Scholarship math heading into spring football

College football rosters undergo three significant updates per year. After signing day, at the start of spring football and at the start of fall camp. WSU released it's updated roster on Monday in advance of the start of spring football and as expected, there are plenty of changes.

In some cases, absent names on the roster provide confirmation. In others, they come as a bit of a surprise. A few players also shuffled positions, leaving us with a slightly different five-year depth chart breakdown. Let's go ahead and take a look at where things stand.

Once again, exact scholarship numbers are not available, so the chart below represents the most educated guess we can make.

Key: Bold = scholarship player, Italic = walk-on, * = used redshirt season

Departures:

We covered most of the departures in the post-signing day scholarship breakdown. Redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Pierson Villarrubia is the most notable name not on the current roster. He was part of Paul Wulff's final signing class, staying on after the coaching change. He didn't play last season. Austin Brown has also been removed from the roster.

Position changes:

After bouncing back-and-forth last season, Destiny Vaeao is back at defensive end. Ivan McLennan will join Kache Palacio as the top two BUCK linebackers. Mitchell Peterson and Paris Taylor have both moved from safety to linebacker and will compete for playing time at the SAM spot. Moving safeties to SAM linebacker has been a fairly common move. Feddie Davey made the same move, before leaving the team. Nick Begg is listed as a tight end on the roster, grouped with the wide receivers and a left tackle on the depth chart. For now, the depth chart wins and he's with the offensive linemen.

Overview:

Based on the latest projections, the Cougars will carry 78 scholarship players next season. That's down two from the post-signing day projection. Of the other walk-ons, long snapper Alex Den Bleyker appears the most likely to be on scholarship. Whoever wins the punting and kicking jobs could also land a scholarship. I wouldn't expect the staff to invest too many of those free scholarships long term. They'll need them next recruiting cycle with a small senior class departing.

Depth chart:

The depth chart is mostly what we expected, but there were a couple of interesting changes. Projecting the offensive line was difficult, outside of Joe Dahl and left tackle and Gunnar Eklund at left guard. In February, I predicted a starting five of Dahl-Eklund-Carlos Freeman-Riley Sorenson-Jacob Seydel. The spring depth chart has Dahl and Eklund on the left side with Sam Flor starting at center, Seydel at right guard and redshirt freshman Cole Madison at right tackle. Freeman is the third-string center and Riley Sorenson has moved from a guard/tackle to the No. 2 center. Madison penciled in as a starter isn't a massive surprise, there have been positive reports, but I'm extremely surprised Sorenson isn't penciled in to start somewhere. It's only spring and Clay McGuire has shuffled guys around the offensive line a lot. It will be very interesting to see how the depth chart looks at the end of spring compared to the start.