Round Table: How much does Cole Mosier's injury hurt the OL's forecast?
The Cats Illustrated Round Table returns with T.J. Walker, Jeff Drummond and Justin Rowland discussing Cole Mosier's season-ending (and college career-ending) injury, and the impact it will have on this year's team.
How significant is Cole Mosier's injury for this year's team and how much does it impact your forecast for the kind of season the offensive line will have?
T.J. Walker, Basketball Recruiting Analyst: Kentucky losing Mosier won't change my win/loss total for the Cats this season. It's obviously never a good thing to lose an offensive lineman with so much experience, but for the first time in a long time UK's line is built to be able to handle these kind of nasty surprises. It's no guarantee that Mosier would have actually started for Kentucky this upcoming season and although they're young, UK has several candidates to replace Mosier. Candidates that likely have more talent. You feel terrible for Mosier but Kentucky should be fine moving forward. It does thin out the line a bit more, but UK is deep at that position.
Jeff Drummond, Managing Editor: People who have followed me for a long time know how much I harp on the offensive line being the lifeblood of your football team. It's the main reason why UK broke its bowl drought last year and a huge part of the record-breaking season that Benny Snell Jr. had. Cole Mosier was a big part of that rushing success. He was a mauler in the traditional SEC mold. It's going to be hard to replace the raw physicality that he brought to the table, but I don't think it's something that UK can't work around. There are talented guys waiting in the wings. They'll just have to do it in a different manner than Mosier did. Eddie Gran showed us last season that he won't let injuries define what the offense is capable of doing. I suspect he'll adapt and improvise once again.
Justin Rowland, Publisher: It does cause me to downgrade my expectations for the offensive line to some degree. While I believe Landon Young is due for a big performance surge in 2017, and I think we'll start to see why he was a five-star recruit, Mosier's absence at left tackle will definitely be a blow to depth there and when Eddie Gran is talking about a true freshman like Naasir Watkins as an option there it gives me a little pause, not because someone like Watkins is ill-suited for the position, but because Mosier/Young looks a lot better than any of the depth chart combinations now. I think it probably hurts Kentucky in the run game more than anything else and we'll probably see a little more inconsistency on the left side now. The rotation is smaller than it was last year so they really can't afford much more in the way of injuries. Put it like this: Left tackles make a ton of money because of the passing game's significance in the game today and how difficult the position is to play. Losing your starter there is always going to sting.