I honestly don't think anyone of the anti-coaches crowd has really looked at our depth chart. You have dmoney proclaiming true sophomores as busts for goodness sake. Please someone point to a team in the past 30 years that have had success with the collective youth and inexperience on defense that we have now. It is astounding how young we are. People really just gloss over it with the mindless drivel about schemes and coaching.
Quit while you are still behind. You act as if every other team in CFB lines up Jr's and Sr's only.
The rosters of all teams have many underclassmen playing large roles. Many of them playing at a very high level.
But it's only the UM kids who need time to mature?
Come on man.
Let's look at the team that just emasculated us three days ago, as a direct point of comparison.
The entire starting defensive unit are upperclassmen-9 Srs and 2 Jrs. On offense, they have sophs starting at C and WR and a rFr at LG- everyone else is an upperclassman. So, 19 of the 22 starters are upperclassmen. Overall, they have 11 sophmores and freshmen on the two-deep.
His progression after coming back to KSU:
2009 6-6
2010 7-6
2011 10-3
2012 2-0 and counting
He's been program building(for the second time, mind you) for the past 3 seasons and this is his first legitimate Top 10 team. The team I saw last Saturday is capable of being Oklahoma and winning the Big-12. They're faster than we thought, more athletic than we thought, and execute with the acumen of a team that's been drilled tirelessly. I can't help but envy what they are considering what they used to be.
Don't get me wrong- it's fine to have contributing younger players here and there. We won a national title 30 years ago with a freshman QB and WR leading the way. But in this era, nobody else in the country plays 17 or 18 kids on the two-deep and skates through the season. I'm sure USC and Bama and Oregon have handfuls of baby-faced assassins contributing. Pretty sure Oregon's QB is a rFr and he seems to be doing just fine. But those are programs that have been rolling on autopilot from a minute and have strong coaches that drive the ship. We're dealing with a team that's been stuck in the mud for a decade. We're still building this thing. Besides being young, our kids are surrounded by mediocre or bad upperclassmen who do nothing to help make them better on the field. They're also receiving poor coaching at the moment. That's a violent combination to have to sift through, and I think we're in store for at least one or two more of these thumpings in 2012.