QB.

It takes a special combination of attributes to be a high-level QB... same for OT. And those are both physical and mental attributes.

Another thing people don't realize is that except for QB the only other position that needs to know what everyone, including WRs, is doing on every play is the OL because the protection called is dependent of what everyone else is doing.

So you could only think of ONE recruit on the lines that had a big impact his FR year, yet proceeded to name THREE in the last 3 years?!

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M wilson

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You think Marvin Wilson made a big impact as a freshman?

Charles has struggled this year. He's also a converted guard so I'm not sure if he'll ever be athletic enough to play tackle.

I wish somebody would post the differences in the guard and tackle positions and what it takes athletically to be successful as a tackle. In particular a left tackle.

marvin Wilson ate too much of that maple fried chicken that got him to the Tallahassee dumpster fire. bet he regrets that. lost his coach and wont get a bowl.

If he doesn't continue the alienation of N-LA, that's where the best are.

So many things in this gif... I'll just go down the list.

1. Great example of how you defeat plus-protection (including max-protect). RB stays in, goes left, LB reads, goes O-right, sack.

2. Guice should've read the LB, just like the LB read him. He didn't follow, soon as he went towards LoS Guice should have shown a target to Etling and became the hot route on the blitz. We do the same mistake today.

3. This is the play that convinced me Charles should be an OT (he's at RG). He spins out and finishes his spin move with near perfect body positioning, lower body and upper.

4. That's the difference between an OG and OT athletically. A "limited" OG can make that move, but it isn't controlled enough to either have the balance (control momentum) to engage (w/proper leverage) AND/OR the upper and lower body are out of sync.

5. Mistake by Charles: he spun. While it was a wonderful move with great finish, he shouldn't have done it. He turned his back to the defender.

6. This is the thing about assignments: Was the LB coming through LoS his fault or the RT's?
- notice Charles chipped the DT before releasing to cover his gap in the zone blocking.
- So the RT knows he's got help inside, which is #1 priority
- so when LB comes over his outside shoulder, he should release to block him giving DT to Charles. So RT's fault right?
- No. Charles didn't keep his toe-2-hell of the RT, he was too far forward for to take on DT if release.

7. Charles recognized the problem, executed it incorrectly (by turning his back to LoS), but tried to fix it with an athletic move. However, DT was pushing in, and Charles encountered him at end of spin. It indicates quick reaction time and vision by an OL, which is absolutely required for OT. Just between him and the RT it was doomed to failure because of above.

8. As a tFR, and I'm using a little imagination here and a little experience, Charles knew the protection scheme. He knows Guice is going left. Otherwise, he wouldn't have released DT and been watching for LB to crash. He knew ahead of time what his 2 primary responsibilities were. Again, necessary for an OT.

9. Same as #8, he knew the protection scheme was broken down as soon as LB was moving towards another gap, and he recognized it immediately. Tried to recover with an ill advised move.

The difference between an OT and an OG....
- An OT and an OG move from point A to B in about the same amount of time
- An OT recognizes TO MOVE very much more quickly
- An OT has better posture and leverage when he arrives at Point B

It's not footspeed, it's about body control WITH footspeed. You have to get there first. When you get there, you have to be able to block, not just get in the way.

Oh, and watch Charles throw his guy down at the very end, probably out of disgust. Nice.

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To be honest looks like we are still lacking these big guys who have the size,strength,toughness and drive to make impacts as freshman and soph on the OL/DL.

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Freshman linemen rarely have the size, strength, toughness, and drive to start and make an impact anywhere. It’s not a position like RB.