Well Folks they have hit the news stands. Two (Athlons and Lindys) are on the racks. Athlons has OBJ on the cover, Lindys has Mett on its cover. Both are good reads.
Lindy's rates LSU's offensive line in the lower tier of the conference. With four starters returning, what do they know that I don't?
I know Red, its good to look back after the year. Freak and Loston are high on their lists(Both 2nd teamers). Athlons has them also in theirs Freak 2nd team and Loston 3rd.
I think you have it backwards. It's what you know that they don't. In this case, you chose not to take the elective, fuzzy math, when you were in school. I heard Ed Cunningham make the comment on College Football Live, "LSU lost three starting offensive lineman." He followed that by stating he realized Josh was coming back, but still inferred it was a line with only two starters returning. I'd assume they look at a depth chart from the end of last year and don't consider injuries and prior experience when they are looking at 2013's offensive line. For people getting paid for observations on college football they consistently don't look at the entire picture. Last year I saw them overlook guys who started half of the games in 2011 and they didn't consider them experienced.
Returning OL this year: Name Played games/started Alexander 13/9 La'el Collins 13/13 Porter 10/1 Turner 12/7 Williford 6/6 Thats not too bad of returning players. We are finally adding line depth this year.
Turner being the perfect example of what I was mentioning earlier. He's started over half of the games he's played but he isn't a starter? I wonder where their line is drawn, ya know? 9 of 13 makes you a returning starter. Does eight?
Perhaps they are just sloppy. If all they did was look at their LSU roster from last summer's mag, then they see Hurst and Lonergan gone and figure we have three starters returning. But we have four guys who started at least 6 games last year and the fifth guy actually started one game. And we have a behemoth freshman who is going to take someone's starting job by October.
I'm more inclined to believe too few people, too little time leads to incorrect data. Phil Steele puts roughly six months of work into his yearly publication. In those months, a short week is 80+ hours. He normally works right at 100 hours per to get the magazine out. I exchanged emails with one of his senior editors last year about a variety of subjects (including how much time Phil spends) and learned he has more than one assistant working on your six, now really five, major conferences. His staff is by far the most accurate, but still has glaring omissions and mistakes. I don't view the excessive time and lack of manpower as an excuse or reason. However, I do see the oversight a symptom of those two handicaps.
When it comes to experienced depth, OL is our weakest unit on our team with only 5 returning OL that played in a game last year. It's the only unit on our team that isn't two-deep with guys that played last year We have nobody with starting experience at LT or C, so both those positions are a question mark We only return one full starter in Collins (13 starts at LG), and he might be playing LT, a whole new position. So that's a question mark Williford has a ton of starts at LSU, but only 6 at RG last year before suffering a very very severe concussion, so that's a question mark And besides C Porter (a question mark) the only others that have game experience are two sophomores that started half the season last year: Turner and Alexander, and you'd prefer not to have to rely on sophomores on your OL (although Turner is a RS soph), as Alexander showed by getting beaten badly all game vs Clemson Finally, last year, LSU's OL really struggled: it was #7 in SEC (#67 in NCAA) in rushing ypc, #10 in SEC (#93 in NCAA) in fewest sacks allowed per game, and #7 in SEC (#65 in NCAA) fewest TFL allowed per game Being that, as Kevin Sumlin put it (who had the #1 offense in the SEC and arguably the best OL in the SEC), your offense is only going to be as good as your OL, i don't expect our offense to be too good in 2013 unless our OL surprises
I like Studs being able to be on the sidelines coaching during games. I think after watching the Spring game, a few players may help this year. Hawkins, Edinburgh, Austin, Fanaika and Pocic. Once Boutte, Dodd and Malone get here in the Fall, they too start getting a feel for the college game. Injuries and a few things took over last year. If we don't have some of that this year, who knows, I like these players on the OL. Last year we were building depth, then we were hit.
