Yeah…he gone. Seriously the kid says the hogs “might” be in the running but if he had to pick it would be Bama…wait…it might be Arkansas. Well ya know he’s gonna choose on how well the team uses their TE. If that was the case he never would have decommitted. The kid is gone.
It would be nice to have a projected TE talent like him sign with our Hogs, but if it’s not to be I don’t feel that TE is a weakness on our current roster. We have 8 TE’s and most have had time in the system and don’t forget we also have Jeremy Patten, #1 JUCO TE joining the team soon.
My chief concern is the O-Line holding up against the most talented D-Lines in the Nation once conference play gets underway. If they don’t shore things up upfront then it won’t matter how many stars a receiver may have next to his name during recruiting because Austin won’t have time for routes to develop.
Hopefully, we will get a big season from Whaley and perhaps one of the newcomers will emerge at RB as well because we will have to be able to run the ball to keep defenses honest.
Honestly, we have no idea how our defense will perform in the new 3-4 scheme and do we actually have the type of athletes at this time to run it effectively, I hope so and it won’t take long to find out.
Another area of concern is the kicking game which hasn’t been to good of late. Hope they have cleaned these areas up. Punting was our only area of strength and consistency the past couple of seasons.
Kickoffs rarely reach the end zone and coverage led to good starting field position for our opponent too many times.
FG kicking has been scary of late, haven’t been able to depend on it.
So, having all of the areas of real concern whether this TE recruit becomes a Hog or not is way down on the list.
Go Hogs!
Great post and I agree with most of your thoughts except I wonder and worry about Patton. Patton was supposed to join the team in January, then it was after the Spring Semester then after Summer I and here we are about into Summer II and no Patton.