This is what scares me abut the "let's fire so and so" mobs. Far too often,the whole process IS (or appears to be) a crap shoot. ALL of the candidates are usually "highly recommended" and endorsed and probably do know more about the game than the people who hire them. But, and it happens far too often, it DOES appear to be a role of the dice decision. See both UT's, FSU, Miami and Nebraska as examples. I think many of us here had to hire and fire people. I would venture to say we always ended better off. Pehaps the variables were more controllable in the environments we worked in. And thus we begin to think our experience must be universal. But in the high $ world of college athletics, that isn't always the case. (I offer CPJ and his DC's as further proof - we churned through those guys without any significant changes to our program. We were what we were. And yes, that is better than where we are now but that does not change the argument).
Not to say that firing isn't always necessary. I am starting to believe that we are at that point with our defensive staff at a minimum. But to see it as a panacea is wrong and the "it can't be any worse" mindset is very naive (and expensive).
Thank you for this. We have people on here that grew up playing madden and believe when you run a post route it hits, because they just use turbo if the sim is lagging..
Coaching is a wild profession, and at the college level is even more so. Boosters, fans, ADs and current players/future recruits create a cluster of priorities and challenges you don't have at any other level. HS and the NFL generally are smoother deltas between talent team to team than NCAA Div 1. The roster at a Bama/uGag/Clemson/ND is so significantly different than the programs outside the top 20.
People calling for patience with CGC see that. I admit fully he hurts himself with many of his constituency by repeating the same trope without any seeming acceptance of reality as we sit today:
- The output of his program has been bad.
- He took some unnecessary shots at the previous regime (who many whether they liked the option or not understood CPJ made the break up as easy as possible).
- His insistence on playing guys despite clear lack of fit in role (some of our DBs should be LBs; and CBs should be at S for example)
- He comes across as a whiner, always pointing to "circumstances" outside the program's (Read his) control without identifying what is causing the trend of D getting worse, O having no consistency, play calling being suspect and time management being woefully lacking.
However; I have low confidence we can pay him out and get an upgrade (snark not withstanding we could absolutely be worse.. While the on field product has been terrible, we are somehow holding and acquiring standout talent at positions. There is still a path where we go into the off season, sign some more guys and bring in some more beef on the lines, and all of a sudden look much better next year. We DO NOT HAVE the line play on either side of the ball to be arguing about schemes and plays. The foundation is bad and until that is fixed there isn't much we can do to window dress that.
On O Coach made a choice to run a scheme dependent on Line play which our roster was ill equipped to roll out. We are slowly seeing flashes, and I agree with some on here that I would like to see our play call strategy improve in the offseason but don't think we need to flush CDP. MAYBE try to bring in a QB Coach, but other than that I think our problems start with and primarily come from the guys on the OLine.
On D.. Well.. I just.. Yeah I don't have a good look answer here. Our seemingly decade long lack of war daddies is coming to a slow end, Biggers is looking legit IMHO and if we can score one more guy there we might be able to get some pressure from the front set. I read many on here saying they think the back end issues are guys playing out of position trying to heroball their way to a win (I buy this completely, but don't really understand our guys assignments there well enough to definitively judge it on my own). We do often have guys out of position though, that I can see for sure. I think* that comes from guys pressing since no one likes losing and the lack of pressure up front. Also fairly certain guys playing out of their natural physical fit shows up here as well.
I don't know what the answer for the D side is. I would like to see us play more man and bring pressure with 5 more often, but there are a lot of areas of concern there. I like CAT, and the guys seem to like him, he speaks intelligently in the pressers and seems to honestly reflect on our issues. I just don't know why we haven't sat some of the dudes not getting it done at spots which appear deeper than we play on the roster.
The ATL philosophy has completely rubbed me wrong given some of the guys playing. I don't have the $$ to fund an overhaul so I will keep donating to the fund to help with whatever else our options are.
*Wish, hope, pray and beg