I don't know enough about Rome's personality to say whether his loss is good for the psyche of the team. The airport paper towel dispenser incident is confirmed, and there's been mention of others. A close friend of mine says she's friends with his girlfriend, and that he explosively yells at her (his girlfriend) and is very over-bearing a la anger management issues.
Regardless, you're probably right. Maybe his transferring will benefit the team from a psychological standpoint. It's just a really difficult situation when you consider the fact that we're losing two starters, Eric Martin, and now Rome to transfer. It leaves us even thinner in a unit where we couldn't afford to be any thinner.
Hopefully it's for the better, because there's not much else to say about it. I'll just be very disappointed if another relatively successful offensive performance is wasted away next year because our defensive line is a sieve.
Yeah, although (reiterating myself I guess,) you're not off base about the importance of line depth...by
any means. There are a lot of positions that you can plug in an uber-athletic but completely green kid and get immediate, positive results. QB obviously is generally not one of those positions, but I'd argue that it's even HARDER to put in a first or second year kid at a line posiiton on either side of the ball, and not see a detrimental effect. The line is different from EVERY other position in two crucial ways (especially at the college level): One, a 21 or 22 year old kid is physically more mature than an 18 or 19 year old. The relevance of that is obvious. Two, line play is FAR more complicated than a lot of people think it is. I'll never forget listening to Pelini talk about how many mistakes Lavonte made in a game, and the stat sheet showed him with 20 tackles and a sack. But that's the thing about every position other than the lines: instincts and raw talent can carry you over mental mistakes. Lavonte could blow his assignment, but use his incredible combination of elite athleticism, steel eyed determination, and natural instincts to make a hell of a play when he really should have been made to look awful.
That just doesn't happen on the line. If you are supposed to run contain to the weak side but you plunge forward and in on a bull rush, you have effectively conceded five yards already at a minimum. No quickness or instinct will negate the error and the damage.
The bolded is basically a verbatim representation of my feelings for 2013. I suspect maybe we differ in that I had already hitched my wagon about midway through LAST season to guys like Valentine and Curry and that DE from Ohio (2012 recruit) who's name escapes me at the moment...and we landed Gregory as well. Jucos are dice rolls, but we really need that kid to provide an immediate impact. And we need markedly better tackle and LB play. I think we've got a higher caliber of athlete at the LB spot than we've had in a long time. (Although, granted, they are really young.) It really comes down the ends and especially the tackles for me. We need a youngster to play big for us. Actually, we need two, if we're honest. No disrespect to the upperclassmen, but we've seen what they've got. It's not at the level I would say we need to be at, and I'd bet I'm not alone on that.
