How Young is our team this year?

[fishwater99]

I keep hearing Mullen say that we are a young team over and over.
I know we start a few young players but is it really that many?
How do we compare to other SEC teams?

 

[KeyserSoze1999]

As long as we field a team made up of College kids, we will always be "young". If we are to ever have an "old" team, we are gonna have to do like BYU and send our College kids off on Mormon Missions and get them back in 4 or 5 years. Then we can have 23 / 24 year old Redshirt Freshmen and even 26 / 29 year old Redshirt Seniors.

Seriously, Alabama's QB Hurts is a Freshman and their RB Bo Scarborough this is his first year to start at RB. AJ Brown is a first year WR for Ole Miss---was playing for Starkville High School last year. The Mason kid QB for Georgia is a Freshman and he looks fairly poised, at least as poised as our Redshirt Sophomore Nick Fitzgerald.

 

[tenureplan]

It means

I keep hearing Mullen say that we are a young team over and over.
I know we start a few young players but is it really that many?
How do we compare to other SEC teams?

That our most talented players are underclassmen for the most part plus we are having to play with inexperience in some places like corner. But go ahead and ignore this post and continue repeat posting.

 

[KurtRambis4]

I'm sure

this is something you can look up yourself.

 

[Uncle Ruckus]

Top 20 young *

 

[thf24]

It's bs that we're particularly young age-wise, but I think what Mullen means when he says that is that we're relatively inexperienced. Which I can much more easily believe, but the point is still overblown.

 

[PBRME]

He's found his new dead horse.

 

[BiscuitEater]

How do we compare to other SEC teams?

Kind of depends on your definition of 'young?' Is it young, meaning mostly underclassmen or young meaning 'not much experience?M

ullen has red-shirted the vast majority of each in-coming class (+even some incoming JC). Think we have only played 3 or 4 true freshmen this year (Spencer, Simmons and Couch are the only ones that come to mind)

When you add 20+ true FR .. to ~ 20+ RS FR and have ~15-18 SO .. you will ALWAYS have somewhere between ~ 55 - 75% 'young' players (when the definition of young = underclassmen)

 

[Dogariffic]

Mullen has always said we are a developmental program and I have bought into that. My impression was that we would move forward as an established sustainable program due to this philosophy.
Prior to this year he was successful, in my mind, but something obviously happen. I did not expect this sort of drop off from players who have been in the program 2-3 years even if their previous playing time is limited.
I think Bear leaving and the other receiver being removed from school and BBrown going pro combined with losing our two corners hurt us a lot. I believe we found out that a developmental program needs players to play their full time here....basically....because we don't have the depth to replace them.
Of course none of this explains the O line!

 

[Bulldogg31]

He said this in a post-game interview with Jim Ellis. He said "young may not be the right word...we're inexperienced in a lot of key spots."

He then mentioned losing starters to injuries (legit) and some guys that should still be here to the draft (legit) and some upperclassmen that haven't worked out (that's on coaching and talent).

 

[Junction John]

It's a clever strategy - don't play anyone until they are juniors, then you always have the "inexperienced" card to play.**

 

[kired]

I think he means we've got a lot of freshmen with late / August birthdays that never got held back a year in elementary - so they were only 17 years old when the fall semester started

 

[TheStateUofMS]

Young enough to still be on their parent's health insurance.

I keep hearing Mullen say that we are a young team over and over.
I know we start a few young players but is it really that many?
How do we compare to other SEC teams?

You got until age 26. BYU cannot say the same.

 

[Hoover Dawg]

Upper class men aren't talented (and suffered some attrition) and lower class men have a little bit. Just some bad recruiting in 2012 and 2013. That is really all there is to it.

 

[GloryDawg]

To be honest we probably are but that is no excuse for losing to USA, BYU and KY. Those teams are not that good.

 

[Indndawg]

That's Football

 

[stateu1]

I lol'd.

That's Football

 

[SheltonChoked]

Where we are young is in leadership.

Dak Prescott is such a powerful natural leader. People flock to him. But, because of that, no other leaders developed. Look at the current roster of Sr's, the players in the system that should be stepping up and taking control and blame them:
Richie Brown,
Kivan Coman
Ashton Shumpert
Tolando Cleveland
Jammal Clayborn
Justin Senior
John Calvin
Fred Ross
Torey Dale
Nick James
AJ Jefferson
Ced Jiles

All of them got used to being motivated by Dak instead of becoming a leader. It's very very hard to force someone to become a leader, you have to develop it over time. Dak covered all of that.

Mullen thought he could pull it out by having the QB's compete over the summer to make one of them step up. The players didn't know how, and his plan didn't work. Probably for the first time ever for Mullen. Before he'd had leaders at QB (Dak, Tyson Lee, Tebow, Leak, Johnson, Smith, and Harris) I think Dan expected one of them to step up. They didn't and here we are. Fitz seems to be learning to be the team leader.

As for other teams and how they handle it. Alabama had a similar problem 2 years ago, but they are Alabama and have enough sheer talent to overcome it. A&M has had the issue for 3 years now, that's why they've folded after the bama loss for 3 years now.

 

[IBleedMaroonDawg]

He said this in a post-game interview with Jim Ellis. He said "young may not be the right word...we're inexperienced in a lot of key spots."

He then mentioned losing starters to injuries (legit) and some guys that should still be here to the draft (legit) and some upperclassmen that haven't worked out (that's on coaching and talent).

I don't know of anything that has hurt us worse than the preseason DB injuries. This really could have at least changed our chance at a bowl this year seeing how many deep passing TDs we have given up.

 

[fishwater99]

this is something you can look up yourself.

Here you go smartass...


From the 2 Deep Deth chart for this weeks game

18 Seniors
12 Juniors
14 Sophmores
7 RS-Freshmen
2 True Freshmen

 

[DudyDog]

Ok; I broke it down for you guys....

I went to the stat sheet for the Ky game and broke down the play by play summary to see exactly who was involved with each play. For those of you unfamiliar with the play by play summary is breaks it down by:

Offense:
ball carrier on a rush
passer and receiver on a pass

Defense:
tackler(s)

So when you see these numbers below, they represent who was in on a play; either rushing a ball, passing a ball, receiving a ball or making a tackle.

Here is the breakdown by class on offense and defense.

Offense: 90% either Fr. or So.
Fr. 17
So. 57 (21 of these are passes from Fitz)
Jr. 2
Sr. 6

Defense: 48% either Fr. or So.
Fr. 14
So. 23
Jr. 27
Sr. 13

Out of 159 players involved in a play, only 19 were Sr's.


For ***** and giggles I went back and broke down last year's Kentucky game. Here are those totals.

Offense: 24% either Fr. or So.
Fr. 21
So. 5
Jr. 27
Sr. 56

Defense: 24% either Fr. or So.
Fr. 16
So. 5
Jr. 49
Sr. 16

So to compare Kentucky 2015 to Kentucky 2016:

Offense:
2015 24% of plays were made by Fr. or So.
2016 90% of plays were made by Fr. or So.

Defense:
2015 24% of plays were made by Fr. or So.
2016 48% of plays were made by Fr. or So.

 

[fishwater99]

That is a good breakdown of Who has the ball, but doesn't tell you squat about what other players are on the field, like the OL etc..
Fitz also had 16 rushes to go with his 21 pass attempts. Those numbers will change once we get Holloway back, unfortunately.

 

[KurtRambis4]

I wasn't

Here you go smartass...

the one asking for it, Einstein.

 

[DudyDog]

That is a good breakdown of Who has the ball, but doesn't tell you squat about what other players are on the field, like the OL etc..
Fitz also had 16 rushes to go with his 21 pass attempts. Those numbers will change once we get Holloway back, unfortunately.

For the offense, you are correct. However, the OL is easy to figure. We play about 7 guys on the OL per game. What I broke down tells you who is involved with a play from a playmaker standpoint. We had 11 WR/TE play and 4 RB play against Ky. So among 16 (adding Fitz) offensive playmakers, 90% of the touches were made by Fr. or So. It makes it easy to figure the other 10% were from Shump and Ross. So when you go into a new season and you see the stat "returning production", you will see a %, in this case it would be 90%. And think about this.....you lose your 10% after this year, (Shump/Ross), and the other 90% were by Fr. or So. So that means 90% of our offensive production against Ky. this year will not only be back next year, but in 2018 as well.

As for Holloway cutting into Fitz's carries....Fitz has 96 rushes in 6 full games, or 16 per game. He rushed 16 times vs Ky, his avg. If Holloway comes back, he will cut into Shump and Williams numbers, along with the Fr. depending on how Dan uses him.

I can go back and figure the plays made by the OL by class and adjust all the numbers, but that's gonna cost somebody free chat.

Defensively, it gives you a truer (I didn't say true, as in precisely) picture of who is actually making the plays, as it's strictly based on who made the tackle. As we all know, if the DL does its job, it frees up the LB's to make tackles. These numbers don't compensate for the DL doing their job on any given play.

But overall, you can still get a sense of who is involved in making plays and draw a pretty good conclusion of whether you have a young or older team. See the percentage comparison of 2015 and 2016 as examples.

 

[KurtRambis4]

So what you're saying

is that he (Dan) is pretty accurate in his assertion?

 

[DudyDog]

is that he (Dan) is pretty accurate in his assertion?

I didn't really say anything to be honest. Posts in the thread were going back and forth if we were young or not, so I did what I thought would give us some numbers to look at and make a determination from those numbers. As my boss used to so eloquently say....er, shout; Numbers don't lie!

But, if you're asking my opinion....what I took from the numbers were that our skill players on offense are definitely young. You can't look past 90% of our touches on offense were from Fr. or So. 0% from Jr's and 10% from Sr's. As I was typing that in the above post, it dawned on me that 90% of that production would be back for the next 2 years. Unless of course someone jumps as a Jr after next season. That is powerful. I'd bet you a ham sandwich no other team that played last Saturday night could say that they would have 90% of their offensive production back the next TWO seasons. That was encouraging to me.

As fishwater mentioned, that did not take into account the OL. Against Ky, we started 3 Sr's, 1 Jr. and 1 Fr. And looking at the participation list it looked like Elgton Jenkins may have been the only other OL to play in an offensive play. We had others that played on XP/FG, but I don't recall seeing anyone else play in an offensive play. Correct me if I'm wrong! So if only those 6 played, we had 3 Sr's, 1 Jr, 1 So and 1 Fr play on the OL. That would skew the OL as to being upperclassmen, or in this debate, OLDER. I don't know about you, but I don't look at that as being a bad thing. I think our younger talent would have a higher ceiling than our older talent on the OL has displayed.

Defensively, it was pretty much even, 48% of the guys making plays were Fr. or So, 52% were Jr. or Sr. Breaking it down even further quickly, it looks like we had 8 Sr. play on D....some may have only been on special teams, not sure...but out of 77 tacklers named on the stat sheet, 24 were from Sr's.

So to take it a little further, 31% of the 52% were from Sr's, so 69% of our defensive production will be back next yr.

In summary, 90% of offensive production will be back next year and 69% of defensive production will be back next year that made plays against Ky. Saturday night.

So, to me, yes we are an overall young team.

In closing, offensively, we are an extremely young team in the skill positions. An older team on the OL. Defensively, with 48% of the plays being made by Fr. or So, 21% by Jr's and 31% by Sr's, I'd say we were fairly young on defense. If you break the 48% down to 24% Fr. and 24% So., then 21% Jr. and 31% Sr. and look at it that way, I think you'd probably want more production from you Jr. and Sr. classes than we got Saturday night. Therefore my assumption of fairly young on D.

Just my .02

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

We're "not using all our scholarships young" this year

 

[fishwater99]

On defense, just because a player doesn't make a tackle doesn't mean he wasn't involved on the play by drawing a double team or locking down a receiver in coverage.(not that our guys ever do that).
You need to keep track of how many snaps each player played for to get a real read on how young we are.
UK was not a good game to use for the season so far b/c we did play younger guys(finally).