UTEP Depth Chart

Dannymacfan · August 23, 2022

They have a lot of jucos and transfers. Completely different squad as opposed to what we faced last season.

Hookset · August 23, 2022

That is a beefy offensive line. I hope we have backup defensive linemen that are capable of rotating in without a drop off in ability.

MeanGreen13 · August 23, 2022

49 minutes ago, Hookset said:

That is a beefy offensive line. I hope we have backup defensive linemen that are capable of rotating in without a drop off in ability.

Unfortunately, I think our interior D-line might be a weakness this season because both starters are on the shorter and lighter side... Their back-ups are even lighter but longer. our starting DE is 3 inches taller and only 10 lbs or so lighter than our starting nose tackle. I am worried but the two DTs are talented so I guess we'll see.

Big Z · August 23, 2022

30 minutes ago, MeanGreen13 said:

Unfortunately, I think our interior D-line might be a weakness this season because both starters are on the shorter and lighter side... Their back-ups are even lighter but longer. our starting DE is 3 inches taller and only 10 lbs or so lighter than our starting nose tackle. I am worried but the two DTs are talented so I guess we'll see.

Tom Trieb is going to be a monster this season

MeanGreen13 · August 25, 2022

On 8/23/2022 at 6:28 PM, Big Z said:

Tom Trieb is going to be a monster this season

Amen!

UNTLifer · August 26, 2022

On 8/23/2022 at 5:57 PM, MeanGreen13 said:

Unfortunately, I think our interior D-line might be a weakness this season because both starters are on the shorter and lighter side... Their back-ups are even lighter but longer. our starting DE is 3 inches taller and only 10 lbs or so lighter than our starting nose tackle. I am worried but the two DTs are talented so I guess we'll see.

Rod Brown Jr. would like to have a word with you.

Trieb will be picking pieces of Hardison out of his teeth by the third quarter.

MeanGreen13 · August 26, 2022

8 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Rod Brown Jr. would like to have a word with you.

Trieb will be picking pieces of Hardison out of his teeth by the third quarter.

I think he played well last year and will probably will be good this year also. He is on the small side though. Trieb is 275 lbs and listed at 6'3"... all i'm saying is that we will need to have a deep rotation on the interior Dline to be successful because they are all smallish.

97and03 · August 26, 2022

2 hours ago, MeanGreen13 said:

I think he played well last year and will probably will be good this year also. He is on the small side though. Trieb is 275 lbs and listed at 6'3"... all i'm saying is that we will need to have a deep rotation on the interior Dline to be successful because they are all smallish.

I recall Bennett saying they were deeper this year, perhaps even rotating three deep. Based upon what I saw earlier, our third DTs could be Johnson and LeBlanc, who have a lot of game experience. Our DEs also seem bigger, which should help.

Cr1028 · August 26, 2022

18 minutes ago, 97and03 said:

I recall Bennett saying they were deeper this year, perhaps even rotating three deep. Based upon what I saw earlier, our third DTs could be Johnson and LeBlanc, who have a lot of game experience. Our DEs also seem bigger, which should help.

No only that, we run more of a 4 down these days as opposed to the 3 down we used under Bowen where you wanted a mountain like Novil in the middle.

Hookset · August 26, 2022

46 minutes ago, 97and03 said:

I recall Bennett saying they were deeper this year, perhaps even rotating three deep. Based upon what I saw earlier, our third DTs could be Johnson and LeBlanc, who have a lot of game experience. Our DEs also seem bigger, which should help.

I hope this is true and works for us. Even looking at AAC offensive lines for two games this year and then next, we’re smallish on the defensive line. Will likely need the linebackers to play lights out as the D-line might wear down if rotations are short.

BillySee58 · August 26, 2022

4 hours ago, MeanGreen13 said:

I think he played well last year and will probably will be good this year also. He is on the small side though. Trieb is 275 lbs and listed at 6'3"... all i'm saying is that we will need to have a deep rotation on the interior Dline to be successful because they are all smallish.

Trieb is replacing Grayson Murphy at DE. Big bump in size there.

MeanGreenTexan · August 26, 2022

2 minutes ago, BillySee58 said:

Trieb is replacing Grayson Murphy at DE. Big bump in size there.

This poor guy has a TON of expectations shoved on him from this fan base without playing a down of football here. I hope he can come through.

UNTLifer · August 26, 2022

12 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

This poor guy has a TON of expectations shoved on him from this fan base without playing a down of football here. I hope he can come through.

He's going to be fine.

http://www.hudl.com/video/3/15240717/61cbd706c11b3c08802f681c

MeanGreenTexan · August 26, 2022

15 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

He's going to be fine.

http://www.hudl.com/video/3/15240717/61cbd706c11b3c08802f681c

Oh, of course!

Mean Green 93-98 · August 26, 2022

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

This poor guy has a TON of expectations shoved on him from this fan base without playing a down of football here. I hope he can come through.

This is a fair observation. We have had transfers in the past--for example, say, oh, Marcus Trice--who were relatively underwhelming initially, but went on to have great careers. Even if Trieb finishes with a HOF career, it could certainly take him the better part of a season or more to truly find his form.

That said, I expect at least 4 TFLs tomorrow night.

MeanGreenTexan · August 26, 2022

14 minutes ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

This is a fair observation. We have had transfers in the past--for example, say, oh, Marcus Trice--who were relatively underwhelming initially, but went on to have great careers. Even if Trieb finishes with a HOF career, it could certainly take him the better part of a season or more to truly find his form.

That said, I expect at least 4 TFLs tomorrow night.

Trice was awesome. Trice was certainly the exception to the norm when it came to FBS transfers.
Thankfully Trieb is a JUCO guy. And we've had much more success with those guys.

That said, we recently had a 6'4/255lb DE transfer here and most of us (myself included) were drooling all over the guy when he first got here because he came to us from P5 NCSt: Davontae McCrae. He did jack squat and is now stuck in portal purgatory.

If Trieb is even half of Marcus Trice, he'll be just fine. I just hope he's not like McCrae.

BillySee58 · August 26, 2022

3 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

This poor guy has a TON of expectations shoved on him from this fan base without playing a down of football here. I hope he can come through.

For sure, but I was just putting it in perspective of our d-line relative size. Person I was responding to mentioned him in the context of being undersized, so for reference I compared him to the player who manned his position last year.

The nice thing about Trieb is that his performance from day 1 since he stepped on campus has had him as a pencilled in starter every step of the way. That’s impressive on its own.

MeanGreenTexan · August 26, 2022

Just now, BillySee58 said:

For sure, but I was just putting it in perspective of our d-line relative size. Person I was responding to mentioned him in the context of being undersized, so for reference I compared him to the player who manned his position last year.

The nice thing about Trieb is that his performance from day 1 since he stepped on campus has had him as a pencilled in starter every step of the way. That’s impressive on its own.

I think @MeanGreen13 was talking about Rod Brown when talking about being undersized. As far as that guy is concerned, he's already shown he's more than capable of taking care of business on the interior. He & Enoch are probably the 2nd & 3rd best players on the entire defense behind KD.

I've also heard nothing but good things about Trieb, for sure. I'm excited about him, but I'm not going to put any expectations on him right now. As for him being the starter... I would certainly hope so, because we'd REALLY be asking too much of his backup, True Freshman Cam Robertson (who's future I'm also very excited about!).

And even though Grayson was lighter (listed at 6'3/255), his production was legit. We're asking a lot of Trieb to come right in and fill those shoes like-for-like, even if he's heavier (listed at 6'3/275).
Heaven forbid he's not quite as good as Grayson, but still gets frustrated and earns 3 or 4 Unsportsmanlike penalties over the course of the season. He'll be hated around here forever.

UNTLifer · August 26, 2022

Bennett is excited about this group, so that means I am as well. I don't care about the individual stats, I just want us to improve on last year's defensive performance. I long for the days of the early 2000's defenses of Booger, Spencer, Awasome, Jones, Buckles, etc. where we didn't care who we were playing only that we were going to knock them around.

97and03 · August 26, 2022

6 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

Bennett is excited about this group, so that means I am as well. I don't care about the individual stats, I just want us to improve on last year's defensive performance. I long for the days of the early 2000's defenses of Booger, Spencer, Awasome, Jones, Buckles, etc. where we didn't care who we were playing only that we were going to knock them around.

Honestly if we just match last year’s D then we should be fine. Improving would be icing on the cake.

Hookset · August 26, 2022

2 hours ago, 97and03 said:

Honestly if we just match last year’s D then we should be fine. Improving would be icing on the cake.

I agree. Matching last year’s efficiency would be fine. Improvement needs to happen with the passing game. JMO

MeanGreenTexan · August 27, 2022

6 hours ago, 97and03 said:

Honestly if we just match last year’s D then we should be fine. Improving would be icing on the cake.

Precisely. I’d be thrilled if we lost Novil, Murphy, Murphy, Colvin, & Sanders, yet still kept the same defensive efficiency.

Mean Green 93-98 · August 27, 2022

21 hours ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Trice was awesome. Trice was certainly the exception to the norm when it came to FBS transfers.
Thankfully Trieb is a JUCO guy. And we've had much more success with those guys.

That said, we recently had a 6'4/255lb DE transfer here and most of us (myself included) were drooling all over the guy when he first got here because he came to us from P5 NCSt: Davontae McCrae. He did jack squat and is now stuck in portal purgatory.

If Trieb is even half of Marcus Trice, he'll be just fine. I just hope he's not like McCrae.

Tex, I'm not sure if you missed my point or just wanted to talk about something else.

My point was that some of the best transfers in our history are not that great right out of the gate. I mentioned Trice because Trice was not particularly impressive his first year at UNT. Yes, he won the starting job and he was athletic as all get out; but he was oftentimes out of position, getting beat on routes, and not particularly physical. His first year. But his senior year, he was incredible, flying to the ball and demolishing whomever happened to be so unfortunate as to have that ball in or near his hands.

If you are indicating that the learning curve is steeper for FBS transfers than for juco transfers, I'd have to disagree. I could list multiple juco success stories who started out slow. We've had some complete flops out of the FBS ranks, but that's completely unrelated to anything I'm saying.

So the conclusion of all that is to say, Don't write off Trieb as a flop if he doesn't immediately meet those high expectations. He has 3 years to write his North Texas story.

Still, I'm calling 4 TFLs tonight.

PlummMeanGreen · August 27, 2022

22 hours ago, BillySee58 said:

For sure, but I was just putting it in perspective of our d-line relative size. Person I was responding to mentioned him in the context of being undersized, so for reference I compared him to the player who manned his position last year.

The nice thing about Trieb is that his performance from day 1 since he stepped on campus has had him as a pencilled in starter every step of the way. That’s impressive on its own.

Makes me happy to know we have 2 Mean Green offensive linemen who could be 1’st team All CUSA performers this season.
Going to especially watch RB Oscar Adaway with great interest tonight. Some of you have said he’s been a monster in Fall camp.

Does our JUCO All American transfer Tom Trieb have a nickname yet?
I’d suggest “Manster” but there’s already been one of those in our area albeit years ago.
Talked with a fellow alum this morning & our common theme was how “anticipatory” we were about this season opener. Hope we all have reason to celebrate. We need that.

GMG!

BillySee58 · August 27, 2022

44 minutes ago, PlummMeanGreen said:

Makes me happy to know we have 2 Mean Green offensive linemen who could be 1’st team All CUSA performers this season.
Going to especially watch RB Oscar Adaway with great interest tonight. Some of you have said he’s been a monster in Fall camp.

Does our JUCO All American transfer Tom Trieb have a nickname yet?
I’d suggest “Manster” but there’s already been one of those in our area albeit years ago.
Talked with a fellow alum this morning & our common theme was how “anticipatory” we were about this season opener. Hope we all have reason to celebrate. We need that.

GMG!

I just call him The Trieb Trunk because he’s built like one and can be the foundation of our defense.