(GIF in honor of basketball season starting)
It seems like Keisean Lucier-South is doing as well or better than we could have hoped while filling in at linebacker, do you think he is working his way into a full time outside linebacker position next year?
I have been impressed with Keisean Lucier-South’s move to linebacker. When he tried it out at different points of training camp, the reporters saw it and we said to each other, “They’re just trying crazy things in camp, they’re not going to do this in a real game.” Then all the injuries came.
I think being at linebacker is good for him at this point because he hasn’t quite filled out his frame yet. He’s still listed at 235 and that’s about 15-20 pounds off of what he said his target was last year. At linebacker he doesn’t have to engage with much bigger offensive linemen all the time so his speed and athleticism are more evident when he’s playing in more space.
He was recruited to UCLA as an Anthony Barr linebacker type. That was a different time because the Bruins ran a 3-4 scheme then. So I don’t know what next year will hold, but perhaps Lucier-South’s move to linebacker is just a step toward fulfilling his Barr-like destiny.
We’ve seen a couple recent decommits. Do you think it has to do with team performance and potential coaching uncertainty (changes are always possible after year where performance wanes)? Or do you think it has to do with positional depth and players already on the team and committed?
I try to stay out of the minds of 18-year-old boys so recruiting is never a strong suit of mine, but decommitments come all the time and every one comes for different reasons. UCLA had five of them last year but hung onto its most important prospects (Jaelan Phillips and Darnay Holmes) so things turned out OK. Rahyme Johnson committed, decommited and recommitted before eventually signing his letter of intent.
This week, UCLA had a junior college offensive lineman and a cornerback from Florida back out. Two different prospects from different areas who play different positions. I don’t know if you can draw a distinct connection between them. If there were, say, three defensive back decommits, then you might raise an eyebrow.
With 24 commits by the end of October, it seemed that a few were going to inevitably pull back. At 22, it’s still a relatively large group. Recruiting is just a weird world. You’re dealing with the whims with children.
What does Dorian Thompson-Robinson bring to the table as a quarterback if he stays committed?
Dorian Thompson-Robinson a quintessential dual-threat prospect who will likely appease the crowd clamoring for a mobile quarterback again. His athleticism was evident when he played receiver as a junior and caught 22 passes for 397 yards and eight touchdowns. Besides his running ability, he has a crisp, quick release and is a legitimate passing threat as well. By all accounts, he seems to be a very talented player who can help the Bruins in a lot of ways once the Josh Rosen era ends. The concern would be his relative lack of game experience because he didn’t start at quarterback until his senior year.
Check Thompson-Robinson’s latest highlights here (because he actually has quarterback game film now)
How much more mobile is Devon Modster compared to Josh Rosen? It seems like Rosen takes a sack more often because he doesn’t scramble when nobody is open. This has to affect the offense when the quarterback is not a threat to run.
Devon Modster was the No. 7 dual-threat quarterback in the country, according to Rivals.com, but he said during training camp that he likes to think of himself more as a pocket-passing type. He was also ESPN’s No. 13 pocket-passing quarterback in the country. So he isn’t an easily categorized prospect. But Modster is definitely more of a scrambling threat than Rosen. It’ll be interesting to see how he executes the zone-read plays that Jedd Fisch has installed in the offense this year.
However, in Rosen’s defense, he did scramble for a 37-yard touchdown against Washington State as a freshman and recall that against Memphis, he rushed for four first downs on zone-reads and finished with 32 rushing yards on seven carries (one carry was a sack that lost 10 yards). So Rosen’s relative lack of mobility is not the reason why he takes sacks when nobody’s open. He gets sacked because he doesn’t throw the ball away when nobody’s open.
After this week’s 49ers trade, the options for a quarterback draftee are drying up and the Browns look like the only team willing to burn a pick in the first round for a quarterback. That being said how does this affect Josh Rosen or any college quarterback thinking about leaving early?
I’m sure prospects weight a million different things and a potential landing spot could be one of the things they consider, but I doubt that it would be the biggest thing. Whether Rosen, or any other top draft eligible quarterback, goes this year or next year, he’s going to be a high draft pick to what’s likely bad team. It’s inevitable. Maybe it’s the Browns, maybe it’s another team with chronic quarterback troubles (because doesn’t it always seem that the teams at the top of the draft NEVER have a steady quarterback?). So I think players weigh more what they could be leaving or losing than what they could be getting. For example, do they feel like they have unfinished business in college, like Randall Goforth said he and Fabian Moreau felt two years ago. Are some of their close teammates leaving, signaling what feels like the end of an era? How much money could they lose if they came back and got hurt? I think those are some of the bigger questions weighing on prospects’ minds, not only “Will I be stuck with the Browns?”
Do the players seem to pay attention to what is written about the team or themselves by newspaper reporters or on internet sites like Bruin Report Online? Have you ever received positive or negative feedback from players or family members regarding any of your published work?
One of the first things many players do in the locker room after games is check Twitter and favorite/retweet all tweets that mention their names. So they do pay attention to what’s being written/said about them by fans and media. Players will also occasionally share articles about the team and/or themselves. I don’t think many of them spend hours and hours reading everything, but whatever they see on their social media feeds with their names in it, they notice. They’re probably not ones to directly regularly visit sites like Bruin Report Online or this blog, but they read about themselves based on articles that come to them from their own curated news feeds.
I have received feedback from players and their family members before. Parents will send me emails sometimes thanking me for an article or a player will comment and share it on Twitter. Players have also said thank you in person the next time we cross paths at practice. Coaches, despite what they want you to think, do read the press clippings as well.
Do you believe it was fair commentary for television analyst Brock Huard to question Josh Rosen’s toughness and commitment during the Washington game without knowing the extent of his injuries? What do you make of Mora’s response to Huard’s comments? Excessive reaction? Reasonable show of support for his player?
At the beginning of his comments, Brock Huard said “I need all that (injury) information before I make any hard-and-fast opinions.” So he made an effort to say that he wasn’t trying to judge Josh Rosen without knowing the extent of his injuries. I think at the beginning of the conversation, Huard was trying to speak more to the fact that he thought NFL scouts may look at this game as a knock on Rosen’s toughness, not that he personally didn’t think Rosen was tough. Play-by-play announcer Bob Wischusen then responded “so there’s a toughness factor that comes into a play if you’re evaluating?” To which Huard replied “It comes into play.”
Wischusen continued: “There is, as you said, part of that evaluation process is even when on a day it’s not going your way, even on a day when you’re getting beat sideways by a great defense, those NFL guys love to see guys just stand in there and take the punishment.”
So I think Huard and Wischusen were trying to talk about how a perception of toughness relates to the NFL scouting process. As the conversation stretched on, it veered away from that and gave off a more personal view. I only reached these conclusions after listening to the clip maybe three times. It could very easily have been mistaken for an attack on Rosen’s toughness, but I don’t think it was meant to be at the beginning.
As for Jim Mora’s response: I have learned a few things about Mora in my almost two years on the beat and one of the first things I learned was that Mora is fiercely loyal to his players. He will always defend them. And for someone like Rosen, whose family lives within walking distance to Mora in Manhattan Beach and who is friends with Mora’s daughter, the coach is especially protective. Just think about that awkward ESPN moment on National Signing Day. Mora is an emotional coach who is protective of his players. Many of his players value and reciprocate that feeling (remember this tweet from Rosen). I respect that he was defending his team and his player, but as is the case with many of Mora’s outbursts, it probably could have been handled more gracefully by not personally attacking Huard’s credibility.