ArmyVet83;2128876; said:
Great write-up LJB. I think your "ratings" were hard but fair.
I have to ask, do you contribute the "performance" of most of the recruits during Tressel's reign to be that of poor evaluation by the coaching staff during the recruiting process or the quality of coaching during the athletes tenure at tOSU?
I understand injuries and attrition will happen but it appears to me there was a combination of both during the Tressel years especially the quality of discipline amongst the student/athletes as a whole.
What is your perspective?
That's a great question, and I don't know if there is a single answer, as I think that a combination of factors was at work.
I am not alarmed by the fact the 27.5% of Tressel's recruits have busted out so far. I suspect that most schools have a similar bust rate.
Most kids who become busts have character issues, which can broadly be classified as academics, criminality, and motivation, often with plenty of overlap. It is difficult to determine which kids will be character risks, especially because character issues often do not arise until after a kid leaves home for the first time and goes off to college. I think that Tressel recruited a few obvious character risks (Maurice Clarett, Jamel Turner, and Jaamal Berry come immediately to mind), but not an unusually high number.
I think that the staff reached on too many kids. Probably 25-30 of the kids who received low ratings (2.5 stars or less) really didn't have the talent to play at Ohio State; there are probably 10-15 kids on the current roster who would fall into the same category. While it is sometimes difficult to identify character risks, it should be a lot easier to gauge a kid's talent level. The Tressel staff missed on 20% of its talent evaluations, which is way too high. I doubt that Meyer-Pantoni will miss on that many kids.
The staff did not recruit enough superior athletes on the lines. And once they got the linemen into the program, the staff bulked them up, which reduced their athleticism even further. Robert Rose is a great example. Rose was probably the most athletic lineman who signed with Ohio State. The kid entered school at 260 pounds, and he was a beast. The staff bulked him up to 295, and he couldn't move. Don't expect to see this happen under Meyer -Marotti.
The Tressel staff were never particularly dynamic recruiters, and I believe that they got lazy at times, which explains quite a few of the talent misses. Tressel's inability/unwillingness to discipline certain players led to some of the more egregious character issues.
t_BuckeyeScott;2128753; said:
Looking at the big picture it's clear why OSU had problems: the lines. We had no 5* defensive or offensive lineman. And especially a paucity of 4* offensive lineman.
I was never really a Bollman basher, but this makes the Oline recruiting and development fairly clear. He was not up to Ohio State standards when compared with the rest of the team.
Well, there we're only twelve players who graded out at 4.5* or 5.0*, and two of them were on the offensive line. The bigger problems were: (1) that there were only two 4.0* OL; (2) most of the 3.5* OL (Boone, Adams, Shugarts) should have had better careers; and (3) most of the 3.0* OL got their jobs by default because there were inadequate numbers of OL to compete with them. However, I do think that it's fair to blame Bollman for the overall underachievement of the OL during the Tressel era.
Buckeye86;2128718; said:
What I wouldn't give to see this defense together in their prime at Ohio State for a season or two.
And that's the real key to success. With rare exception, every starter is going to be at least a 3.0* player; the problem is getting a group of great players together at the same time. If you look at the 2002 team, the Buckeyes had six 4.5-5.0* performers playing together - Mike Doss, Will Smith, Mike Nugent, Michael Jenkins, Chris Gamble, and Maurice Clarett (for that one year). Add in a 4.0* quarterback (Craig Krenzel), middle linebacker (Matt Wilhelm), nickel back (Will Allen), and punter (Andy Groom), plus 3.5* performers such such as Tim Anderson, Darrion Scott, Kenny Peterson, Dustin Fox, Donnie Nickey, Cie Grant, Alex Stepanovich, and Shane Olivea, and you can see why that team won a national championship.
OHSportsFan;2128893; said:
Really, what's striking to me, is that only 3 of Tressel's classes were qualified as being 2.5*'s or greater in terms of on and off-field performance according to LJB's very objective view. I'd say 2.5 stars is what most would consider pretty average, yet barely any of the classes met that criteria, and the average (2.08 stars) is actually pretty lackluster performance in recruiting success.
Yet, he was largely one of the most dominant coaches over his, or any 10 year, span. That, to me, really speaks to 1) How good a manager he was at winning his way and 2) how low the Big Ten was. There were certainly some good Buckeye squads, but I think we'd be lying if we couldn't look back, as LJB has done, and wonder how good they were really were.
The thing is, you don't need a whole recruiting class to do well. What you really need for 1/2 of each class to do well. That way, during any given four-year period, you should have 40-45 players who can play, which is really all you need to succeed.
