Unless the Defense makes some pretty material strides, the rematch won’t be nearly as competitive. X is the better team simply bc they have a decent Defense.
I know it’s a tough decision, but I think they need to transition Larkins to play the bulk of his snaps at DE. The OL gave up 1 real sack tonight while the other 2 were on Hambleton for not throwing the ball away. Larkins is still mostly a blocker and with the proven performance of the OL, he adds more value at DE. This let’s Mitchell shift to OLB which is a more natural position.
Another possibility is bring up the Soph DE Hulen. He’ll certainly be a solid player in the next 2 yrs, but I’m not sure he has the size this yr to be an effective pass rusher on varsity.
Tucker moving back to NT would be a big boost, but I believe he’s starting at LT (could be wrong, hard to tell watching live). If that’s the case, I’m not sure you can move around the guy in charge of protecting Hambleton’s Blind side.
As has been pointed out to me in the past, this isn’t Fantasy Football. It’s a lot easier to theorize how to shift personnel around when it’s on paper, so I wanted to focus on guys who have already played these positions. Probably too late in the year for anyone to learn a new position from scratch.