Is depth the issue?

Everyone is beat up. It comes down to good coaching, toughness and mental fortitude. We lack all 3 of these components.

 
"THE" issue.

Haha.

Just one of many.

Year seven, where did we gain significant or valuable depth? At each position group, who got better as the season went on? In what areas as a whole did you see improvement as a unit as the season progressed?

Sure you might be able to name a couple guys or a few things that improved throughout, but not many. What questions that we had headed into this season will not be questions headed into next season?

 
The DL depth might be a bit of an issue, but that is something that reflects on Pelini as well. He did the recruiting, and managed to have bare cupboards at the position after the 2011 season. WR was not the key point in the last two games. Hell, in Sept it was considered to be the best in the B1G.

This is not the NY Jets with a GM giving the coaches nothing to work with. a 7th Year college coach has no one to blame but himself for any issues with depth. He simply didn't recruit well enough.

 
I'm not even sure if recruiting is the issue. I see little player development, game to game, year to year. Sure, some players transcend, Suh, Abdullah, David, Prince, RG, but for the most part, Bo's teams don't improve much through the season. I bet if we play Minn at the beginning of the year, we win, by a good margin. They were able to coach their guys up, keep improving through the year, give a game to Ohio St. and beat us on the road.

 
It's definitely a depth problem...our second and third string defense can't keep outside containment any better than the first string and the back ups tackle just as poorly.

 
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It's part of it, especially considering how many guys tap out almost every time they get hit.

 
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Yes Eric, that is part of it. We have not developed players very well either. It all leads back to coaching, experience and their ability to do the job. This is and has been an on the job training problem. Not qualified, not capable of change, unknowing of how recruiting works, anger issues. There are many reasons.

 
No. Lack of mental toughness is the #1 issue. Co-#1 issue is lack of coaching competence, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. A good RB coach and a good WR coach isn't enough when the guy calling the plays has no idea what he's doing.

 
The depth problem is due to coaches not letting people play enough b/c they dont know every single aspect of the stupid schemes we run. So basically, its on the coaches. I actually think theres a fair amount of talent on sidelines.

 
Due to injuries on that last possession at one point our WR's were 2 sophomore walk ons, 1 true freshman and a sparingly used guy coming off an ACL tear....Hovey, Reilly, PiersonEl, Allen.

 
I don't think you can really can really blame lack of depth for who was playing wideout late in the game. As Warrior says, we were left with Hovey, Reilly, Pierson El, and Allen.

Bell, Westercamp, and Moore were real hurt. We lost two major contributors - Burtch and Turner - before the season even started. I think we're having some exceptionally bad injury luck at wideout this year.

 
A lack of depth is poor developement of the backups by the coaching staff. I'm 100% sure that, with 105 man roster, there should be at least 4 deep at every position. QB, RB, each OL position, each DL and LB position, each WR position (even in a 4 WR set... especially if you use a lot of spread...) and so on. It's not about not having people to out into position, it's about not having people who have been prepared to effectively play in the position. That's lack of depth, and that's on the coaching staff.

It's not like the NFL where you only have 53 men on active roster at any point in the season. Even the 85 man travel roster can be changed at any point in the season. So depth of players isn't the problem, it's depth of prepared backups.

 
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