The West Virginia Mountaineers defensive line took a huge blow this week, after Lamonte McDougle has informed the coaching staff that he will be transferring out of the program after the Spring semester.
The rumors of McDougles departures have been flying for the past couple weeks, but we received confirmation on Monday that it was more of a when, not if scenario and were asked to sit on the info because the staff was putting a full-court press on to keep the Freshman All-American in Morgantown. Well, the when in that equation is today, as Mitch Vingle was the first to publicly break the news via Twitter.
Received confirmation WVU DL Lamonte McDougle has quit the Mountaineer program.
Mitch Vingle (@MitchVingle) March 29, 2018
McDougles departure leaves the Mountaineer defensive line extremely thin, with just four defensive linemen on scholarship. West Virginia also lost Adam Shuler III and Jalen Harvey earlier this year to transfers. Sophomore Darius Stills is the only nose tackle remaining on the Spring roster. The coaching staff will now be forced to look at the graduate transfer market to help shore up the depth at the position.
A Deeper look into the Football Depth Chart Crisis
The depth at corner is hardly any better than defensive end but the players have far less experience. There are currently five scholarship corners on the roster with the recent departure of Kevin Williams. To make matters worse, the returning players have only three starts between them. One of these players, Derek Pitts, recently moved to corner from safety but has a pending gun charge from January. This could easily place the team with only four corners for part or the entire season depending on the verdict of his case. Similar to defensive ends, teams typically play more than two corners during a game and this is especially true in the pass heavy Big 12. In certain passing situations defensive coordinator Tony Gibson will have three corners on the field at one time. If there was an injury, it is possible that every corner on scholarship could see meaningful playing time in any given game. With no proven players at cornerback, it seems that it could be a tough season on the backend of the defense.
WVUs defense wasnt much better than ours last year and theyre losing a lot of their best guys.
If Pruitt and the staff can tighten up the defense and just keep WVU from going off, well have a chance in that game. Probably asking too much to get a win against Holgerson and Grier in year one of the rebuild, but it will be a game we should be in at least.
Thanks ChattaTNVol. I just hope we can survive that wikipedia offense. Haha. And its crazy that WV will only have 4 scholarship DL and 4 CBs with one of those possibly getting suspended. That is nuts.
Vols win both of those games (UF and WVU). And as secking pointed out the other day, When Auburn plays UT it will be their 7th game in a row without a bye. UT will be coming off a bye week. Thats another W.
10-2.
Actually it does. If you are saying that they are a bunch of quitters, that is pretty much a full on indictment of their mental toughness.
I was talking about Missouri and Dooley's wikipedia offense and WV but yeah add Florida in there too. Haha. Can we find some negative articles about Alabama and Georgia now. Haha
Hahahaha nice.
Well after some quick research Bama comes to Knoxville this fall for their EIGHTH straight game. Theyll be beat up and exhausted and likely overlook the Vols, looking forward to the bye upcoming before facing LSU. Thats likely a W as well. Wow 11-1 this fall, boys! Its happening...
Well after some quick research Bama comes to Knoxville this fall for their EIGHTH straight game. Theyll be beat up and exhausted and likely overlook the Vols, looking forward to the bye upcoming before facing LSU. Thats likely a W as well. Wow 11-1 this fall, boys! Its happening...
Well after some quick research Bama comes to Knoxville this fall for their EIGHTH straight game. Theyll be beat up and exhausted and likely overlook the Vols, looking forward to the bye upcoming before facing LSU. Thats likely a W as well. Wow 11-1 this fall, boys! Its happening...