Saban wanted Parker REALLY bad, Gooch flipped from Auburn, and Smith is a 4* on 247 that was highly ranked and somehow dropped despite no camps. All three commits are sought after guys by big programs. Missing on a guy that's been likely headed to UGA the entire time doesn't mean that good o-linemen aren't coming to UT.
The term is subjective, but I would consider some 4*'s blue chips as well. I wouldn't call any of our currently committed OL blue chip. That doesn't mean they can't be good. Hopefully they are. But we're always talking about talent disparity on this board. Part of making that up is signing and developing blue chip recruits.
Yeah in the recruiting world, most consider 4-star and 5-star recruits as blue chips. Hence why they talk about the high percentage that UGA, Bama, etc. have on their overall teams. UGA probably has had about 20 or so 5-star players going back to the last 4 or so cycles but I believe they say their overall roster is composed of about 80% blue chip players. I think our roster is probably in that 40-50% range right now but as mentioned in past posts, the majority of our most talented guys are freshmen and sophomores.
It would be nice to load up on 5* and high 4* o-linemen, but that position is such a developmental position. It's the one position where I think recruiting ranking doesn't matter as much. If you've paid attention to recruiting and the draft over the last 20 years, the norm is having low ranked guys develop into NFL draft picks and 5* guys not really live up to their rankings. Some guys are underdeveloped out of high school due to a lack of strength and nutrition programs, a lot of high ranked players get that ranking from camps where they're not really hitting...it's just a lot harder to project o-linemen, and college coaches have said the same thing.
This post may be better suited for the general recruiting thread but if we do let Friend go, who do you think we go after? Idk what all good OLine coaches are out there. I'm sure we'd likely have try to poach someone from somewhere though. I remember when we all wanted to believe Friend was in or near that same tier as Pittman lol...I wanted to believe Covid played a part since those guys didn't get much time together, but seeing they played much better the first two games, even with just general assignments than they did against UGA, I'm just not sure. Likely a combination of factors I suppose.
And his o-line will get crushed just as much as our o-line when they play UGA. I think we've got too many people jumping to conclusions. A lot of our o-linemen are still trying to catch up mentally and physically from missing a lot of practice from COVID/quarantine. Mizzou isn't a great team, but their run defense has looked pretty solid outside of the game against our o-line. There's a good chance our o-line handles every defense left on the schedule (including a solid performance against Bama) and gets better every week. Everyone can have their own take, but I want to see how they play on Saturday. They should absolutely handle Kentucky's front seven. You have to have a national championship level o-line to hold your own against UGA's front seven and our group isn't there right now.
