Offensive line was the biggest issue this year

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That is true but O can't stand someone who questions him or flat out disagrees with him.

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That's why he's getting his buddies on board.

This post is an example of why this board sucks.

You make a nice post discussing OL play, and the first two responses are morons parroting bullshite talking points. (Both of which are fictitious)

There is no way you know this. Pure conjecture.

Need to return all of our linemen. Weathersby needs to stay. Taking late round money is not worth it. He has top 2 round potential with one more year.

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That is true but O can't stand someone who questions him or flat out disagrees with him.

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and you know that HOW ???
He is IN CHARGE

I was pleasantly surprised by OL play this year

Malone was just not very good. We improved when he went out and the younger guys got more experience.
Appreciate that he was a good guy, team player, etc - but just not an SEC OLineman.

and people hating on o/canada never talk about how the receivers had trouble getting open all year. chark was a total no show against nd. but canada sucks and his offense is a gimmick

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Offensive line was the biggest issue this year
Followed by the QB play. Especially early in the year, there were busts all over the line. Having multiple freshman in the starting is a recipe for disaster. I don’t care who the OC was. There was gonna be issues esp early in the season. Those issues decreased as the year went, but even in the bowl game, the line struggled. To me, this was the biggest hindrance to our offensive production all year. The lack of a real playmaking QB was the next biggest issue but the QB play would’ve been improved with better O line play.

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That's the way I view this past year, too.

Early in the year, the line really struggled. Etling rarely seemed to have more than a couple seconds to throw. And the running game was far less productive than we're used to seeing against lesser opponents. That Guice was not 100% was part of it, but as I recall it, a little too often he had to evade defenders in the backfield to avoid getting tackled for a loss. If there were running lanes, he sometimes wasn't able to get to them due to at least one OL missing a block and letting defenders through.

Agree, too, that OL play tightened as the year went on. Credit to the young players and to Coach Grimes for that. I don't have a good sense of whether the subpar offensive performance in the bowl game was largely on the line or not as you suggest, but maybe losing Grimes to BYU during bowl prep hurt more than we most here would think... Haven't really seen any discussion about that. Seems most here are tentatively satisfied with the incoming OL coach, but I'm not sure he's even here yet, so it's not unreasonable to think losing Grimes when we did hurt us against ND.

Regarding OC, no idea how formations, play calling, etc. affect OL performance. No idea how much Canada chose to or was forced to keep old parts of the offense or how much was truly his. Doesn't matter at this point. But going back to my observation/opinion of the run game early in the season, it seemed to me that Darrel Williams was more effective running early in the season... partly, of course, because Guice wasn't 100%, but also partly because it seemed that Williams was more often able to take the handoff and get to the line of scrimmage and look for a hole before worrying about contact. Guice-- as I mentioned-- would more often have to evade defenders in the backfield before he even got to the line, which would disrupt his rhythm. If there is validity to this observation (it's just my opinion and maybe happened a couple times one game, a few in another, etc.), then was this a function of formation/personnel tipping defenses off that Guice would run (whether Canada ran LSU's old plays, his own plays, or just generally poor disguising of the play call)? Or was this just poor OL execution of certain plays they prefer to run with Guice? Don't know, but I didn't think this as much as the season went on.