What spin? So you are saying the DT recruiting failures since last year are equally the fault of Taylor and Salavea? Or 1/3 each if you include Wright? Ok, I accept that explanation. Wright is gone, Taylor is probably NFL bound before too long, so then there will still be one coach left who isn't recruiting DTs well.
I appreciate your perspective, Let me reply...
Well first of all from a macro perspective UM doesn't exclusively recruit by position. For example, Joe was a big part of recruiting Francis Mauigoa, Francisco Mauigoa and Jayden Wayne. Three huge recruits and impactful signees already. Agree?
Second of all, in the 2023 class we only landed Horton, which I agree is light, and I agree that Joe shoulders a solid amount of blame. We should have gotten 2+. He was also the primary on Moten in 2022, fwiw. But he was also part of landing Jackson out of the portal right? And Deen, right? Honestly Mario is as much a part of every single kid's recruitment, and its all hands on deck, so saying concretely who gets crowned and who gets blamed in absolute terms is pretty ridiculous. We can make educated guesses, but really the only ones who know are inside Hecht or the insiders, and frankly it feels they might have been off on some coaching perspective stuff so far. But lets message board the **** out of it anyway.
So it seems that so far he's been a key part of the recruitment of Francis Mauigoa, Francisco Mauigoa, Jayden Wayne, Joshua Horton, Jackson and Deen, at the least right?
But most of the hand-wringing seems to be about our failure to land another DT in the spring portal.
Which leads to third of all, as alluded to above, we have two DL coaches. Not a DT coach and a DE coach. And while Taylor is clearly the lead DL coach, they both recruit the whole line. This board can't seem to process this. So this "Joe is failing at DT in the spring portal" while sparing Taylor as some sacred cow is bull****. And none of this even accounts for regional recruiting or connective recruiting (where there is a connection or prior relationship, etc.).
Which leads to fourth of all, right now we have more elite 2024 HS DL seriously interested (UOV's, multiple visits, bringing parents, saying the right things, scheduling OVs) than I can ever remember in UM history (especially at DT btw). So the DL coaches (Taylor and Joe) both deserve some credit for the work to date. And yes, of course, what matters is if they sign. But you can't have anyone signed in May, and its a numbers game, and we hold a lot of leads right now. That matters, a lot. Because the alternative is being in Manny-land, being dead in the water already with the elite kids and having to scramble and beg and come from behind. Would you bet against us landing a very good DL class this year?
And circling back to the spring portal DT situation, again, Jason Taylor has been recruiting for Miami since he came on staff in early 2022. He's been a full time DL coach since March. The spring portal opened when? April 15? Yeah, He is as responsible as anyone for our failure to land a portal DT this spring. These are all brand new recruitments, and he's been on the clock for their entirety. The scapegoating of Joe for our inability to land a portal DT is ridiculous, no matter what you think of him and what you think his future is here. It's on a lot of people. And you can't say Joe's name without saying Jason's name when discussing it.
