Three years ago we had an offensive line that would have made Coach Bryant tip his hat. Now I am reading about how we are using spring ball to "gel a portal-heavy offensive line" and it just makes me sick to my stomach. You know what gelling used to mean? It meant a bunch of freshmen coming in, living in the same dorm, eating together in the cafeteria, getting their tails run off by Coach Cochran in the weight room at 5 AM, and learning to trust the man next to you because you bled together in summer workouts. Not because you both signed a NIL deal with the same car dealership.
I remember the 1992 offensive line that paved the way for our natty. Those boys played together for three and four years. They knew each other's tendencies the way you know your own brother's breathing. Antonio Langham was running behind a wall those guys built with sweat and discipline, not with a checkbook and a transfer portal agreement. We did not need to "aggressively revamp" anything because we developed what we had. Coach Stallings would not have recognized this roster turnover nonsense.
Now we are bringing in grown men from other programs hoping they can learn our system in a few weeks of spirng ball. That is not how you build a football team. That is how you build a fantasy roster. And do not get me started on the fact that the spring portal window just got eliminated. So now all these kids are going to be sitting on rosters they hate for eight months before they can jump ship? That is not going to help anybody.
The SEC used to be won in July and August, in two-a-days when the heat was so thick you could chew it and the seniors made sure the freshmen understood what it meant to wear the A. We are not building that kind of toughness with a bunch of mercenaries showing up for a semester. I will believe this line is ready when I see them push somebody off the ball in November, not when some recruiting service tells me we landed five guys with good tape from other schools.