AUgryphon

The OP raised an interesting idea, intentionally or not. Is there such a thing as human rights apart from a cultural agreement. Meaning, did God establish human rights that he will judge us based on (among other things)? I'm not sure I have a confident answer. I very much believe God established morality, but I don't think "human rights" is a special moral category. Maybe it is. Definitely gives me something to think about.

Like, can I imagine a society that is godly where you don't have the right to speak in public at all? Everyone has to be silent in public spaces. It's a weird scenario, but it tests the limits of what I think about human rights and how they relate to God and general morality.

Our OL numbers are bolstered by the freshmen, and it looks like AG doesn’t want to rely on freshmen for the 2 deep. Disregarding the freshmen makes the OL numbers make more sense. Have 12-13 non-freshmen compete for actual playing time.

I don't know what to think about this roster. If I had more faith in the new offensive line I could convince myself we will be good. The running game could be elite with a well coached line, and that will open up the passing game. I expect defense to be competent if not great under DJ.

I'm sure this will never happen, but they should go back to forcing kids to sit a year when transferring unless they move up from G5. That might slow the chaos down and put some agents out of business.

Feels weird to be at the end of the portal window and still have so many significant contributor spots open.

Based on who the staff has pursued and what “insiders” are saying we are still looking for starter level help at these positions:

OG -missed on Bah
TE- just what insiders are saying… they still want a game changer here
DL- may want 2 starter level, but at least 1
DE - I assume Womack for this spot
WR- Staff has pursued many coveted receivers and missed on all non-USF guys.. they clearly want another
CB - my own gut feeling, would like to have another cover guy who can push for starting role

And we should expect several depth pieces and projects to round out the numbers. I just don’t know why the depth pieces are waiting until the last second.

Neither line of scrimmage screams “talent advantage”. Feels like we are missing a dominant OG, and a couple of dominant defensive linemen. Those are dudes you have to spend big on. Our refusal to even target those types of transfers makes me wonder what Auburn’s NIL really looks like.

Good question. Were we overpaying? Did new staff not value them? Seems like gross mismanagement to not lock down at least 5 or 6 of them even if you aren’t in love with their potential. Are you going to portal 10 new guys?

I’m also frustrated that our portaling efforts appear to be completely serial, grinding for one transfer at a time. Every position room should vigorously recruiting in parallel, signing 3 or 4 guys a day. I don’t get it. Time is running out and the current pace won’t get it done.

I sort of agree with metafour. We pay DK big bucks to stick around, and then he just transfers next season anyway. These agents only thing that might make sense is a 2 year contract that is heavily back loaded to the 2nd year. Otherwise let him go and spend big money elsewhere.

Indiana narrative is going to justify a lot of weak roster management going forward.

If I wanted to criticize the current staff, I was disappointed that they hadn't fully tampered and there weren't 25 portal guys signing with us the first weekend. We had the time and plenty of connections (think Bank's knowledge of all the Tennessee defensive players) to have stuff set up and ready to go. Assuming we were going to find everything we need on the open market seems unlikely.

I was also concerned that the staff just wouldn't be good at securing the guys they identify. Whatever you want to say about Freeze, he and Redmond eventually figured this out, and our new General manager has never portalled in the big leagues. I don't know that these fears have been alleviated, but signing The OT from Mich St is a good sign that they can get it done.

The clear positives are that:

There are a lot of visitors going in and out of the athletic complex, even more than we are made aware of.

The On3 recruiting guys seem very confident that we will get to 90 or 95 scholarship players.

Golesh appears to be well respected by his players such that most of the good ones followed him to Auburn.

JLee has clearly been converted by the new staff, as he is very vocal about how much he likes them (I think Golesh came out and just hung with the beat writers and made them feel welcomed... smart move).

Paying what we did for Byrum is a sign of a "win now" mentality.

The staff is quality and it speaks highly of Golesh that he was willing to bring in alpha coaches, and they they agreed to work for him.


The verdict will be out for a while on whether the staff can scout and develop talent, so there is no point in getting excited or upset about that now. If they get the roster to 95, and they appear to get the guys they target, then there won't be much to complain about. I guess we could also evaluate from a distance whether or not enough targeted players were sure fire impact contributors. As much as I hate what the portal has done to recruiting, there is a perverse joy in watching a new staff build a team almost from scratch.

I'm ready to get the USF and Howard transfers out of the way so we can move on to the lines.

WR room already seems crowded with the USF guys, and I still hope we grab an elite P4 receiver.

Haven’t heard anything about Derrick Smith’s intentions. Maybe they convince him to move to defense.

Ole Miss has deeper pockets than us? That’s unexpected.