InChristAlone
New member
Eric Morris will be holding a press conference announcing the 2026 roster today at 11 am.
2025-2026 Portal Recruiting
- Thread starter InChristAlone
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- recruiting
Love listening to him. He is real. Real attentive. Real transparent. Real relationship building. He threw out numerous names without hesitation. Shows he knows the kids and cares about them. Not a politician or cars salesman. You can tell how excited he is to get his offense going!
Defense will be the big question mark with a young somewhat young inexperienced DC. He do have some length on the outside. Hopefully we will have the run stopping girth in the middle. Loved his presser though!
He cares about being a college football head coach at the D1 level. Wild thought, huh?
Newpoke
New member
After twenty years of listening to Gundy, it's nice having a coach who: 1. speaks like a normal person--no more "he likes football", "loves to compete", "doesn't say a word", 2. Actually wants to hang out with the players and get to know them on a personal level. Loving this hire more everyday.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ot...1&cvid=6984b7a556164d19be6e119a3e9bd880&ei=15
We set a new record guys!
Colorado was the previous "Most players transfer out" title holder with 56; we blew 'em out of the water with 64! Congrats everyone
We set a new record guys!
Colorado was the previous "Most players transfer out" title holder with 56; we blew 'em out of the water with 64! Congrats everyone
A record that will never be broken!
SanditeCowboy
Sheriff
Is that a bad thing? The product on the field the last two years could be argued to be the worst P4 team in the country! The high roster turnover likely is a good thing. This era of NIL and the transfer portal allows for a quick turn around of lowly programs, see Indiana. Not saying the Cowboys will be playing for a natty anytime soon (I hope they do) but there is evidence the turn around can happen quickly via this route.
EdmondPoke
Deputy
We lost a lot of good players to P4 teams. Our on-field performance was more coaching deficiencies than it was a lack of talent. After Gundy was fired and we had the initial wave of transfers, then we lacked talent. Before that, however, it was on coaching (or lack thereof) than it was talent.
Gundy did a lot of good here. A lot of good. However, his problem was thinking that was all his doing. The injection of hundreds of millions of dollars helped a great deal, as well as having elite position-level coaches and coordinators (Wickline, Dunn (WR coach, not OC), Glass, Holgorsen, Monken, Knowles, etc.). He also had a roster management philosophy that not only worked really well for us, but that he could execute at a high level - bring in underappreciated recruits, build them up with our elite assistant coaches, and keep them within the program for 4-5 years.
This covered up a lot of his problems, such as his inability to develop QBs, replace assistant coaches with reasonable hires, significantly decrease the physicality of the offseason program, etc. I'm not going to rehash everything, as it's not only been beaten to death but it's also behind us now so there's no point in keeping the debate alive. My point was that we could get talent in the door. Our problem became our inability to coach them up and develop them. Bowen said it best when he said that this team was the least fundamentally sound team he had ever coached. We lost a lot of talent through all of this, unfortunately. I think HCEM can recover this, though.
SanditeCowboy
Sheriff
Not sure I agree with the statement of losing "a lot of good players to P4 teams." How many of those that transfered out landed on P4 teams? I am not sure it was a large number, but i haven't done the math. I would bet it is a relatively small percentage of the number that transferred out.
Rough math:
25 to other P4 schools
29 either G5 or lower
10 are going to have to play school now.
Notable:
Henjy CSU
Shettron LA Tech
Freeman: Baylor (guess I hate him again)
Fields: KSU
Sam Jackson: school of hard knocks
Gregory: KSU
Rigby: Wisconsin
McKinney: TCU
Ford: Bama
Gregory, McKinney, Fields, Ford. I hated losing those 4.
SanditeCowboy
Sheriff
Thanks for the break down, there were more that went to P4 than I surmised. But 39% going to P4 is not a high percentage in my mind. To be clear, I hated losing some of those - I do not discount we lost some talented players.
I think that's something important. Say no one leaves early-we had pretty decent talent but once that talent started getting hurt and we had to test our depth we would have been in trouble.
EdmondPoke
Deputy
Completely agree. We had talent, which is what makes the coaching performance so inexcusable. Who knows how the season would've played out if Hejny had stayed healthy, but his injury was probably a blessing in disguise (as crass as that sounds- I hope he is back to 100% and plays well at CSU). His mobility and proficiency in throwing on the run would've covered up an ongoing coaching disaster along the offensive line.
The decline in offensive line performance over Gundy's tenure should be the subject of academic study. We routinely had elite-level offensive line performance right up until 2013, then it was not just a struggle, but a consistent decline. Which, coincidentally, aligns with turnover at the OL coaching position and reiterates my earlier point about Gundy's struggles with hiring assistants. Wickline left after 2013, was replaced by Connelly in 2014, who was replaced by Adkins in 2015, who was replaced by Henson in 2016. To make matters worse, we didn't even have a true offensive line coach for the 2018 season. By 2019, we had hired Dickey and then promptly kept for entirely too long despite never having a decent offensive line.
InChristAlone
New member
CB Kale Smith has been granted an extra year of eligibility. Wonder who is going to be off the roster to make room for him. DT Iman Oates also waiting hear about receiving an extra year of eligibility.
