We were bad last season. The reports from the open scrimmage were not good. So is the talent just not there, is the O-Line Coach we brought back not good?
Hope we get better come fall. We can't blame Rich S anymore. Anybody else worried?
The open scrimmage was a very small sample accrued against one of the SEC's best DLs. Many of our own fans still haven't grasped how good our defense is. But the numbers don't lie.
It is unquestionably true that 2022 was an outlier performance by our OL. I submit that our OL room was overwhelmed. New OC, new offense, new OL coach, loss of Kinnard and Fortner, underperformance by (inexperienced) Buford, titanic underperformance by overweight Goodwin. Not quite a perfect storm maybe, but looking back it was a tough hand for our OL.
To answer the question posed by the OP, one would need to know ahead of time what will happen next fall. The hope is that the arrival of Marques Cox and the move of Eli Cox back to RG will lead to significant improvement. That may or may not turn out to be true, but I can't see how we could conclude anything useful from one windy Saturday in March. My guess is that Stoops will add one more lineman from the portal in May. If so, maybe that would help, but I will give the OL some time under Coach Coen before forming conclusions.
As for Zach Yenser, the book is still out. It's a nice story to see a former colleague of John Schlarman come back home to Kentucky. But I was not sold when Yenser was hired, and 2022 did not help. At the end of the day, Yenser's fate will be decided by Coen, but Yenser is in bad need of a successful 2023 season with some player development victories. That doesn't mean it won't happen. A player's second season of heavy play often sees big improvement, which (in a best case scenario) could apply to Flax, Burton, Buford, and Wohlabaugh this year. Far too often, some of our fans sour on our football players early in their playing careers without understanding that time in the gym and subsequent experience are important in the development of college football players. Typically, our players get better with additional work and development, so it is not out of the question that our OL might improve significantly between now and next fall. One thing is for certain. Most players on our OL roster had nice offer sheets. These are not low upside athletes. Many other good coaching staffs wanted most of them. For those of you who pay attention to star ratings, Flax, Burton, Bingham, and Bowles were 4 stars while Buford and Hall were high 3 stars. Kenneth Horsey, Eli Cox, and Marques Cox already received citations for the quality of their play in prior seasons. So let's not be fooled by impatient pessimists into thinking this OL cannot be good. Don't give up. One way or another, this is still a developing story.
