Has this team been extremely lucky at linebacker?

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EE_Gopher

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This team lost two starters in the offensive line and have had the depth to survive it. They lost Briean Boddy for the season and Derrick Wells has been banged up all season, but have been able to move guys around to deal with it.

However, had this team lost a linebacker or two, it would have meant playing red-shirt freshmen more and pulling the red-shirt of one or more of the freshmen linebackers. Linebacker is one area I am not excited about seeing a lot of 18 and 19 year olds playing.

Receiver and linebacker appear to be where we were the thinnest. One we were lucky; one not.

I think depth at linebacker is still at least a year away and it's easy to see they will want to bring in one or more juco linebackers.
 

EE_Gopher said:
This team lost two starters in the offensive line and have had the depth to survive it. They lost Briean Boddy for the season and Derrick Wells has been banged up all season, but have been able to move guys around to deal with it.

However, had this team lost a linebacker or two, it would have meant playing red-shirt freshmen more and pulling the red-shirt of one or more of the freshmen linebackers. Linebacker is one area I am not excited about seeing a lot of 18 and 19 year olds playing.

Receiver and linebacker appear to be where we were the thinnest. One we were lucky; one not.

I think depth at linebacker is still at least a year away and it's easy to see they will want to bring in one or more juco linebackers.
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Yep we were, but it happens both ways sometimes.
Even good teams are thin or young sometimes and get bit by the injury bug.
I really hope we can bring in Christian Russell the big JUCO backer, we are about another year away from the freshmen and redshirt freshmen backers being ready to contribute. Losing Westerhaus and Baudacco were tough if only from a depth perspective.
 


Yeah, we've been fortunate.

We have a little bit of depth there with Campbell backing up Manuel and Lynn behind Wilson. I don't think it will be an incredibly thin position going forward. It'd be nice to get Russell but even without him, we are returning two guys who played a ton and some young guys who appear ready/close to ready (Rallis, Lynn).
 

I wonder how often we even had three linebackers on the field.
 


Studwell55 said:
I wonder how often we even had three linebackers on the field.
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True. Doesn't seem all that often. Have you noticed if Rallis is in the rotation at all? I see him on special teams, but haven't seen him
play.
 

CWCWCW said:
True. Doesn't seem all that often. Have you noticed if Rallis is in the rotation at all? I see him on special teams, but haven't seen him
play.
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He's only a RS Freshman and i think he had mono early in the season.
 

One reason we've been soft against the run this year--but rarely got beat deep--is because: (1) We rarely had more than 7 people in the box; (2) We played our safeties quite deep.
 

I really want the Ploock kid for middle linebacker to commit to the Gophers

We need a mike to spell and even replace Damien Wilson after next year. Jack Lynn seems more like a strongside linebacker to me than a Mike. Time will tell.
 



Yes, but remember that before the season no one knew what a stud Murray was. This staff knows what they are doing - they may very well have Eric Murray type players waiting on the LB corps too. Think Nate Triplet... sometimes you don't know till they get their opp.
 

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