Tbh I’m concerned about multiple areas on this team and DT is one of the biggest. That room scares the crap out of me.
I think that's more looking at things relative to last year and thinking if last year equals 10 wins, how can this be better with what will be a worse offense across the board...
But if you compare this roster to 2 years ago it's clearly superior in every way. Like if we went from the season 2 years ago to this one directly, I think the mood would be much better.
And if you compared it to last year post-spring without ANY context of how the season played out I think it's obviously more balanced. Like what were people predicting our record to be entering last season? Many probably had 9 wins? It wasn't until AFTER we saw how great Cam and this offense were operating that the expectation grew.
So like comparing this post spring to last post spring, Beck to Ward pre-2024, I don't think many would be all that down about the QB position. RB and WR would be the only big issues. But it's important to note most (including me) wanted George gone due to his penalty problem, and Horton was unproven. And Daniels is probably viewed as a better transfer than Brown was. So like the major difference between last spring and this spring at WR is we don't got a Restrepo.
But like look how people talk about the "unproven" guys right now, why wouldn't you look at Arroyo entering last season and say the same about him? It's because people just hate on our top talent when they are unproven and basically don't credit any expectation of them meeting their potential. It's why for some stupid *** reason people are acting like our EDGE room can't be absolutely elite this season. **** for all the criticism about DT, I actually think DT was looking probably worse entering last season than this season. Seriously our 5star DT was a frosh. Moten was FULLY unproven, Horton was always hurt, we NEEDED Mesidor to play DT. Blay was probably looked at as same tier as Barrow.. Expectations from Scott alone imo make our top 3 DT better than last year. Depth is MAYBE a bit bigger of a concern, but not by all that much tbh. LB is honestly better now than entering last season on proven players and young guys having even more experience. DB is like 10x improvement than what we had entering last season.
So like a proven go-to WR in Restrepo, and a top proven RB in Martinez are the main big negatives from Last Spring to this one imo. But even Lyle COULD very reasonably be expected to be as impactful as Martinez imo. So really the only true negative I see is missing a Restrepo and Ward obviously had a higher Ceiling... But I don't see how Defense isn't viewed as having majorly higher expectations.