It starts with acknowledging that Jim O’Neill is possibly the worst hire that any D1 football team has made in the last 5 years. To go from a top ten team to the current status quo would be terminal for any head coach that had not built up the extraordinary goodwill that Fitz has with Northwestern (no, I do not believe NU should fire Fitz).
But failure to acknowledge that O’Neill is not the man for the job amounts to gross negligence and malfeasance. Even I - as one of the staunchest and most pro-Fitz for life advocates - would start to acknowledge the reality that Fitz as coach must be more heavily scrutinized if he cannot put any personal connection or feeling of obligation to an individual aside to meet his fiduciary duty as the leader of a serious football enterprise to show success. Fitz made a mistake in hiring O’Neill. He needs to own the mistake and take aggressive and immediate steps to fix it, lest the team continue a downward spiraling trajectory.
In Chryst, you have the opportunity to bring in a guy who knows the weaknesses in every Big Ten team, who demonstrated success at a high level (and frankly should not have been canned), who has a good relationship with Fitz and, given his current circumstances, might be willing to drive down 90 minutes to take a transformation job - even if for the remainder of this season.
Re: Bajakian - also on the hot seat, but I wouldn’t characterize hiring him as negligence just yet. He hasn’t had a chance. It’s hard to execute an offensive plan if you’re constantly playing catch up. In any case, Northwestern wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire on offense before hiring him. The change in offense is a stark difference to the change in defense, where NU went from among the best statistical defenses to among the worst with direct correlation to the bungled hiring of an objectively awful defensive coordinator.
Fire O’Neil now. Don’t wait. Do it now, mid-season. Do your best to get Chryst. Otherwise promote from within on an interim basis. Hard changes now are necessary.
But failure to acknowledge that O’Neill is not the man for the job amounts to gross negligence and malfeasance. Even I - as one of the staunchest and most pro-Fitz for life advocates - would start to acknowledge the reality that Fitz as coach must be more heavily scrutinized if he cannot put any personal connection or feeling of obligation to an individual aside to meet his fiduciary duty as the leader of a serious football enterprise to show success. Fitz made a mistake in hiring O’Neill. He needs to own the mistake and take aggressive and immediate steps to fix it, lest the team continue a downward spiraling trajectory.
In Chryst, you have the opportunity to bring in a guy who knows the weaknesses in every Big Ten team, who demonstrated success at a high level (and frankly should not have been canned), who has a good relationship with Fitz and, given his current circumstances, might be willing to drive down 90 minutes to take a transformation job - even if for the remainder of this season.
Re: Bajakian - also on the hot seat, but I wouldn’t characterize hiring him as negligence just yet. He hasn’t had a chance. It’s hard to execute an offensive plan if you’re constantly playing catch up. In any case, Northwestern wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire on offense before hiring him. The change in offense is a stark difference to the change in defense, where NU went from among the best statistical defenses to among the worst with direct correlation to the bungled hiring of an objectively awful defensive coordinator.
Fire O’Neil now. Don’t wait. Do it now, mid-season. Do your best to get Chryst. Otherwise promote from within on an interim basis. Hard changes now are necessary.
