Where are we relative to the rest of the Pac 12...

[CougEd]

While I think 2015 is another losing season, and losing Cooper early really hurts the rebuilding process, are we miles or feet behind UW who loses their front 7 on defense, and their front five on offense, with no QB on the roster?

Are we neck to neck with OSU or slightly ahead of them as they lose Mannion and their recruiting hasn't been the same lately.

Cal is ahead of us because of their QB. But Goff will be gone after 2015. We are in the same race as they are.

Stanford and Oregon are miles ahead of us. How we close the gap I don't know. It wont be next year, but 2016 I could see beating one of those teams.

CU- they have come a long way but have a long way to go. Their speed in below average on defense. We are neck and neck.

Utah- Ad just blew that program up they way Rawlins did. Unreal.

Where we are behind is UCLA, ASU, Oregon, USC, Stanford and Arizona.

 

[JBrown4435]

I would say we are in the bottom 4 for sure and could even be as low as 10th or 11th. Colorado didn't win many games last season but they were a lot closer than we were in most of them. Oregon State's coaching staff has majorly improved. Utah will regress. Cal keeps getting talent.

A lot rides on our QB and the defense.
This post was edited on 1/5 1:09 PM by JBrown4435

 

[Cougsocal]

Bottom rung recruiting takes its toll. Doba was canned because of the perception that his recruiting had fallen off. Under Wulff recruiting was utterly dreadful. Under Leach recruiting has improved from dreadful to competitive, but still bottom of the heap Pac-12. We still are 11 or 12 in the conference talentwise. Because of Leach's coaching skill we have fared better than Colorado on the field, and we might beat OSU next year. We are in the process of signing our first recruiting class in a decade where athleticism has been stressed over the scale and tape measure. Whether this is grasping at straws or whether Leach now has a good understanding of the type of player he needs to be sucessful, within in the parameters of our recruiting limitations, is yet to be seen. It took Price some time to dial it in. However, Price started out recruiting hot, which saved his neck. Leach has a long contract and Moos, who staked his reputation on this hire, protecting him. So he has time on his side, but he has not signed the talent needed for him to win 7-8 games, yet. This class maybe the first, it is the most promising, looking at the tapes.

So the long and short of it is, we are still in the basement, but Leach may finally have come up with a recruiting formula to get us out.

 

[CougEd]

We will see if their evaluation is correct

if speed and athleticism has been accurately evaluated. Where I disagree with you is in stating Price started out hot. Price got a franchise QB, but if you look at his recruiting classes his first five years, he was lucky if he hit on 50% of the kids. for every Ron Childs there was Reggie Cherry and a Matt Whitmire.

I would venture to say Paul Wulff had more success putting an offensive line together in the first four years than Mike Price, and that takes into account the 2008 class which was a disaster for olineman.

Price was able to piece things together and get into the contract position to get 98-2002.

 

[dgibbons]

Re: We will see if their evaluation is correct

Originally posted by CougEd:
if speed and athleticism has been accurately evaluated. Where I disagree with you is in stating Price started out hot. Price got a franchise QB, but if you look at his recruiting classes his first five years, he was lucky if he hit on 50% of the kids. for every Ron Childs there was Reggie Cherry and a Matt Whitmire.

I would venture to say Paul Wulff had more success putting an offensive line together in the first four years than Mike Price, and that takes into account the 2008 class which was a disaster for olineman.

Price was able to piece things together and get into the contract position to get 98-2002.

Other than the 2010 class, all of Wulff's classes were a disaster in general, and were a disaster in particular for the OL.

 

[CougEd]

Ok....but so were Price's...which was the point...IE he didn't start

out on fire.

 

[Coug1990]

Originally posted by JBrown4435:
I would say we are in the bottom 4 for sure and could even be as low as 10th or 11th. Colorado didn't win many games last season but they were a lot closer than we were in most of them.

You do realize that Colorado did not win any conference games last year. They lost by double digits in six of their losses, which is the same as the Cougars. In fact, two of those losses were much closer as Nevada and Stanford both scored near the end of the game to make the loss double digits.


Oregon State's coaching staff has majorly improved.

How do you know? Seriously, Anderson has not proven to be a better coach at the BCS level than Riley. He may end up better, or he may end up worse. But, to say OSU has majorly improved? I don't know.

Utah will regress. They should. Cal keeps getting talent. They have always gotten talent. It has not shown up on the field. I say prove it first.

A lot rides on our QB and the defense.
This post was edited on 1/5 1:09 PM by JBrown4435

 

[CrimsonDisciple]

Originally posted by CougEd:
While I think 2015 is another losing season, and losing Cooper early really hurts the rebuilding process, are we miles or feet behind UW who loses their front 7 on defense, and their front five on offense, with no QB on the roster?

Are we neck to neck with OSU or slightly ahead of them as they lose Mannion and their recruiting hasn't been the same lately.

Cal is ahead of us because of their QB. But Goff will be gone after 2015. We are in the same race as they are.

Stanford and Oregon are miles ahead of us. How we close the gap I don't know. It wont be next year, but 2016 I could see beating one of those teams.

CU- they have come a long way but have a long way to go. Their speed in below average on defense. We are neck and neck.

Utah- Ad just blew that program up they way Rawlins did. Unreal.

Where we are behind is UCLA, ASU, Oregon, USC, Stanford and Arizona.

We play Rutgers, Portland State and Wyoming in OOC. We play Colorado, OSU, and Cal. We're bringing most everyone back and Falk has proven that he's capable of throwing in this offense. I see us winning 7-8 games with 4 PAC 12 conference wins. Leach will get it done.

This post was edited on 1/5 4:06 PM by CrimsonDisciple

 

[Coug95man2]

I HOPE he gets it done… Hate the crystal ball stuff.

 

[Cougsocal]

Re: We will see if their evaluation is correct

Originally posted by CougEd:
if speed and athleticism has been accurately evaluated. Where I disagree with you is in stating Price started out hot. Price got a franchise QB, but if you look at his recruiting classes his first five years, he was lucky if he hit on 50% of the kids. for every Ron Childs there was Reggie Cherry and a Matt Whitmire.

I would venture to say Paul Wulff had more success putting an offensive line together in the first four years than Mike Price, and that takes into account the 2008 class which was a disaster for olineman.

Price was able to piece things together and get into the contract position to get 98-2002.

When you consider that Price's first recruiting class was 1990, as Erickson left after the 1989 class was signed, and it included Bledsoe, Sparks, Mobley, Burns, Hunter, Childs, Rushing, Patterson, Pointer, Carolan, Bobo, Shaw, McCloskey, Dunning, Hall, Reis, I believe, that is 15 eventual starters and a corp of which that took the Cougs to two bowl games, and with a little QB luck in 1993, three straight, it may be the best single class in school history. I will go to my grave believing the 1992 team was a Rose Bowl team had Bledsoe played anywhere near his potential prior to the Apple Cup,

As for Mark Whitmire, he thought he was the next in line to take Loertscher spot, when he was beaten out by Chris Hayes, he quit the team. If you recall be played quite a bit in 1991 and 1992. Stipid yes, a bust no.

As for Reggie Cherry, he had the misfortune of playing behind the best all round secondary quartet, and most durable, the Cougs have ever produced. Funny, as I recall, Cherry was the big name and Burns was a last second post signing day recruit, much like Lamont Thompson, a few years later.

 

[cr8zyncalif]

Interesting question, Ed. Here is my $0.02....well, maybe $0.05.

If you want to talk about clearly ahead or clearly behind in terms of overall team athletic quality depth I would put us clearly behind UCLA, ASU, Oregon and Stanford. Slightly behind UW (they have depth, but it is clear that their recruiting classes were grossly over-rated, based on results, so we are not far behind), Arizona (their quality is not awesome, but their depth is better in terms of both age and numbers), and USC (they are still very thin, even if they have some great individuals, so we are not as far behind here as you might think). We are roughly equal to or slightly ahead of Cal, Utah, Colorado and OSU. I'll note that Utah is not short of numbers but their overall quality is not at the level of the higher rated teams. I think the bottom 5 teams in the league in terms of depth (WSU, Cal, Utah, Colorado & OSU) are very similar in a macro sense but differ widely when individual position groups are compared.

Breaking that down a bit, I would say that on D our front guys would rank middle of the league (better than that on a good day, but they were too inconsistent to rate higher than the middle third for the entire season), our LB's and our DB's lower third. On O our receivers are top third of the league, our line will be middle third this year, our QB will have to prove himself (our biggest question mark) and if one of our RB's can develop to the point that he can get 2 yards after initial contact, we won't be at the bottom of the league and might legitimately be closer to the upper-middle at that position. We have speed and hands at RB, but lacked a power runner this year. I'm optimistic that one of the freshmen from this year will make that transition.

Our kicker, punter and return folks did not distinguish themselves this year; barely even making the bottom third. The good news is that there is a lot of room for improvement. We were arguably the worst in the league in overall special teams performance this year, from the standpoint of direct impact on wins/losses. Special teams directly cost us wins against Rutgers and Cal, and contributed to other losses.

Ed, I think you are wrong about anticipated wins/losses. We had a brutal injury year, and that combined with inept special teams kept us out of a bowl. The year before we were blessed from an injury standpoint, and that made it possible to win 6 games. I think it is fair to think in terms of an average injury year next year. If that happens, and we improve to merely adequate in special teams, then with our schedule for 2015, 6 wins looks pretty realistic. If our QB is ready to play from the beginning of the season, our FG kicker is actually good, and injuries treat us well, we could realistically win a couple more.

Of course, we don't play these games in a vacuum. The other team's situation is also relevant. What kind of coaching staff and team will the Utah dumpster fire be fielding? How will a new coach impact OSU? How will UW do after losing 3 projected NFL draft picks from an underperforming defense? While we are on the subject of UW, will Miles ever become a good passing QB? Is two years enough time for Sark to ruin USC? Will some really top level athletes emerge at Stanford? Will Colorado start to turn the corner? All of these things will impact our wins/losses next year, too, and they are totally out of our control.

Let's update this discussion after spring ball.

 

[longtimecoug]

Re: We will see if their evaluation is correct

Originally posted by CougEd:
if speed and athleticism has been accurately evaluated. Where I disagree with you is in stating Price started out hot. Price got a franchise QB, but if you look at his recruiting classes his first five years, he was lucky if he hit on 50% of the kids. for every Ron Childs there was Reggie Cherry and a Matt Whitmire.

I would venture to say Paul Wulff had more success putting an offensive line together in the first four years than Mike Price, and that takes into account the 2008 class which was a disaster for olineman.

Price was able to piece things together and get into the contract position to get 98-2002.

agreed

 

[Flatlandcoug]

How we compare against our schedule:

PSU - clearly better

@ Rutgers - about even. I believe we have the better team overall. We can win if we have fixed our special teams woes and have found good replacements in the DL and secondary.

Wyoming - clearly better

@ Cal - about even. People seem to forget that Cal went 1-6 to finish the season. We should have beat them at home. This game is a true toss up.

@ Oregon - big edge to Oregon. We'll run with them for a while but will not be able to stay up.

OSU - slight edge to WSU. They lose Mannion and we beat them with him in Corvallis. If not for their bizarre win over ASU, I'd feel absolutely cocky about this one.

@ Arizona - advantage Wildcats. This will be an interesting matchup because I think we'll score on them, but I won't pick us to win this one.

Stanford - edge to Stanford. I think the Cardinal is a program ready to fail. Their defense is going to get decimated in the offseason. They did finish the season pretty strong though. I will not be surprised to see them at 4-3 coming into our game. This is a definite upset special for us.

ASU - advantage Sun Devils. We might make it interesting in Pullman but the Halloween drubbing a couple years ago doesn't make me feel good about this one.

@ UCLA - advantage Bruins. With Hundley gone, it might be interesting. They also seemed to suffer from arrogance in 2014 with soft games against Cal and CU. They let a lot of teams hang around. Don't see us winning in Pasadena though.

CU - advantage WSU. Say what you want about hanging around, but the Buffs have lost 11 straight conference games and 25 of their last 27 conference games. They play UCLA, Stanford and USC in the weeks before us. We will get our revenge.

@ UW - slight edge to the mutts. This will be a winnable game because I think UW is in for a brutal 2015 campaign but we haven't shown well against the mutts in Seattle for a while now.

We will get to a bowl game in 2015 and I could see our ceiling at 9 games if everything went our way. I see 4 wins as the minimum likely number. I'd put the O/U at 6.5 just because I'm biased.

Ranking the conference next year:

1) Oregon

2) ASU
3) USC
4) Arizona
5) UCLA

6) Utah
7) Stanford

8) WSU
9) UW
10) Cal
11) OSU
12) CU

CU and Cal have shown signs of life but both seem to find ways to lose just as easily as we do.

 

[Glad Cougar]

I actually see a handful of teams catching up to UO next year....Mariota is THAT good. Ducks will be in the mix to repeat as conference champs, but I wouldn't put them way ahead of everyone else simply because they will have no experienced QB despite the rest of their considerable talent. Of course, they can prove me wrong.

Glad Cougar

 

[Coug95man2]

They have a RSSoph coming in (if we go strictly by seniority) by the name of Lockie. Played a bit when Mariota got injured but he's the "oldest" QB they've got. A couple RSFreshman and a true freshman… We shall see.

 

[Flatlandcoug]

Oregon is certainly not invincible. Florida went 48-7 when Tebow was QB and 15-11 in the two years after he left.

Originally posted by Glad Cougar:
I actually see a handful of teams catching up to UO next year....Mariota is THAT good. Ducks will be in the mix to repeat as conference champs, but I wouldn't put them way ahead of everyone else simply because they will have no experienced QB despite the rest of their considerable talent. Of course, they can prove me wrong.

Glad Cougar