BillySee58

Did I say you said or thought that? No, I didn’t. I was asking an entirely new question related to the situation, that was fairly relevant.

In your original post you said “shouldn’t we be focusing on corners instead of safeties?” My point is I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition. We can get both. Also, would you rather have a HS signee who we identify as a likely 3-year starting safety or a transfer portal corner who couldn’t crack a P5 rotation? Dealing in realistic scenarios, you don’t want to say no to a top HS talent just because you are holding out hope on getting two “shutdown” corners through the transfer portal. Because if they’re shutdown corners they’re probably already at a P5 and not transferring, or are looking to move up to a P5. We get John Davis and Jordan Rucker types through the portal (P5 backups who couldn’t crack the rotation), or Ridge Texada and Sean-Thomas Faulkner types (FCS starters). Hopefully we continue to improve on the caliber of guys we sign through the portal, but we’re just not in a position to be turning down multi-year starter type high school signees because of holding out hope for transfer portal pulls that are significantly above what we have gotten through the portal.

That’s my understanding here

I think Brett has correctly predicted the outcome of every individual game this season

So your contention is more that we should be focusing on transfer portal/JUCO types to fill our spots, not that you would prefer recruiting a different position with our high school recruits, is what I’m gathering. I think there will spots for both. Especially if the NCAA moves forward with the proposed rule to allow up to 7 spots added to the standard 25 spots for a class if up to 7 players transfer out (so up to potentially 32 total spots in the class).

What are our needs for this high school recruiting class, exactly?

Has more to do with if we’ve identified a replacement that we feel really good about than the result of that individual game

40% from three is great. If he can do that again we’ll be looking solid. Chalking it up as a bad game until sample size becomes big enough to counteract his body of work from behind the arc last season. But yes, inside the arc is where he needs to improve. His high school team was hell bent on scoring 100 points every game so they were all about scoring at the rim and shooting threes. It shows in his mid-range game, or lack thereof.

It’s going to be a long 4 years of people never really getting used to that COVID extra year. To make things even more confusing, most teams across the country did list their players as having advanced a grade classification between 2020 and 2021. We did not, and I wish more teams did it that way. No consistency across the board.

Dillion Williams has played Corner all year. Was listed as a safety but has been at corner since the clips started coming out of fall camp. I believe Cinque has been in that nickel role. Williams was ahead of Texada earlier in the year but was injured and I think that’s when Texada passed him. Williams was active this past game so we could see his reps start going back up now.

Crosby and Nichols are safeties. Crosby is on the two-deep at safety behind Sanders. Rucker, no clue what’s going on there.

Idk but probably will if it hasn’t already. When teams know something like is going to pass they will start preemptively operating under the expected new rule. Either way, until we have 12+ more guys transfer out, we will be able to just fill spots using the traditional 25 allotment alone.

I have us at 79 scholarship players, 8 being seniors. So that would be 14 spots available for next year, with 4 current commits. ~10 spots open right now with that number set to increase by any subsequent players transferring out, is my approximation. Not 100% sure on who all is on scholarship.

I meant more of after this season vs next season. But I agree if we’re talking about what month/week of the year is better.

Those explanations don’t actually answer the question from the beginning of your post.

What timeline are we running against? We already got into the AAC. I haven’t seen any legitimate reasons explaining why time is of the essence other than people saying it is.

I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not also in the wait and see, let UTEP and UTSA show us where we really are camp. There are a ton of players on our team who, for the first time in their careers, have actually played significant snaps for 4 games in a row now. Early in the season there was so much lineup shuffling due to injuries and other reasons. Guys are actually starting to build off their performances instead of having to sit a game and sort of go back to square one due to injury or other reason. Getting that type of progression across the board puts us significantly ahead of where we were earlier. And that’s on Littrell and his coaches to keep building on that in practice and into the game next week.

Truthfully if he could just be Senior-year Derek Thompson level I think that would be good enough if the roster keeps improving at the rate they are and if they don’t have to keep running down to their 3rd string receivers. And he has been about what Derek Thompson was before his senior year. But yeah, the roster is close. Prioritize getting a good QB this offseason, keep developing the roster, and worst case I think you have a bus driver you can win games with. Best case you have a starter who can take you to the next level and a backup who has a lot of experience.

We didn’t see this type of progression among individual players last season or the season before. We are seeing players look different between week one and now. It’s easier now to see the players on this team turning our team into a good team than it has been since we started going downhill. We got into the AAC. Whether Littrell keeps his job or not, whether we make a bowl game or not this year (or next), neither of those things are going to prevent us from missing the boat. My sense of urgency has dropped but either way I am just glad I think we have the players to win now.

Said this in the game thread but my biggest positive takeaway here is that we’re starting to see the makings of the foundation of a good team. Big game for Detraveon Brown with 85 yards receiving. Next year when Bush and Shorter are back, Brown and Damon Ward as sophomore backups with a year under their belts and Thompson and Burns in the slot sounds like more receivers running open than what we’ve had so far. And Adeyi, Johnson, and Ragsdale with Adaway back sounds like a strong RB group. Defensively we’re starting to play well, going back to the Liberty game. A sack for Rod Brown who PFF has graded as one of the best Freshmen DTs in the country. Rod Brown, Enoch Jackson, and the Murphy twins all have 3 more years of eligibility left on the d-line. These guys are all starting to look like at least competent FBS players, and everyone I mentioned in this post has at least two, most of them three, years of eligibility left after this season. Win or loss, we’re starting to see these individuals make plays with consistency and play winning football. That’s the important takeaway here.

You can definitely see the players who should be the foundation of the next good North Texas team.

If WKU makes the conference title game and a bowl game, Zappe would break the NCAA record for passing yards in a season with his current yards/game.

Wow! Get this kid in a college S&C program and meal plan and we could have ourselves a legit pass rusher here.

LSU-Alexandria officially added to the schedule (we’ve known about that one in the schedule thread for a while). We’re currently sitting at 12 non-conference games. Considering they didn’t officially announce anything or release a press release that the non-conference schedule is completed and released, I’m still expecting a 13th game until we hear otherwise.

Mac Engel of the Ft Worth Star-Telegram was on 105.3 The Fan this morning and said if he had to pick right now he would say Dykes will end up filling the TCU opening and McGuire would take the Texas Tech job.