Next year we get them with our new 5* tackles on defense. Should be a good matchup with their OL. Those guys are huge, but we will come out on top.
I think the point Butch keeps trying to make, and I keep mentioning with our alum group here when we watch games is, we'd like to be in a position where we don't
have to play true Freshman, really at most any position, especially in the trenches. Anyone using Barnett as a rebuttal, come one. I love him. He's a fantastic talent with a great motor. You have a guy like that, and how can you not put him on the field? Well, if you have former 4 and 5* Jr/Sr DL'men, that's how. That's what Butch wants. He wants 18yo kids developing with
off-season conditioning to get the bodies of SEC men during the season, while his team of RS Freshmen, Sophomores, Jrs, and Srs goes out and wins f'ing football games.
Take a look around the SEC. Take a look around the nation, any conference, any team, even mid-majors. No one is playing 23 Freshmen in the 2-deep. No one is starting 7 Freshmen in a game. UGa, UF, Bama, etc, they may have 1-2 standouts that are freakish enough to play/start/contribute as true Freshman because they are simply just
too good to keep off the field, a la Eric Berry in '07 (do I have the year correct?). Other than that, you're not going to see many. Even Winston redshirted a year, and he was one of the most heralded recruits in the nation that year. That's called depth, and it takes program development to get to that point.
Arkansas had their crapshow a little further in their rearview mirror before Bielema arrived (the goofy guy who lost almost all his games was only one year, and didn't kick a bunch of players off the team a la Kiffin), so they didn't have attrition and depth issues that we did. People need to make like Aaron Rodgers and RELAX. What happened with the UT program is a bit of a special case. Not many teams had to endure waning talent leading up to '07, followed by 4 tumultuous bungled years of poor development and attrition to lead us to the point where we have to hang all our hopes this season largely on the performance of an entire Freshman class...all the while replacing all starters on both sides of the OL and DL (seriously, can anyone remember a team ever, any team ever, that that's happened to?? Seriously, maybe I'll even google it)!! We really have fought hard to even be in the spot we're in now. Next year will be twentysome
more Freshman contributors, and more growing pains. '16 and '17 is where we will see the fruits of this timing-wise. We'll have upperclassmen out there who've been entrenched in this workman-like culture. And the new young studs, well they can redshirt and watch Barnett as a Jr go out and lay waste to opponent OL's while Sutton (if he's still around as a Sr) swats everything in sight like Darrelle Revis.
Can I get a hell yeah for that?
