BillySee58

What are you hoping for out of the portal? Paula Vaipulu started double digit games at a P5 school (Georgia Tech), and he still got beat out by a guy we signed out of high school. Trey Cleveland and Blair Conwright had productive seasons in the receiver rotations for P5 schools (Texas Tech and TCU). Chandler Rogers was a starter at ULM with solid stats. Phil Hill was a starter at UNLV who had 3 picks his last season there. Larry Moore was on the 2-deep at LT at Texas Tech as a redshirt freshman. It’s not like we’re bringing in a bunch of G5 backups. And still none of these guys made any difference in game 1. Not sure what a few more of them does immediately. It takes time. I don’t think the expectation from our fanbase about what you get out of the portal currently matches reality.

JayD hit the nail on the head. A lot of guys playing in the same system they were in the year before. The day we bring in a Head Coach/OC/DC who brings players with him, then I’ll expect those guys to be ready to go from day one. Otherwise I expect a year of growing pains.

He definitely is utilizing the portal and will continue to do so. We’re only one game in, but on paper the portal additions he got were pretty solid. Actual legit playing experience at the FBS level.

I agree that we are trying to elevate our HS recruiting. I don’t think it is a safe assumption that the HS guys are going to transfer out more as their quality improves. If their quality is improving then so should our quality as a team. Again, there isn’t much evidence showing guys who are successful players already on successful teams transferring out without a coaching change. Certainly not common enough to change strategies on or treat as anything other than an exception, not the rule.

Look at the game Maclin had. 122 yards and 2 scores. He averaged 27 yards per game last season. It usually takes these guys a season before they really start impacting the game. We have seen this historically here. Texada was decent in 2021 but he really became a top defender in 2022. Marcus Trice was not even honorable mention all conference his first season in 2012, then was 1st team all CUSA the next season. We can go on down the list but this is generally pretty true for the FBS transfers we have brought in over the years. It usually takes a season. I know we all want a quick fix but the irony is you still have to be patient with guys from the portal too.

Again, almost all of these guys you are referring to left during a coaching change or after playing what would’ve been their Senior for us, then using that extra COVID season somewhere else. We just have not seen it yet where we bring in HS recruits who starts for us as underclassmen and suddenly decide to use us as a springboard when the coach who signed them is still here. If it starts happening with Morris’ actual recruits then we can consider it a valid fear. But until then, guys tend to stay and play for the coach that signed them out of HS.

That’s just not true. We have seen the offers our average, run of the mill starters have gotten in the portal. Guys like Cam Johnson and Larry Nixon getting scooped up by UCLA and Auburn clearly shows it doesn’t take guys being all conference here to attract P5 teams.

I think the picture here has been painted inaccurately because of not weighing in all the variables. We had a coaching change. Of course dudes were going to transfer. Also the extra COVID year doesn’t get factored in. But with Littrell all the dudes tended to stay, when the coach who signed them was still here. Then when he left we saw more guys leave. But the Murphy twins were the only guys who left who actually left early while Littrell was still here. The other guys were all grad seniors who had already played 4 years here and chose to use that extra season somewhere else. I think that’s what we’ll see with the guys Morris is bringing in from HS. Even if they start early they aren’t just going to leave as long as he’s still here. Now as for the HS recruiting, need to start seeing more impressive d-line and LB recruits.

You mean like the Offensive Coordinator at P5 Washington State?

I think the narrative with Earle changes a lot because he mostly sat last season. People forget that he was honestly the most established division 1 QB we had brought in from the portal before Rogers. Had Earle been fresh off his solid true sophomore performance at ACU and beat out Rogers, we’d be surprised but we wouldn’t be looking at it an indictment on the QB room. We’d just be looking at it as getting a high-quality guy out of battle between two transfers who performed well at their last D1 spot.

Nah. Titans were the Oilers, even in Tennessee. Texans never were. Very glad they will be wearing the Oilers throwbacks against the team that has only ever been the Houston Texans.

I love when my Titans wear the Oilers throwback jerseys. No one in the Titans organization is concerned that media will confuse using a throwback name with desire to use that previous name in the present. Humans are capable of understanding nuance, of which this only requires the slightest bit. The change happened 35 years ago. Only people who still get it wrong are 50+ people who refuse to make even the slightest effort to correctly associate the name we’ve been using since the Reagan administration.

Started a podcast with my pal @WanderingEagle: https://play.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/27736944/theme/modern/tdest_id/4111206

We only have one player on the roster who runs out of eligibility after this season, and that’s Robert Allen. We also already have a class of 2024 Commit in Jaylen Washington. My guess is we are saving that spot rather than wasting it on a Bryce Zephir type that would just tie up a scholarship for future years without actually helping the team.

We have an open spot

I think we’re just listing sizes honestly and accurately instead of the time-honored tradition of adding 10 lbs to everyone’s weight and 2 inches to everyone’s height

I think it’ll be a 3-man rotation at the 4/5 positions. It’s what we saw from Mccasland most years. 19-20 it was Geu and Simmons starting with Bell off the bench, and when Bell came in Geu either went to the bench or slid to the 5. 21-22 was similar with Bell and Ousmane starting and Scott off the bench, with Scott either coming in for Bell or sliding Bell to the 5. I expect something similar for the current team. Allen backing up both Scott and Sissoko. With his size and skill set he should be able to play both the 4 and 5 spots.

The athlete designation is given by the recruiting services. Not by our coaching staff. He’s going to play linebacker here. A lot of times the “athlete” designation is given when a player is going to play a different position in college than what he played in HS, or he plays multiple positions in HS that he could potentially project to in college. For example, with a high school QB who projects as a receiver, that player is most likely going to be classified as an athlete because it is hard to rank that player amongst receivers who are actually playing receiver in high school. Hard to call a high school QB “the number 8 receiver in the country” when he has never caught a single pass in high school due to playing QB, for example.

I believe he was signed to an Exhibit 10 already

Having realistic dreams of catching a top 25 team in Denton and dropping them

I think this is a fair concern. Especially because he has the prototypical height. Bean’s offer list looked better, but pretty comparable to Bryce Drummond and Cade Pearson, better than Kason Martin’s and Fine’s. Will definitely give Morris the benefit of the doubt. QB is one of the positions I probably care the least about offer lists, surprisingly. Get a guy you like and develop them. In a year it doesn’t matter if your offer list looks like Jace Ruder’s, Stone Earle’s, or Chandler Rogers’.

Once again the impact of the extra COVID year is completely omitted from these type of conversations. 5 classes of college athletes were each granted an extra season of eligibility, and teams did not add extra scholarship spots on their teams. A huge bottleneck was created with players graduating high school but not having a proper departing class to make room. Of course not everyone who entered the portal was able to find a home. There was a huge surplus of players both in the portal and not in the portal. But that never seems to be taken into consideration with the portal panic.

Wow, just realized that Wisconsin game is off the schedule. Was supposed to be a buy-game in 2025.

Part of it is that we had OOC series scheduled against Tulane and Memphis plus seemed to be expecting the annual SMU game as well. With all of those becoming Conference foes that put us back to the drawing board with some OOC games.

I think we’re starting to see that. The impact of the COVID year is usually understated in these “issues.” Because of the free COVID year, a ton of dudes in college football have graduated with still 2-3 years of eligibility left. Grad transfers don’t have to sit out. We now have the last 3 HS classes that were not playing college football during the free 2020 season. As those older dudes phase out and with a lot of guys having already used their sit-out free transfer, I think it’s going to be a little more reasonable.