gossamorharpy
Starter
I’ll tell ya what changed- Rhule got a call from a few select boosters saying “we didn’t pay 7 figures to land a tackle only to see him play all of 6 snaps while the rest of the lineman options got obliterated”Holgorsen really really hates pre-snap penalties and mental errors. All coaches do, but I get the sense it's just not something he wants to tolerate and he doesn't want to play guys who have that problem. My read on it (no inside info) is Gottula and Pritchett were the best overall tackles during camp, but due to the mental mistakes Holgorsen didn't want to commit. Something changed over the bye week, because Pritchett wouldn't have survived the MA or false start the first 4 weeks. Maybe Holgorsen had a change of heart over the bye week, but my guess is Rhule put his foot down and said we're going to play the better players.
Also a quirk that I assume has to do with recruiting promises - Pritchett was mainly a RT for Bama last year, he played a couple games at LT when Proctor was hurt but generally was RT. Gottula had pretty much exclusively played LT until last week. Maybe we flipped them because we were more confident in Gottula adapting easier, but Pritchett still has more experience at RT. My guess is we told Pritchett we would let him play LT when we recruited him, and most other teams probably wouldn't commit to that. I do think having the set line with the most talented players will pay dividends down the stretch.
Don’t think it’s that complicated. Pritchett is a mountain of a man, the other options are meh, you play the guy with the highest potential and the better run blocking option