The top 5 offensive lineman in the Class of 2023:
Francis Mauigoa -- who is from American Samoa and grew up in California
Kadyn Proctor -- Des Moines, Iowa
Samson Okunlola -- Brockton, MA
Luke Montgomery -- Findlay, OH
Charles Jagusah -- Rock Island, IL
Now DL -- yeah, I can see where the South would have way more. OL -- the south has no advantage at all. Do some teams in the South have good OL's? Absolutely. But as you can see from the schools putting the most NFL offensive linemen into the league -- It is all over the board and it is the Midwest schools putting more into the league.
I am not saying there aren't good OL in the midwest. There just aren't as many and if you want to build the depth you need, you need to go to where they are. I will use your dataset but go a little deeper.
Top 50 OL in 247 composite for 2023:
- No. 1 player is a Pacific Islander, presumably, and he is playing in Florida (IMG), going to Miami.
- No. 2 player is from Iowa, going to Iowa.
- No. 3 player is from MA, going to Maimi.
- No. 4 player is from VA, going to PSU.
- No. 5 player is from Ohio going to tOSU.
- No. 6 player is from Illinois going to ND.
- No. 7 player is from LA, going to LSU.
- No. 8 player is from NJ, going to ATM.
- No. 9 player is from PA going to PSU.
- No. 10 player is from SC, going to UGA.
Do you see a trend here? Home state kids are staying home, or going south. There is no south > north movement in the top 10. Basically you have 5 northern guys staying home (I'm including VA > PSU in that), and then 5 southern or northern guys staying home or going south.
I assume we can agree that there are way more good OL in the south? No? Okay:
31 of the top 50 are from the south.
Of those from the non-south:
Pacific > Miami
IA > Iowa
MA > Miami
VA > PSU
OH > tOSU
IL > ND
NJ > ATM
PA > PSU
UT > Utah
MO > OU
CT > Bama
OH > tOSU
IL > Bama
OH > tOSU
MD > USCjr
DC > UM
MI > UM
HI > AZ
MO > Mizzou
MI > MSU
Basically, they are all staying home or going south. It's not a big sample set, but I am surprised to not see the Midwest/Northern guys move around in northern states. 8 of the 19 are headed south.
Now let's look at the 31 in the south:
NC > ND
AL > MSU
TX > Nebraska
AZ > ND
NC > ND
SC > Northwestern
6 of the 31 going north. Interestingly, 3 to ND, 1 to Northwestern - perhaps academics? And, ironically, 1 to Nebraska. All the rest are staying in the south.
Remember what the original point was ... that you need LOS to win big, and to do that you have to tap into the southern LOS. It's my belief it's really hard to get the southern OL to move to the north, and that a lot of that has to do with weather and ugly women. I think I have proven that there isn't a south > north migration of OL, and you agreed that was true with DL. What I didn't prove, and can't, is that it is due to weather. I suppose there could be other reasons, but I have seen weather come up in recruiting discussions. And, of course, I am kidding about the women.