we are heading into the season with 75 scholly players. So much for being off probation.
And? There are so many posters on here who keep telling us that EVERY SINGLE PLAYER who leaves the team is somehow addition by subtraction.
Regardless of injuries. And the need to have enough players for practice. And the possibility that some of these guys may have been underperforming due to injuries.
Nope, certain people on this board have convinced me that we can cut another 15 guys who are dead weight, and I think they might have a point...
It's pretty maddening when several of the departures would've been 2nd teamers.
Yearby, Haskins, Odogwu, Linder, Jenkins, Willis in particular.
Look, I'm not trying to bash fellow Canes, but there is so much failure on this board to properly analyze what is happening.
It's not just the issue of who is first-team and second-team RIGHT NOW.
First, this isn't the NFL, we can't just sign replacements right now. More importantly, those SPOTS on the scholarship roster were already accounted for. The ONLY thing we can do is give more scholarships to walk-ons (which are renewable annually, so they won't really hurt us with any future signing classes), and even if these guys quit the team in January, it ALSO wouldn't impair our numbers for future signing classes.
Second, nobody thinks about special teams (how many offensive and defensive STARTERS also play STs?) and the need to have enough bodies to get through practices all season. Even Gus could conceivably play a valuable role in helping the defense prepare if he is the stand-in for a particular type of running back that we are preparing to face. It doesn't matter who is first-team and second-team to the TEAM efforts (and yes, I know it hurts the kids' egos, or their perception of future opportunities). Alabama manages to keep 85 scholarship players, and there are plenty of 4-star kids there who aren't on the 2-deep at any given moment.
Third, people are ignoring injuries. The very FACT that guys like Linder have "underperformed" for more than one year recently has been due to ongoing injury issues AND the fact that we don't have a 2nd-teamer or 3rd-teamer ready to step in without significant drop-off. Kaaya has alluded to this in the last year or two, that MANY of the OLs were playing with injuries. So, instead, because we have a bunch of tuff-guy porsters who like to react as if every guy who leaves the team is a quitter, we keep going through our SAME CYCLE of not having enough scholarship players, followed by injuries, followed by playing guys with injuries, followed by guys underperforming, followed by criticism, followed by recruiting "better guys" from high school, followed by...well, you get the picture. The longer we go with 70-75 guys on scholarship (NOT counting walk-ons), the longer this cycle goes on.
Look, I'm not claiming that Linder was going to come in when a guy is injured and totally transform the team. But let's say you have five solid starters, and a couple of guys get hurt. The starters, with a few patches in between, are capable of playing CLOSE TO the level they were once at. But if you are forced to play a guy who IS NOT READY and/or is hurt, then you will see some ABYSMAL mistakes. People are making the mistake of acting as if Linder can't possibly cut it at Miami, but that just isn't true. His older brother is doing well in the NFL. Let this kid get healthy and get his head together, and even if he isn't the starter, he is the experienced depth that we need to get through a grueling season.
Yes, some of the guys who have left are better than others. But nobody is claiming the less-talented ones are cancer. Why does anyone care if a kid carries a scholarship for another semester when we DON'T HAVE ANY OPTIONS and we also are not impacted in our 2018 signing numbers or beyond? We aren't going to sign 30 guys anyhow, there are more NCAA rules than just the 85 scholarship limit.
Now, if all of those kids had left in either January 2017 or January 2018, it would be a different conversation.
But guys leaving the team in August...that's not helpful to the team preparing for the current season. Giving a scholarship to a walk-on, while heartwarming, does not improve the situation.
