O-line: Worse, slightly—until we can figure out the snap count and quit killing drives with holding penalties. We lose Ricky Henry—maybe our best O-lineman—and D.J. Jones and Keith Williams. (And Mike Smith was already lost.) The guys behind them right now are Brent Qvale, Marcel Jones, Andrew Rodriguez. I wouldn’t be surprised to see guys shifted around to maybe get Yoshi on the field since he’s behind Sirles right now. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the guys who redshirted last year. Like Mike Moudy.
WRs/TE: Better. We lose a tremendous athlete (Niles Paul) and maybe the best hands on the team ( McNeill). But keep Kinnie, Gilleylen and Quincy Enunwa. These guys will step up. We’ll be okay, maybe better. And Ben Cotton, despite all the grief he gets, is actually a pretty good blocker.
QB: Better. Martinez, healthy and with an offseason of training. He’s gonna run wild. I hope he figures out how to work through the progression when we decide to air the ball.
RB: Worse. Don’t get me wrong, I love Rex. But he can’t do it alone. And I’m not sure what kind of depth we got. We're gonna miss Roy. Dontrayevous was stupid for leaving.
kicker: *sigh* We may never have a kicker as good at Henery again.
OL --- Worse --- losing Henry, Williams and Jones will hurt. The returning people should all improve: M. Jones (who needs to get stronger), Sirles (who needs to get stronger), Yoshi (who needs to drop 30 pounds), Caputo, Rodriguez, Quave, etc. But these guys were undisciplined, penalty prone and inconsistent in terms of intensity and physicality. My fear in the Big 10 is that if our guys on the OL stay somewhat... fat and not overly strong... they will struggle. So.... if the conditioning improves, and the returning guys all improve... they may be close to last years crew. But the discipline (lack thereof) is a coaching thing... and if that and conditioning do not improve, then the OL gets worse.
WR stay the same... But still are not a strong crew. Losing Paul is, in a sense, addition by subtraction. He took off 1/2 the plays, had horrible hands and was really spotty. He will not be missed overly. Kinnie and Enunwa have to improve a great deal. If so the WR's stay about where they were --- and will be in the bottom 3-4 units in the conference.
TE will improve as two good players, Reed and Cotton return more experienced.
RB. Will? Who knows. Helu was a great player and will be missed. Rex is solid. It depends on how good guys like Green and Abdullah are as true freshman. So this one is hard to measure. I'd venture a guess that the RB situation will not be a weakness... and likely not a strength either. It is we OK. Unless one or both of the frosh guys are the real deal right out of the box... at which point the group will be better than OK
QB --- the play at QB last year was abysmal. So the standards are really, really low. So... sure... things must improve, that is the only direction that things can go. Our passing game last year was a grave liability with both TMart and Green --- both possessing poor mechanics and neither having displayed the ability to deliver the ball consistently through the air. Both struggled mightily with fumbles. Both made routine poor decisions on throwing into coverage (picks or near picks resulting). TMart, in particular, is among the worst I have ever seen in terms of taking needless sacks --- never even thinking about throwing the ball away. Neither step up to evade pressure well. Both showed the signs of stress and neither handled pressure well. Both showed confusion far more often than is typical for D1 QB's. Most of this falls into either of two categories (or both) --- bad coaching and inexperience. I'd guess the coaching will not improve (unless a new offensive staff is hired and that seems unlikely) but experience should help with the jitters, the confusion, and the mistakes and even perhaps the fumbles. So... the QB situation should get better --- but will still likely be quite weak .. in the absolute sense.
Overall assessment... we will once more have an anemic offense that may be held at 10 points or under in 3-4 games next year. If they limit the turnovers and do not allow the defense of the opponent to score.. we might still be in some of those low scoring games. But... this offense will score precious few points against even a decent defense. This is both due to predictable and limited scheming, and limited skill.
