Everything coming out of camp says Collins is going to be special, probably not this year, although we will see flashes if he stays healthy.
I love our schedule. It sets us up perfectly to get theses guys experience. Even if we lose to UCLA we have 2 bye weeks and the bottom of the big 10 to get get all these guys up to speed. By the time we hit November they will have so much practice and game experience they won't be freshman anymore.
That said, I'm off the kool aid train because of the KW injury, and I'm glad I am. Not necessarily because of the injury, mostly because it brought the facts to light, and knocked me back to reality. KW was our third most experienced returning dline with 4 tackles. That's scary, especially when you consider Randle has been here 5 years and has never played a full season healthy.
We have mountains of potential, but I'm really worried about the young guys staying healthy, they might not have the strength to hold up quite yet. Look what happened to Curry and Moss last year, barely got any time before they got hurt. Mcmullens been hurt spring and fall, so I don't see him making it thru the year. Hearing about the young guys is great, for the future, but if they start going down because they aren't ready we won't have the defense we could have, and we will see another blowout.
I'm not down by any means, we still win 10 games, I just think we're a year away from tge defense being truly dominate again. The schedule is a big help and well be playing good D by seasons end, but I got a feeling were going to pretty banged up again come the Iowa game. If we somehow keep everyone healthy we could really pull off a great year. Thats going to require the coaches to rotate freely, and a little bit of luck.
BTW BTN will be here on Monday, will be interesting to see what they have to say. They have mostly been honest about teams weaknesses that I've noticed, but not shy about heaping on the praise to the strengths, so the kool aid should start to flow again.