Depth Chart Musings and Etcetera

We all know about Arthur Ray, but his class also featured Chase Dumphord, a tackle prospect from Kentucky who unexpectedly didn’t show up at camp that year. Dumphord, Ray and McGaha were all considered 3* and Joel Foreman was the afterthought.

The plan was likely to have David Barrent, who was a very highly ranked tackle who’d be a reshirt sophmore to be starting for us this year, but he quit football due to recurring injuries. Henry Conway and Zach Hueter have also had major problems with injuries.

As far as not developing, I don’t think that’s been as much a problem as losing guys. The guy some people would point at is Nate Klatt, who was a 4* center recruit and isn’t on the depth chart as a redshirt sophmore.

With converted, it depends on when the conversion happened. Jake Long was a converted TE, after all. France got converted to OT last December. He’d also spent time listed as TE, I think. Reynolds has bounced back and forth, I though depending mostly on a lack of d-line depth and the same with Treadwell. They used him at DT as a true freshman,

http://www.abeautifuldayforfootball.com/2011/09/yes-but-who-watches-watchmen.html

..played center in the spring this year.

And if creating Wisconsin type olines was something you could just do through an effort of will, every school in the Big 10 would have done it.

If you check out KJ’s link, it seems to me that MSU has suffered more than its share of things that aren’t the coaching staff’s fault on the oline, with Dumphord deciding not to come at the last minute, Barrent and Hueter having to take medical disqualifications, Ray coming down with bone cancer, Conway both being hugely set back by injury.

I think there’s a bit of perfect storm going on there. And one of the reasons players like Treadwell and Reynolds were sent to the dline is that our DT recruiting hasn’t gone well for whatever reason. We’ve had three 3* DT recruits who should be here starting/giving us depth who aren’t. Two of those, Oren Wilson and Ishmyl Johnson were mixed up in Rather Hall. Plus, Antonio Jeremiah 4* who hasn’t gotten to that potential, and a few others who’ve left. One issue with accuracy here is that MSU didn’t necessarily recruit a player for the position Rivals has him rated as.

We’ve suffered attrition and turnover at other positions, like RB, especially from the 2007 and 2008 recruiting classes, but Wiscy-style o-lines are partly built through depth and experience moreso than RB. And, sure, you get to use the scholarship on someone else when a guy leaves the program for whatever reason. But trading a player who’s been in your program three or four or five years for a true freshman is an especially bad trade on the lines. I think MSU has really improved recruiting for the lines over the last couple years, but that’s just the area where it takes guys the longest to develop.

I don’t follow any other program closely enough to tell you if MSU has had more people lost at these positions than average, but it seems like it must have to me. I think the issue is that MSU has recruited like a middling Big 10 program since Dantonio got here (which, I’ll hasten to add is an improvement over the previous coaches) and you have to get very lucky to weather this number of injuries and mishaps without recruiting more in the OSU mold than the MSU mold.