Why not? I'm not as convinced as many on this board that we've suddenly solved our WR depth. If he really moves, he's in the 2-deep at CB AT BEST. And we only have 6 scholarship WRs, and that includes former walk-on Salerno. I think we need to use Styles from time to time in addition to the Tyree switch. Get athletes in space and go to work.
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Granted 4 of the 9 are freshman but we also have 6 TEs on the roster. Given that the offense for the future will be a run-oriented, I am not particularly worried about WR depth.
If we have injuries, we can always pull Styles back into the WR room.
Safety depth is the bigger concern where we only have 6 on the roster of which two are freshmen. And those guys have a tendency to get hurt more than WRs. I suspect Styles move to CB was more a case of moving one of the current CBs (Lewis) to safety
If you remove Styles, I see
Thomas (who needs to make a Boykin-like jump).
Tyree (24 catches in the flat)
Colzie (9 catches)
Merriwether (1 catch)
Salerno (5 catches)
freshmen (and we saw the last 2 years how dangerous it is to rely on them).
Said differently, if we were okay with WR, why would ND have taken a WR transfer? The moment someone is hurt we're back in the same old predictable, slow-moving offense. Or again, said differently, if you're relying on Salerno to be Chris Finke, that's not exactly aspiring for greatness.
WRs on Scholarship for the '23 season: Tyree, Salerno, Thomas, Colzie, Merriweather, Flores, Greathouse, James, and Smith. Whatever you think of Salerno, he is a very competent WR who knows who to play and run routes. Charlie Jones, a very similar type WR who most people never heard of, started out at Buffalo and ended up catching 110 passes at Purdue last year.
Since we will clearly have a run-oriented offense, I'm not particularly concerned with WR depth. We are more likely to run 3 TE sets than 4/5 WRs sets.
Yes, Smith bugging out was not ideal, but the much much bigger issue was depth at Safety and moving Styles to CB, allows the move of Henderson to safety. Harper's inability to practice is probably the biggest issue on the team. I'd rather play a freshman at Wr than a freshman at safety.
The problem the last 2 years was competence at QB, not competence at WR.
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for the time being anyway.
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