I’m not sure how you can justify losing Franklin given Miami’s complete lack of Oline depth and injury issues. Dude was literally your best OLine this year and has two years left to play.
Some people saying the Oline recruits are scaring him off but that shows a lack of understanding that Freshman Oline, even extremely good ones, generally aren’t all that effective/dominant their freshman years and certainly aren’t your answer for protecting a 1st round draft pick QB in his last year…
Franklin needed to be retained. If he was worried about the youngsters you gotta just talk sense into him regarding the above as well as let him know he can always transfer next year if this year doesn’t work out.
People will point to the portal and likely help coming, but if you look at it, Miami would be overjoyed to get a transfer portal player in Franklin (an ACC teams best Olineman).
So far we’ve lost Jackson and Franklin and MIGHT get Cohen. Cohen is a positive over franklin but you cannot lose these guys. It feels like we’re treading water and relying on freshman to make impacts on the lines which is a very bad idea. Very frustrating. The freshman should be depth answers, we should be retaining all of our best line players and supplementing them with the portal.
I don’t think anyone necessarily liked it or hates Campbell…But at the same time I think it only matters and hurts more than a little if Nelson leaves as well.
I kinda had a feeling they both weren’t staying.
And usually I would agree with you on the O-line and frosh. But I do think we can are getting 2 of the best 3-4 OL in America and it wouldn’t surprise me if either of them can at least play at Campbell’s level in year one. Campbell graded out as a decent but not well above average pass blocker and a bad run blocker. (Scaiffe was our best, not Campbell…graded out better in both run and pass than Campbell, and Rivers and Campbell both graded out similar, although Rivers was better run not pass) Now obviously you want LT to be your best pass blocker…But you have to figure he was at his ceiling as well…What is now 22-23 years old?
And I don’t understand what your definition of “justifying” is. I don’t think anyone here is saying Campbell would have been among their top choices to be forced out. Could he have helped this coming season, yes? Was he anything special? No…Can he be replaced…YES! And maybe the coaches did beg him to stay? Or maybe they saw him as a stop gap to Nelson and the probable 6-8th offensive linemen on this team next year and they let him know. I think you are overrating him a little here.
And I have to again disagree with you saying we would be thrilled with getting a transfer portal player like Campbell…I think we are shooting for better than him in the portal. And I think you have a warped view of the portal. 5-7 teams and new regimes don’t retain every player that wasn’t horrible or played a lot and had the chance to play next season. Hell all these lists, 90s, myself, Silent etc…were discussing the last month. We all admitted that it’s not only our backups that will leave. There will be good players that us and probably even the staff don’t want to leave and that’s just reality. It’s happening everywhere, let alone a 5-7 team with a new staff. The loss of D. ackson fits the bill here, coaches definitely liked him and wanted him to stay. His loss is way worse than Campbell’s imo. Cohen (although he played guard at Bama) is a better player than Campbell and younger.
Like I said, I just don’t think both he and Nelson were going to be among the starting 5. I think just one would have started…And Nelson’s 21 was better than Campbell’s 22. And the staff supposedly loves both Cooper (guard but possible right tackle) and McCoy as well. There was also positive talk about Mclaughlin. I didn’t hear anything positive about Washington and I don’t think he will be on this team next year.
I will agree with you it stings if we lose Nelson as well.
And it sounds like you are judging our portal based on what we have “so far”…Give it time, it hasn’t started yet.
I still think it’s negative. Sure he’s “replaceable” but how many people are you going to get to replace him? Just 1. You’re not gonna get 2 upperclassmen quality transfers for 1 starting spot.
Now what happens if his replacement gets injured? Now we’re down to a 3rd string essentially. Would have been better for the program overall if he stayed, at least to add quality depth.
What happens if you don’t get ANY portal? A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush…
Same issue with Miller leaving. I’m not too enthused about losing quality depth and hopefully replacing it.
The transfer portal and NIL are the worst things to happen to college football, IMO. You’re going to see this every year. It’s a mini-NFL now. Portal/Free Agency and NIL/Salary Cap. We’ve all known that, for the most part, money buys championships. Not always of course, but the boosters and money bags have been around for awhile now, It’s just legal now.
Kids are going to leave because they want to be closer to home.
Kids are going to enter the portal to shine the light on them “look who wants me.”
Kids are going to leave because they don’t want position competition
And so on…
But again at least 100 teams are going to have “negative” portal losses as well as “neutral” portal losses and “force outs”
I think it’s a small negative but turns into definite negative if Nelson leaves as well. And a little more negative if we somehow miss on Oku next week (sounds like he’s coming)
As for your 2nd and 3rd string talk…Again I don’t think John Campbell should have been promised any job. His performance certainly didn’t warrant that. Nelson, Campbell, Maiguao, Cohen, Okunlola, Cooper (doubtful for LT I’ll admit), Mclaughlin, McCoy, and possibly more portal. Now out of that group would I have made him one of the top 2-3 choices for sure.
Jackson is a much bigger loss than Campbell…And honestly since Jackson left, I would say the loss of Miller is just as/more important as Campbell as it further compounded the DT situation and turned strength into weakness (at least behind our top 2, which includes an All America candidate). Losing Campbell imo will be going from average to average.
Jackson is the BIG loss.
TS2 going to the NFL hurts just as much.
Campbell is a loss but we are likely bringing in two top 20 OT that are 6’5 310-330lbs. They don’t have experience but they have better overall talent by a wide margin. If, big If, Nelson returns. We are looking at Clarke, Nelson, Rivers, Cooper, McCoy(got snaps before injury), Samson, Francis along with the likelihood of landing 2 portal kids.
Let’s focus on DT as that is a Massive concern and much more so than OL!
Lb- I think the athletes coming in are going to make that group go from worst in the conference to middle of the conference just due to lack of experience.