We’ve said all along that even though we questioned LR’s defenses and his ability to fix that side of the ball, that we’d always trust his offenses, and especially, his decisions when it comes to which QB’s to recruit/play.
What is your trust level in him now to make the right decisions when it comes to recruiting QB’s (and even developing QB’s)? Wouldn’t any blind faith that you have in him as a QB Whisperer be fairly outdated at this point?
If we just take the three years sample size at USC, I’d grade him as follows:
HS Recruiting: D (being generous)
- Malachi Nelson was a complete misevaluation on every dimension, and cost us Nico Iamaleava (or Aidan Chiles).
- Failed to recruit a HS QB last year after striking out on Raiola and Lagway, which is also hard to wrap my mind around (sure it’s hard to stack 5-stars, but how do you not get a depth 4-star type?)
- Put all of his eggs in the basket of Julian Lewis this year, despite clear signals that the guy wants to be anywhere but USC and has shown major culture risk.
QB Development: B
- It’s only a B because Caleb went from a spot starter in year 1 at OU to a Heisman winner in year 2 at USC. But he got worse (or at the very least, didn’t improve) between Soph and Junior seasons. But OK, he was so good already that how much better could he have really gotten? Based on the fact that he won the Heisman, this has to be an A by default, though I’m pretty sure Caleb would have been a superstar in about 50 other programs if not more.
- Moss - this is his third year in the program and Lincoln based the entire season on his evaluation of Miller in practices. It’s clear that Moss hasn’t shown any sort of development over the course of this season. So for the misevaluation in thinking Miller was good enough, or for the lack of development in Miller, this deserves a D, if not an F, given this position is supposed to be LR’s speciality and the lack of production here or the lack of fit with how LR wants to run his offense has landed us with a 4-5 record.
So all in all - can you really honestly say at this point that you trust LR when it comes to making decisions about his QB? And please don’t cite Oklahoma stats from seven years ago…I don’t know who that coach was, but it’s not the one who is currently running this program.
