In Reply to: Re: Who of those guys could have been developed much better? posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on March 22, 2025 at 22:46:00
A lot of false claims, exaggerations, and The-Way-I-Remember-Its.
You cite Aaron Ware as your evidence of poor development under Dorrell. Like you don't know how common it is for highly-rated guys to wash out. Mora (who was the last UCLA coach I would say recruited "pretty well") recruited a lot of misses: Chris Clark, Priest Willis, Ellis McCarthy, Andre Dean, Zach Whitley ... the list is pretty long. Not only were they not good players, some hardly ever even played at all. This happens everywhere, all the time.
I don't consider Christian Taylor evidence of Dorrell's recruiting "pretty well" (your words). First off, he *walked on* to UCLA after leaving the Air Force Academy. Second, even though I liked him as a player and appreciated his heady and scrappy play, I'd consider him a significant step down in talent from what I would call a typical good UCLA linebacker of the last 25 years (it's a long list).
Brian Price DID play in the NFL. And I didn't say Hickman/Harwell/Brown/Price were bad recruiting. I am saying they were more the exception than the rule under Dorrell. Again, my position is not "KD was a bad recruiter because ALL of his players sucked". My position is that KD was a bad recruiter because his teams were under-talented by UCLA standards, generally representing a downward departure of what we would expect/hope to bring in. He lost nearly every recruiting battle against sc (before you go off, again, there were exceptions: MJD, Price, Austin, Ayers, etc.) But Pete Carroll really gave him a beating that I think he would not have given a strong recruiting UCLA head coach (e.g., Mora).
If you want to look at receivers, several pre and post-Dorrell recruits (post Donahue recruits) were drafted and/or did play some in the NFL. Freddie Mitchell, Craig Bragg, Tab Perry, Shaq Evans, Jordan Lasley, Jordan Payton, Kyle Phillips. The guys Dorrell brought in were a step down for UCLA, IMO. Of course, the NFL draft is not the only measure of talent, but I find it significant that Cowan/Everett/Breazell caught so many balls yet drew hardly any interest at all from the NFL.
Chris Markey, similarly, was a step down from what I'd consider a good UCLA RB. Post-Donahue recruiting, that would be Foster, MJD, Jonathan Franklin, Paul Perkins, Josh Kelley, Brittain Brown, and Zach Charbonnet. I don't think Markey was a bad RB at all, but his talent level was a step (and in some cases, 2-3 steps) down from the guys listed above. Kahil Bell wasn't a particularly good college RB but he did play in the NFL.
Ben Olson was a big recruit. So was MJD. So was Price. Dorrell landed some highly coveted guys. But not as many as was expected of the UCLA head coach at the time. Not as many as Toledo, Neuheisel or Mora got.
Carter, Horton, and Ayers were good college players. The latter two played in the NFL. They didn't all suck. But again, Dorrell's guys ON THE WHOLE were a step down from UCLA standards.
You also seem to think I need to address every single good player Dorrell had. I already said he had some decent ones, some good ones, and a few great ones. But overall, his teams were under-talented. And if you were to survey all the boards, you'd find yours is easily the minority position. There used to be a poster on this very board who regularly used to post about KD's "narcolepsy clinic", a reference to the many "sleepers" or unheralded recruits he brought in.
You seem to want to reminisce about the good old days of KD recruiting in an attempt to trash Foster's, but we're in a different era now. NIL, transfer portal, and a severely, severely, SEVERELY weakened UCLA brand. It's barely even the same game.
KD took over a pretty solid UCLA football brand. Even though Toledo had lost steam, UCLA had won or shared Pac-10 titles three times in the 10 years prior to his hire. We'd darned near made the BCS title game a few years before. We were relevant. Today, we are more than a quarter century removed from any share of a conference title or big bowl game appearance.