Now that the sun has risen, here are my thoughts on the season
Our team is a developmental program. That means we recruit high school kids, have them learn the offense at an advanced level and then let Kramer turn them into men. By the time they are Juniors and Seniors, we have 22-23 year old men who understand our team and kick the fuck out of everyone. Klieman used to preach retention with very little attrition.
This year due to covid we did no have that.
We lost 2 starting O-lineman, one in the NFL. We lost an NFL QB and unfortunately, we didn't have a veteran with athleticism to take over. We lost Jabril Cox. We lost our starting running back do to a transfer. We lost Matt Biegler our starting senior DT. We lost our starting shutdown corner midseason. I probably forgot about a few too.
Then to make matters worse, those Seniors we spent years developing were suddenly gone. Howieson and Quin Alo likely would have been starters on the O line. Same is true with guys like Mercadel, Beau Pauley and Trevor Heit.
Haven't even gotten to injuries yet. We lost Seth Wilson week 1. We lost Kobe Johnson and Bussey so we ended up starting a fullback with a bad shoulder and a true freshman in Gonella. Since our Fullback is now our starting running back, we had to move a player to the position for the first time
Throw in injuries to key players like James Kaczor, Dawson Weber, Phoenix Sproles and a late transfer by Hayes forced us to play freshman. That's not how we win.
We got Quincey Patterson poised to be the next stud QB. We got a great transfer running back. We got all these injured players coming back. Young players or first time starters are going to look really good next year. Guys like Jake Rock, Mason Miller, Zabel, Jalen Sundell, Wisniewski, Eubanks, Dom Jones, Gonella and all these younger players gained the most. Give them the summer with Kramer, time to watch film and we may have ourselves a heck of team
Point is despite all of this, we were still good enough to make a playoff run. These young guys are only going to get better and we're set up pretty good now.
As far as future recruiting goes, we got 3 NFL Draft picks, a brand new Indoor Practice Facility and coaches and players who may have needed a little humbling. And yes, I still think Tyler Roehl really sucked this year.