Very well said Lance.
The major difference is that Saban was a beast at both recruiting and evaluating. He nailed so many evaluations. That plus being a defensive guru, putting his guys in a position to constantly succeed = longevity and success. He didn’t find just good players. His hits, are NFL 1st rounders. His eye for talent was absurd, and when he wanted someone, he rarely lost that battle.
Mario has not. Not at Oregon, not at Miami (yet). Recruiting, absolutely killing it. Evals…short answer is no. Just not quite there. Not enough dudes that you look at and say “oh this guy can change college football”.
We can go through the list at the end of the season because I want to give younger guys like Malik Bryant a full chance to show off his game (and he’s an example of someone that’s improved since he got to campus, thank you for the position change).
But if you really start going through the list, the emergence (or lack thereof) of young bodies has not related to the stars and portal guys brought in…for every 1-2 hits, there’s 5-6 misses. For every Bain and Mauigoa (which might be the only two at this point), there’s 10+ that can’t quite hack it yet despite being ranked highly. And like you said, it needs to be closer to 50%.
Now I totally get kids need time to develop. I’m not pushing them out the door, I’m not saying Mario is a bad recruiter. That is not true.
Personally, I do think adding more analysts should help with evals. Guys like Frank Tucker etc. I’m just alluding to what we have in front of us right now, particularly guys that should be ready to contribute on the defensive side of the ball, but aren’t. We need more instant-impact, bonafide studs that will play and ball from day 1.
We don’t have many in this 2025 class…yet.