Spring Newcomers Edition: Offensive players to watch for in 2013

What will these guys do in 2013?

I don't know and by listing them here I am not advocating that they will have big years but they are guys that intrigue me. I am interested in seeing if they continue to be solid or will they have all conference or even better seasons.

I started this post about 3 different times but it kept becoming something different than what I wanted it or thought it should be.

In this series I am forcing myself to list five returning guys (offense here /defense), three new guys (offense/defense) and a little lagniappe. I will list a couple guys that seem to be established already but I want to mainly focus on guys we have not heard much about or guys that did not have good years last year.

There are so many more guy that intrigue that I want to discuss but here we go:

1. Well let's get the obvious out of the way - Nick Montana. This is not a knock on Devin Powell or a lack of confidence in Tanner Lee but it is just the truth - everyone will be watching and expecting Montana to lead this team next season. Regardless of his name he was a big winner in high school and highly recruited. Plenty of famous kids play college sports and don't pick up the amount of offers that Nick had and you don't get ranked as a top 50 player in the entire country by every recruiting service because of who your dad is. For whatever reasons it didn't work the first time around while at UWash but Nick showed again at Mt. San Antonio JC why he was heavily recruited - he is a winner. The name Montana aside he is the only QB we will have that has a decent amount of post high school experience and that is why people are watching so closely. I have said this to the people I talk to and I will put it on the record here - Nick Montana needs only to be as good as Ryan Griffin was last year for this team to win 7-10 games ---- contingent on the offensive line being better. It seemed as though they were able to figure out something in pass protection as the season went on but we still could not run the ball. If we can run the ball and Nick can play at an equal level to Ryan Griffin did last year I feel we can easily win enough games to go to bowl. Nick will have to be every bit as good as his high school expectations if we can't find a running game. I hope Nick can be that good and we find a running because that means we are "in the money" and about to win big! Montana has a live ball, is accurate and he is pretty damn athletic. I think he gets better over the off season when he can have time to really gel with his skilled guys doing 7x7's and running the route packages over and over and over. I think people underestimate what familiarity and repetition does for a group. I think Nick wins the starting spot based on the experience he has but no matter who wins the spot it really does not mean much if we can't run the ball.

That leads me to #2 and #3. At first I had OL Chris Taylor at #2 and OL Kenneth Santa Marina at #3 but since I cheated on the offensive category why not cheat again here. My #2 and #3 comes back to what I feel was the biggest weakness on the team last year - The OL. When you average 39.6 yards per game, only 3TDs all season and have 475 net total rushing yards how can this group not get the most scrutiny? Even if you take the total rushing yards at 845 that is still not close to acceptable in my opinion.

Before I go on I will just say that I originally went with Taylor and KSM because I feel Taylor looks on film to be the guy most physically ready to come in and play. He is strong, can stay low and most importantly he plays like a nasty SOB based on his high school film. Please put me next to that guy if we are backed into a corner because I know he is getting out. After what some people called "being hard" on KSM in my breakdown of the 2013 signing class I wanted to make it clear that I am hardest on him because I think he has the most expectation of the group coming from the fans and he has the most potential upside also. The big fella can red shirt which is perfectly fine or he can come in and live up to the hype which would be an enormous boost to the program for next year. I just think it is really hard to live up to the hype when you are on the OL or DL, especially early on and sometimes when kids don't live up to it there is a mental hit they take and it takes time to recover from it sometimes. Not all the time but sometimes. I think I am the hardest on big KSM because I feel I know what I am getting with the other three guys but he is still the rawest one of the bunch, the one with the least amount of experience and the one that has the most to live up to. That is a ton of pressure by itself not to mention that everyone that remotely follows The Wave has heavy expectations from one of the most prized recruits in this class.

I am no longer just going to single out Taylor and KSM though. It is on all of their shoulders. Yep, right or wrong the pressure is on all of these guys - Chris Taylor, Brandon Godfrey, Kenneth Santa Marina and Jason Stewart. Not taking into account anything that the returning guys can do to improve this off-season - I expect that we will need two of these guys to step in and play big minutes immediately. Whether or not they are capable of that is up to them but what I am saying is that based on what I have seen, the facts, the film that we have - this team needs two of these guys to be immediate studs  if we are to drastically improve the running game. Zach Morgan coming back should be a huge boost but I just don't think Morgan alone can bring enough Hot Piss for everyone. Out this group of rookies two need to be great right away and it would be nice if the other two were really good right away so it would light an even bigger fire under the older guys to find "it" inside of them or move on. I say all this but trust me - I would love nothing more in this world than to have all the returning guys prove most of us wrong and we then red shirt some of these rookies. I am not wishing for any of these rookies to come in and be someone we are depending upon - it is a mans world in the trenches and if you are not ready to go in there it could take awhile to recover those bruised egos.

I have gone on and on about the OL, that comes from being a former OL but also because the proof is in the pudding as they say (I think) - this is the one area that going into last year was a question and if anything the picture only became more unclear for me rather than coming into focus since last August.

I will say it again, I believe this seasons outcome will be directly tied back to the OL and how they perform. I am even going to say that I don't care what the defense does this season - if the OL can be solid they will carry this team to the post season. People will soon forget about the 2013 season or it can be one where legends are born but it starts right there up front with the Big Sexys!

Sidenote: Hot Piss was a term used by former Tulane OL Coach Ron West under Bowden. He would use it in a sentence like "Get your piss hot" meaning - get fired up, be aggressive, get upset, go kill someone! If you were practicing/playing soft (ie not getting the job done) you were thought to have Cold Piss.