I guess you missed the part where we were playing against the best DLs in the country with 3 freshmen and a TE that functioned more as a WR.
I'll catch you up to speed -- we retained all of those freshmen, brought in a multi year SEC starter, and then massively upgraded our TE blocking. If you think a run game is all about the RB, then I don't think I have time to build your knowledge base completely from scratch.
You have raved about Blaylock and repeatedly insulted Murray for not playing what you felt like was a star RB early in the year. To that end, he was freshman All-SEC. X was over 5 YPC and ran all over the Ole Miss team that you said was so good we couldn't possibly compete with them.
Sure, and Blaylock was not even in the top 250.
Do you fact check anything you say? Our leading rusher last year was a true freshman.
2024 - 2nd and 3rd leading rushers were true freshmen
2022 - 2nd leading rusher was a true freshmen.
So yeah, I could absolutely see a true freshman being RB3. It's like you have no idea what you are watching.
The stupidity and dishonesty of some of your posts is truly astounding. I have not raved about Blaylock. I thought he was solid and should have been playing more than Barnes because, well, Barnes is a terrible running back. I felt like there was some reason to be optimistic that Blaylock could turn into a good player and I still feel that way, but nothing about his season screams out that he should be a feature SEC back. Again, he had one good game against quality competition. He got hurt (because that’s what happens to our players) in week one and everyone just assumes he will be a stud if he stays healthy. Did Barnes improve over his career? Did Sawchuk turn into a stud? Who was the last RB we had who took a massive leap over the course of his career? Barnes and Sawchuk arguably peaked as freshman in a meaningless bowl game.
And again, I’ve said at least three times in this thread that we have seemingly improved the blocking and that that will help. But that doesn’t mean the backfield itself has gotten better. You say the G5 transfer and an incoming freshman are an improvement on Ott and Tatum. That is because we have already seen what a disaster those two were, but there is zero chance the room is more talented than it was six months ago. Smothers and Hicks are two more examples of guys who came to college with varying degrees of hype. Hicks played about five snaps in his career at OU. Smothers had a few carries, left, and then became a very good back elsewhere.
And you cite those stats about freshmen and ignore the context. Blaylock was our leading rusher by yards with a whopping 444. He got the most touches almost by default. Barnes quit. Ott essentially quit. Tatum was either hurt or simply didn’t care much about football or learning the playbook. And X was injured off and on.
Last year, DeMarco and Brent waited till Nov to play X, even though the upperclassman playing in front of him were terrible. He and Tatum combined to average about 5 carries per game over the course of the season, so if you want to point to that as a sign that we will likely get production from a freshman next season, that’s an interesting argument to make.
Murray, and our offensive staff as a whole, has been terrible at developing players, yet you seem to put a lot of blind faith in simply expecting internal improvement. That’s not based on anything that any of those guys has actually done. Again, not a single guy on our roster has shown an ability to (a) stay healthy or (b) be a productive lead back for 12 games in the SEC. Our leading rusher ran for 444 yards, for crying out loud. There isn’t a single guy in that room who any opponent fears or has to game plan around. There is a reason why, with the season on the line, our quarterback, who is a good but not great runner, carried it more than our two running backs combined. Ah, but they were injured, you say. And yet we should just assume things will be different next year with our crack medical staff, given our recent history?
