a. Could you list the injuries by name, date, and position. The ga tech injury report is less accurate than the weights on the roster.
I know Lee was nicked up.. Braun and cooper damn near played every down. Marshall never stepped on field. I had opportunity to see Bryan and stick a couple of times at mid season and they seemed fine. Shamire seemed his regular old powerful self.
Perhaps the Morgan so were injured? They played a few plays.
B. Just some thoughts follow: The depth issue is in some way self made by the lack of rotation. I guess the theory is the backups can't play because the starters are so much better . The counter theory is the reason their bad is they don't play.
C. In the Virginia game we had 19 pass attempts and about 6 pass but scramble plays. Also during the heavy passing part of the game we did not run a lot of options . We did run some counter options with the guard pull.
Seems like we could let some of the back ups play in this parts of the game.
D. I was less than impressed with the ol run blocking in the last 5 games . We did look good on 2 drives in v t while Bryan was playing. i think they felt him to small for settle (4) Nt, but he cooper and Braun did well with him . Once they started passing they replaced him w the giant ol guy.
E. If normal our plan is to hope the upper class men are well and fit in 18 and we hope the backups are enjoying watching the game.
I was using "injury/depth" as a generic way of talking about them not being at full strength, especially the last part of the season. The actual "injuries," as I recall, were Marshall, both Morgan twins, Stickler, Lee, and I think also Ivemeyer. All of these weren't out at the same time, but some were. Even if not out for injury, I think they were playing banged-up at the end. At the beginning of the season, I think we were able to get some rotation with 7 then 6 bodies. I'm not sure that we got any rotation the last couple of games.
Anyway, I'm not saying that I know this was the biggest issue. It was just my impression that it seemed the effectiveness of our offense declined over the course of the game and that some of it was attributable to decreasing effectiveness of our line, which--given its effectiveness earlier in the season--could be the result of guys playing hurt or without sufficient rotation. Take it for what it's worth.
I'm also open to the suggestion of
@33jacket that Marshall got too much inside his own head (or whatever) and began trying to force it.
As to your suggestion about playing more depth to get them experience, I'm pretty sure that the only OL not listed above in discussion of injuries who did not play were true freshmen or walk-ons.