re: Dennis Johnson (Meatball) Set to join Aranda’s staff

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I was curious about your thoughts on Dennis Johnson's recruiting ability? What would you say his strengths and weaknesses are?

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O always thought highly of him as a recruiter, which says alot. Our fans would get mad at him when he would miss on our biggest targets, like Ish Sopsher last year who went to Bama. It would look like at times our DLine wasn't getting any better. I think that has more to do with the fact that we just didn't have as much to sell as Bama. Now this year he has been great on the recruiting trail. He will be a good recruiter for you guys, but he's not a great pure DLine coach. We had to bring in other guys to help with that along with Coach O helping.

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Also, how do you guys feel about Aranda being a head coach? We really like him already and he seems genuine. How good of a recruiter is he and how well does he motivate his players?

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For the most part we all loved him as a DC. Our struggles last year were completely overblown, and we proved that in the back half of the year. This last year he kept it relatively simple on 1st and 2nd down, running his base defense and occasionally sending a Grant Delpit or Patrick Queen on a delayed blitz. Then on 3rd down he broke out the cheetah package to get a ton of pressure. His real value was how he adapted to our players to create basically a positionless safety/LB group with guys just roaming around the field.

He is a great coach and a defensive Mastermind... We have no clue how he will do as a head coach though. He just doesn't seem to have the typical head coach personality, which in alot of ways is a good thing. If the team is struggling in one aspect of the game, he isn't the kind of guy to stubbornly play through it, he will have sleepless nights trying to figure out ways to improve it. We have no clue of his offensive philosophy, but I imagine he is going to go the Coach O route of hiring a guy he trusts and just handing the keys to him. He's not much of a motivator or recruiter, but the players do love playing for him. Grant Delpit and Jacoby Stevens have basically credited him for their success. shite, Stevens was a WR/Safety when he showed up and Aranda turned him into a force at OLB/Safety hybrid. His best ability without a doubt is scheming the guys he has to put them in the best position possible to be successful.

Hope that gives some insight. I'll be rooting for him to have success. Life is better when you guys are beating Texas and Oklahoma.

Meatball is staying at LSU.

Meatball staying at LSU. I’m one of the minority that is happy I suppose. He lives LSU and is a great young recruiter that can relate with recruits. I assume this means O has told him he will have an in field assistant job this year but I bet he keeps Bill Johnson at DL and maybe gives him the LB coach title as that’s the position he originally coached at LSU in 2016.

Maybe but he is a top 10 recruiter