BillySee58

Some shuffling in the secondary. Alex Morris in the two-deep for the first time (could really use his hitting if we’re gonna rely on our DBs to tackle this much). Murphy twins missing from the two deep, two weeks in a row for Grayson. Not expecting much re-shuffling at the top of the depth chart going forward.

Yup. I think it was easier for him to play underclassmen over upperclassmen when it was his underclassmen playing over Mccarney’s upperclassmen. But these underclassmen should be guys who are capable of outplaying guys one or two years older. That was the way it looked when we recruited them.

Always rooting hard for my fellow Martin Warrior, and he makes it easy to do that.

Interesting article here from MeanGreen 247. 247 sports rates all teams in the nation based on the ratings that everyone on their roster has as recruits. We are ranked 82nd in the country and 6th in CUSA. This should go up as the guys who weren’t as highly rated make room for incoming freshmen who are more highly rated. https://247sports.com/college/north-texas/Article/North-Texas-Mean-GReen-football-247Sports-team-talent-composite-Where-does-UNT-rank-152933481/ But the interesting takeaway was that only 5 of our top 33 players, in terms of recruiting rating, are starting or seeing frequent playing time. The vast majority of those top 33 players are from the 2019 and 2020 classes. We’re getting about as good a contribution from our true freshmen as you would hope (Stout, Tashoyn Johnson, Jake Roberts) but to me the disappointing thing is the redshirt freshmen. They have been here a year to develop, they know the plays, they know the schemes. Why are so many of these highly rated guys stuck behind guys who weren’t highly recruited? I get that the best recruits aren’t always your best players, but I can’t help but wonder if we have more talented options than the ones we are going with.

And going along with those numbers, I think something similar probably would’ve happened. I would’ve expected him to get more minutes early in the season. This will just accelerate the on-court time for the new guys imo.

I would think his minutes go more to Terence Lewis and Mykell Robinson. I think Ousmane is our backup 5, and Bell, Lewis, and Robinson will take the minutes at the 4. Those are the 5 guys (plus Zach Simmons) who will play the 4 and 5, and I honestly thought they’d all play over Jahmiah. He didn’t get rotation minutes last year, only foul trouble minutes.

We’re about to see a whole lot of grad transfers. All of the seniors and redshirt juniors graduating this year while getting an extra year of eligibility, and with seniors not counting towards the 85 limit next year. P5s will be happy to pluck the top G5 talent to replace the guys they lose to the NFL. Consequently, a lot of P5 players will probably be encouraged to transfer if they aren’t projected as future starters, to make room for future incoming freshmen. Especially current redshirt juniors. It would be wise of us to be in position to pluck some more P5 grad and sit-out transfers. Especially if we lose some of our top guys to grad transfers, which we should expect.

Looks like eligibility will be frozen for basketball as well. Similar to football and other fall sports. Two more years of Hamlet, Reese, Simmons, and Bell?

I think Littrell will be fine. He has a lot he needs to look in the mirror and fix, but I think he will win with this group of underclassmen. But still, allowing RV to stay as long as he did is what got us in this mess. Wren seems to like Littrell, but it sure would have been nice to have allowed him the opportunity to make that hire. Especially with how well his MBB hire has worked.

Torn ACL. So yeah, two years ago, would think that wouldn’t be an issue at this point.

I’m not out on Ogunmakin at all. I think he’ll be a good receiver. But I also think he is not currently performing to the point that you feel certain that the guys behind him couldn’t improve on some of his performances. Especially with a season where eligibility is frozen.

I would feel a lot more confident if we hadn’t already seen it. Siggers was 4th on the depth chart going into the season despite showing as soon as he started getting the ball that he was clearly our best back last year. Why would your best back be 4th on your depth chart other than because experience is being overvalued? Last year it was the same for Jyaire Shorter. He was behind White and Bussey in the rotation and didn’t start playing a lot until the Bussey injury. Goes on to catch 9 TDs as a redshirt freshmen. And Adaway, came in behind Torrey and a hobbled Siggers and immediately showed he was the best we have. Like I said, I really think Littrell wants to give guys a year, not including their redshirt year, where they don’t play much and get a taste of game action before passing on bigger responsibilities to them. Not saying that shaking this mindset will turn things around, but I think it will help expand our options when things aren’t working.

A takeaway I had looking into this is that he is far more likely to play a true sophomore than a redshirt freshman. It’s like he wants them to have a year where they play sparingly before giving them a bigger role. The guys from the 2019 class who are playing the most are true sophomores (Simpson, Gaddie, Wood). None of those guys played much on offense/defense last year except maybe Simpson but that was forced due to injuries. Bussey is another example. Look how much he played as a true freshman. Very little but played a lot as a sophomore. Similar for Darden, who did receive a decent amount of playing time as a true freshman but we were really light in depth at slot receiver, so there wasn’t really anyone blocking him. The slot receivers who played over him were Turner Smiley and Lawrence, who was a true sophomore walkon with like 1 catch heading into that season.

Correct

Jackson is injured? Wasn’t aware of that. Hope to see him get Burns’ reps if he’s healthy.

All these very highly recruited receiver signees over the last two years and apparently Rod Burns, Greg White, and Austin Ogunmakin are our best options there. At least twice as many drops as catches from that group last week.

He did. I changed up the way I was phrasing it as I went on to say “meaningful playing time” as in, has the player played any offensive or defensive snaps in a game before the outcome has already effectively been decided.

I made a comment that it has been frustrating seeing us play so poorly knowing we have recruited so well recently. More frustrating is the fact that these recruits are being relegated to the bench by guys who aren’t performing. I looked at our roster and noticed this really does seem to be true. Our redshirt freshmen aren’t playing, and it really seems like Littrell and his staff favor the older players. Here are our redshirt freshmen and their predicaments: QB Will Kuehne - Not in two-deep behind sophomore QBs. No playing time so far. RB Oscar Adaway - Started the season as the number 3 back, didn’t get in until the 3rd quarter the 1st game. Has since proven to be our best back despite coming in at 3rd in the depth chart to start. WR Kealon Jackson - Listed behind RS Sophomore and former walkon Rod Burns, who dropped both of his targets on Saturday. WR Damon Ward - Not listed in two deep, no playing time so far. WR/TE Khatib Lyles - Not listed in two deep, no playing time so far. Converted from receiver to tight end despite being one of the most highly recruited players on our entire roster as a receiver coming out. TE Asher Alberding - Listed behind Jason Pirtle on the depth chart. No other sophomore, junior, or senior scholarship tight ends on the roster OL Daxton Byers - Not currently in two-deep. Has not played meaningful snaps. OL Chris Cassidy - In two-deep but has lost out on starting spot to RS Sophomore Daizion Carroll OL John Brunner - Listed behind Carroll and Cassidy. Has not played meaningful snaps. DL Kenneth Dotson - Listed behind RS Sophomore Davontae Mccrae at the traditional DE spot. DL Jimmy Walker - Not in two-deep, presumably behind Mccrae and Dotson at that traditional DE spot. LB Taylor Jacobs - Not in two-deep. Has not played meaningful snaps. LB Grayson Murphy - Not in two-deep. Has not played meaningful snaps. LB Gabriel Murphy - Listed behind KD Davis and Kyleb Howell. Has not played meaningful snaps. DB Jevin Murray - In two-deep behind Cam Johnson but has not played meaningful snaps. DB Dorian Morris - In two-deep behind Quinn Whitlock but has not played meaningful snaps. In short, very few of these guys have been given any sort of opportunity this year to actually earn more playing time or supplant the older players who aren’t getting it done. Really just Oscar Adaway out of this group, and all it took was 222 yards on 25 carries in two games where he was so obviously the best back even they couldn’t ignore it. I really do believe Littrell and his staff place too much emphasis on giving the older players the first, second, and third crack at playing time. Because we have seen situations where the redshirt freshman was clearly the better player but was not the first guy up (i.e. Adaway at RB this year, Shorter at WR last year). Not to mention Tre Siggers last year. And this group of redshirt freshmen were much more highly recruited than the guys above them. How do we know this isn’t the case at other positions on the roster where we just never see the young guys despite the older guys performing at subpar levels? I really hope Littrell and his staff start feeling the pressure and stop with the politics, favoritism, or whatever you want to call it and start getting the most talent on the field that they can. And if this truly is the best we have, then they either recruited a bunch of busts or have done a terrible job in developing guys.

I think the most disappointing thing to me this season has been watching so many of our highly touted recruits from the recent classes relegated to the bench while the guys ahead of them perform poorly. Are the guys on the field truly the best we have? Are the highly recruited guys busts who are stuck behind below average CUSA-level players? Should the coaches be giving other guys more shots? When I saw the initial depth charts this season I was a little disappointed at how this was transpiring, but I gave the coaches the benefit of the doubt and trusted that the best players were winning the jobs even if they weren’t the best recruits. I wasn’t at practice like they were. Alex Morris had multiple P5 offers and he hasn’t been on the two deep all year. He popped a dude on special teams last night and we’ve had so many DBs get trucked and then the RB is off to the races. Makyle Sanders has been taking terrible angles and giving up big pass and run plays. Morris couldn’t help there? Khatib Lyles had 4 P5 offers as a receiver and he’s stuck as a tight end behind about 3-4 guys. He couldn’t make some of the plays/catches that White and Ogunmakin have missed out on? He couldn’t outproduce 2 catches for 18 yards from those two combined? Murphy twins at LB, what’s going on there? KD Davis pointed them out as guys who came in looking good when everyone came back to campus, why the need to play a walkon fullback over them? If the coaching staff can’t take all these highly recruited players and put a competitive team together, then what’s the path to them turning things around?

This is a football forum. People are free to discuss their opinions on football players as long as their comments aren’t personal or demeaning. If saying he “didn’t really deliver” is seen as insensitive, then that’s basically saying any evaluations of a player that aren’t positive are insensitive.

We only look at things that way for Fine and Bean

Fine had Darden, and Guyton, and Bussey. You aren’t asking to subtract the plays they made for him from his statistics. If Fine played the exact game Aune played last night everyone would be saying “he doesn’t have any help outside of Darden. The Shorter injury screwed him. Look at all the drops.” Also, the idea that he underthrew Darden a lot last night just isn’t true. Aune has been far worse at overthrows and miscommunications than underthrows. After rewatching a lot of the game, the only one you can really make the claim that he underthrew him on was the play where Darden stumbled out of bounds on the sideline, and even that one was a slight underthrow at worst. And by the way, I’m not claiming Aune is better than Fine. But God forbid he gets any credit for the passes he made or is actually judged by his body of work, and not just scorn for getting the job over Bean. Aune went over 100 passes in between interceptions, while Bean has thrown 5 in 64 career passes. He’s the best we have, and if that’s not enough then that’s on Littrell for not recruiting a better QB.

Let’s see what the stats say, just looking at efficiency-based stats. I’ll throw in DT too. Completion percentage: 1. Fine - 62.78% 2. Thompson - 60.28% 3. Aune - 56.49% 4. McNulty - 52.21% Yards/Attempt: 1. Aune - 9.5 yards/attempt 2. Fine - 7.56 yards/attempt 3. Thompson - 7.04 yards/attempt 4. McNulty - 5.83 yards/attempt TD/INT Ratio 1. Aune - 4.5 TD/INT 2. Fine - 2.75 TD/INT 3. Thompson - 1.25 TD/INT 4. McNulty - 0.66 TD/INT QB Rating: 1. Aune - 155.9 2. Fine - 140.7 3. Thompson - 126.1 4. McNulty - 101.9

Scary thinking about next year if Darden goes to the NFL or grad transfers. Everyone else returning almost all of their starters and us losing Darden would be a dire situation.

Imagine what Fine’s numbers would’ve looked like last year if he had Jaelon Darden