Firings: What should happen vs. what will happen

[gocatsgo2003]

GCG, tell them most hires occur around the time of the AFCA National Convention. (American Football Coaches Association) usually during a dead period in January right before National Letter of Intent signing day.

Most hires USED TO occur around the convention. The early signing period changed a lot of the timing.

 

[drewjin]

A program that had its shit together would have been ready to announce moves the second the game ended. It’s not like there were any surprises to be had. They’ve already had weeks to prepare.

Not holding out a ton of hope, because we're dealing with Mr. Inertia here, but maybe we are hiring coordinators who are coaching on bowl-bound teams that are playing in games of some consequence and want to keep it on the QT until after their seasons are over. A guy can dream, can't he?

 

[WildcatWillie]

Most hires USED TO occur around the convention. The early signing period changed a lot of the timing.

Agreed, and the Portal has had a huge effect on timing of coaching changes, as it affects attracting or retaining onfield talent. By the time of convention, a lot of transfer churn is already happening.

 

[Jaguar 88]

People vote with their feet and their checkbooks. I am a 40 year season ticket holder although i no longer live in the area. Yesterday ny wife who also holds two degrees from NU asked if we couldn’t find something else to watch. It is painful to me but we wont be renewing.

I thought EMU football was bad back in the day, but even if they lost the games were almost always very competitive. They ended up 8-4 this season and swept their Michigan rivals!!!! At least I have one team in a bowl!!!

 

[phatcat]

Not holding out a ton of hope, because we're dealing with Mr. Inertia here, but maybe we are hiring coordinators who are coaching on bowl-bound teams that are playing in games of some consequence and want to keep it on the QT until after their seasons are over. A guy can dream, can't he?

Doesn't stop him from firing the coordinators now. Might take a hit on recruiting and port a l which is a big deal. But even 17 year olds must know this can't continue

 

[zeek55]

Then get ready to be very worried. I think Zeek55 is right. Fitz is methodical and is going to take his time on figuring out what's what. The football part I think he gets. I think he gets that our offense is crap. That we can't develop a QB. Or playmakers at receiver. And the state of the defense, that goes without saying.

What I don't have any gauge on is, does he recognize that a real change of direction is needed, for both offense and defense? New leadership/coordinators. Some new assistants (WR without question). New blood from the outside. A new offensive approach that will genuinely attract big boy playmakers like Wandale Robinson, AJ Henning, Nick Singleton, Parker Jenkins, Jordan Mosley (actually stay here), etc etc. Or is he still convinced that very conservative, old style smashmouth football is still the only way we can win big games?

He's facing the idea that, from 2007-2020, what we were doing here worked. It worked pretty good. Fourteen years of being in the upper half of the Big Ten, and two Big Ten Championship games very recently. That's pretty darned good. And he deserves credit for that.

Now, suddenly, it doesn't work anymore. At all. Now he and all his staff somehow forgot how to coach football? And I hired the wrong people? And I have to fire some of these people? My good friends?

So we may not like it, but I don't blame Fitz for genuinely needing a little time to figure out the whole picture and what painful decisions need to be made. That's what we got.

I think you have the right read on the situation.

From watching Fitz's press conferences (I've watched nearly every one this year, and I rarely watched them in past years), he appears mostly stunned by how fast the program has fallen apart.

There's no issues with effort; the team is practicing harder in his words than previous teams. There's no issues with player discipline, we haven't heard of issues there. They're just unable to win football games and completely uncompetitive in several contests, and it felt like he didn't have answers for why beyond just not making plays.

At the beginning of this season it seemed like everything was fixed in Ireland, but then that turned into a mirage.

After 14 years where things mostly worked, where we had tough defenses nearly every year and then the offenses typically did enough to get us bowling (or more in CT's final season and the Ramsey year), it's probably a very stunning thing to see the whole program fall apart in 2 years.

So the question is how to fix it, and I think Fitz needs some time to get to the answer there. I can understand if it's hard to see when you're the head of the program and in the thick of it. But I think he'll get to the right answer.

Because it's impossible to see our disastrous QB situation the past 2 years and not question what the offensive staff is doing in terms of QB development/recruiting. Same for WRs. At some point the fact that the offense cannot score at all is on the staff. Same on the defensive side of the ball with the repeated big play breakdowns that have occurred in every single game since JON got here.

JON's been a DC for 5 seasons in his career; all 5 of his defenses ranked near the bottom of their level (NFL/college).

No matter how you slice this, there's no way that the current staff can turn this around. We're heading for 1-3 win seasons with the current staff for the foreseeable future. At some point Fitz will see that, question is just how long it takes to evaluate that.

 

[NUCat320]

Not holding out a ton of hope, because we're dealing with Mr. Inertia here, but maybe we are hiring coordinators who are coaching on bowl-bound teams that are playing in games of some consequence and want to keep it on the QT until after their seasons are over. A guy can dream, can't he?

The good thing about inertia is that objects in motion stay in motion. So maybe these firings and subsequent hires* will be the force needed to move the program back in the right direction.**

*I’m being an optimist here, because anybody who doesn’t realize that the program is totally broken cannot merely be considered ‘stubborn’, but really dumb.

**all the physics I know was learned in high school, but I’m pretty sure Newton hasn’t changed since then

 

[Jaguar 88]

I think you have the right read on the situation.

From watching Fitz's press conferences (I've watched nearly every one this year, and I rarely watched them in past years), he appears mostly stunned by how fast the program has fallen apart.

There's no issues with effort; the team is practicing harder in his words than previous teams. There's no issues with player discipline, we haven't heard of issues there. They're just unable to win football games and completely uncompetitive in several contests, and it felt like he didn't have answers for why beyond just not making plays.

At the beginning of this season it seemed like everything was fixed in Ireland, but then that turned into a mirage.

After 14 years where things mostly worked, where we had tough defenses nearly every year and then the offenses typically did enough to get us bowling (or more in CT's final season and the Ramsey year), it's probably a very stunning thing to see the whole program fall apart in 2 years.

So the question is how to fix it, and I think Fitz needs some time to get to the answer there. I can understand if it's hard to see when you're the head of the program and in the thick of it. But I think he'll get to the right answer.

Because it's impossible to see our disastrous QB situation the past 2 years and not question what the offensive staff is doing in terms of QB development/recruiting. Same for WRs. At some point the fact that the offense cannot score at all is on the staff. Same on the defensive side of the ball with the repeated big play breakdowns that have occurred in every single game since JON got here.

JON's been a DC for 5 seasons in his career; all 5 of his defenses ranked near the bottom of their level (NFL/college).

No matter how you slice this, there's no way that the current staff can turn this around. We're heading for 1-3 win seasons with the current staff for the foreseeable future. At some point Fitz will see that, question is just how long it takes to evaluate that.

Trouble is that CFB is offensive oriented. Name me one Natty winner or B1G winner that didn't have an explosive offense. Fitzgerald has his head in the clouds. A part of his success is that the West was downright awful during the 2015-18 run. Now you have Minny and even Purdue rising a bit. Even Illinois has found some life. Our offense is high school with zero imagination. Not sure Fitz is the one who can right the ship if he can't comprehend that offense is where it is at.