The Lions' Pride

Tons of potential with a few studs mixed in.
Best staff in the conference.

HC/OC: Bill O'Brien: B
QB: George Godsey: A-
RB: Charles London: B-
WR: Stan Hixon: A+
TE: John Strollo: C+
OL: Mac McWhorter: A
DC: Ted Roof: B+
DL: Larry Johnson: A+
LB: Ron Vanderlinden: A+
DB/ST: John Butler: A-
S&C: John Thomas: F

I'd rate London lower for lack of experience, good thing he gets to work with Redd in his first season..

I'd also grade Butler lower because he lacks experience coaching DB's.. I don't even think he's coached CB's before while Roof and O'Brien want to play man and bump-and-run defense. I fear with the lack of talent/depth we have, and that system, that we're going to struggle for a while in the secondary. Luckily there isn't many good qb's in the big 10 next season.

I'm also not that impressed with Roof. It's nice his system is completely opposite than Bradley (attacking defense) but he's had some poor defenses, including having elite talent at auburn.. Hopefully Vandy and LJ can cover up any deficiencies in the scheme..

Based solely on first impressions:

HC/OC: Bill O'Brien: B (agree with diddy's assessment, but giving him the benefit of the doubt a little bit).
QB: George Godsey: A-
RB: Charles London: B+
WR: Stan Hixon: A
TE: John Strollo: C-
OL: Mac McWhorter: A
DC: Ted Roof: C
DL: Larry Johnson: A+
LB: Ron Vanderlinden: A
DB/ST: John Butler: B
S&C: John Thomas: F

Didn't change them too much from what diddy has I guess, but bumped some down and some up.

OK, so I have to ask, not to be patronizing, but partially because it hasn't been terribly long that I've followed recruiting: what has Vandy done in recruiting to make him great? I can see with my eyes that he's a very good LB coach. But I don't remember him being that good of a recruiter during those kind of discussions. Just wondering.

We played Bama better on O and D than anyone than LSU. Seriously, and crticisms of our S&C are overrated. Could it have been improved? Of course. But to attack someone like JT is ridiculous. He got this team to look exactly like Paterno wanted. Not very big, but smooth, lean, athletes for stamina. Blame Paterno if you don't like that, but not JT.

Agreed. Was speaking with a former player who spent some time in the NFL yesterday who said something to the effect of "John Thomas is the main reason why I made it as far as I did." Criticize HIT if you want to, but I think Thomas does pretty well.

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. I think JT is a tremendous conditioning coach, not so much on the strength part. It's a physical fact that you simply will never develop the same level of resistance power with circuit training v. Olympic powerlifts. There are many successful college and pro teams who use HIT, but they integrate Olympic style powerlifts into the arsenal...specifically variations of squats and cleans. In general, I think we've been one of the better conditioned teams in the country for the past decade. Yet, our strength program...specifically for the OL...has resulted in subpar units for a while. We need to build from the quads up with the OL. I'm tired of seeing chicken legged, misproportioned OL (and some DL) coming out of our program. If JT is open to integrating Olympic series to his program, fine. But if not, he needs to go. From what I've heard, he's rather headstrong in his beliefs...so I give it a D.

out of curiosity, what do you think of Chip Kelly, Steve Sarkisian, Paul Johnson, Chris Petersen?

The reason I ask, all 4 of them (I'm POSITIVE there's more examples) call their plays while being the HC. Yes, they have people as OC's, however the playcalls come from those guys.

That's pretty much spot on IMO.

Im sure Godsey will help him... Maybe Hixon, the WR coach as well (Hixon has the "assistant HC title" according to various people)... Im sure Godsey is going to be groomed as an OC. BOB has been there every step of the way with him. I'm sure he will help him gameplan and such. I agree with you though, I hope he names either Hixon or Godsey as OC...

I know the last thing we want to do now is compare anything relating to BOB's hire to RichRod at UM... well not exactly a comparison..but when RR came to UM, besides his obvious philosophical differences in O and D... the biggest change he made was to their out dated weight program. He brought with him from WVU, Mike Barwis... immediate Barwis began to kick major a$$ in the workout room at UM. PSU doesn't have the problem they faced with out dated equipment, etc... but he completely over hauled the outdated facility and redid the entire strength training program... I forget the exact count, but by early spring he had driven about 10 kids from the program... most notoriously, Justin Boren, who complained about the intense physical demands of the Barwis program, and eventually left and went to OSU.

I have a business associate, just had lunch with him today as a matter of fact, and he was a player at UM under Bo, and was around during Lloyd Carr's time... he also began using the work out facilities on campus again when RR and Barwis came in, and he said in his entire life (4 year starter on OL for UM during the late 80's) he had never seen someone as intense, and demanding as Barwis and he absolutely destroyed those kids in the weight room... even when RR left, one guy that alot of UM people that had turned on RR wanted to see stay around was Barwis, but being loyal to RR he resigned when RR was fired and began to work as a consultant to the Mets and runs his own training programs at his own facilities ( Mike Martin is currently training with Barwis to prep for the NFL draft)...

Long story short, Barwis is available,or at least not employed by a college football team...I am sure he is doing fine on his own, and working with the Mets, but his true passion is not just training, but building developing young men and sounds like he didnt want to leave the east coast to follow RR to Arizona. Its also a testimony to him how many current NFL players came back to UM each off season to work with Barwis, his "Barwis school of Pukitude" is legendary.

Check out his wiki profile, this is the first line under his "philosophy", sounds exactly what some of you are calling for...."Barwis's training philosophy emphasizes the development of fast-twitch muscle fibers and flexibility and is "based on the clean-and-jerk movements of Olympic weight lifting, yoga, track-style stretching and nutrition."[6]".

Don't believe he has a connection to BOB, but seeing he spent a lot of time in WVU, and UM and also mentions he has completed course work at Temple, I would guess that Penn State would be the type of opportunity he would be looking for, and in the geographical area he wants to continue to live in with his family.

After years of HIT, I don't know how well, if at all, our current team would handle this guy they sure couldn't handle him at Michigan... but then again, they are a bunch of pansies over there...

Warinner is better than Mcwhorter (this is an award for top Oline coaches and Warinner was a finalist this year: http://www.footballscoop.com/coaching-awards/2011-coaches-of-the-year/2011-offensive-line-coach). And I think Herman is better than Godsey though that's more of a toss up. And one of the best coaches on the tOSU staff is the RB coach Drayton who you don't list. That makes it roughly equal by your rankings. But the fact that Meyer is>>>>>>> BOB easily pushes it over the edge as a whole. And the problem with your method is that you give coaches equal weight, when they don't get equal weight in recruits eyes. The HC gets by far the most weight, then the coordinators, then the position coaches. And by weighting them tOSU easily wins.

Good staff!