Jake, Genyk and Hooten out - no Anderson (at least yet)
- Thread starter Baz=Heisman
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All guys that were associated with the prior regime and have linkages to the events in question.
The quickie story with some additional reporting.
northwestern.rivals.com
WildcatReport - Report: Northwestern dismisses Bajakian, two other coaches
OC Mike Bajakian, ST coach Jeff Genyk and sports performance director Jay Hooten have been fired, according to a report.
northwestern.rivals.com
Key point here is Anderson probably won't be "fired", he'll take a job elsewhere to avoid that outcome.The quickie story with some additional reporting.
WildcatReport - Report: Northwestern dismisses Bajakian, two other coaches
OC Mike Bajakian, ST coach Jeff Genyk and sports performance director Jay Hooten have been fired, according to a report.
Great reporting as always.
Wasn't every coach on the staff except for Skip Holtz associated with the prior regime?
Kind of. Binns, Foster, and Hicks don’t really have ties to the prior regime. Vokolek definitely doesn’t.
Let me direct you to the poor offensive performance of the team over the past 3 seasons…
Let's be honest, he could have survived the shirt if the past 3 years had seen much better offensive output (beyond the Bryant games and rare good game from Sullivan/Marty/Hilinski).
Shirt was the straw on the camel's back. Definitely not the only issue here. Bajakian was on the hot seat this year for good reason. This was a prove it year.
Yes we won 8 games, but Iowa won 10 games and we all saw what happened to Brian Ferentz over there. The offense didn't work all that well for large parts of this year. It worked at critical points of enough games to get us to 8 wins yes, I don't think anybody can deny that, but the results just didn't match the defensive side of the ball which is the improvement that really carried us for much of this season.
He wanted to fire Bajakian. The t-shirt thing is Bajakian trying to save face.
Braun wanted to fire Bajakian.
The evidence is that Braun did not hire Bajakian and Bajakian has been bad at his job and now Bajakian has been fired.
If Bajakian sleeps better at night by convincing himself it was over a t-shirt, well, then I doubt he’ll be recruiting any highly-regarded quarterbacks any time soon.
What do 8 of those 15 teams have in common?
I was focused on FIVE of them coming out of B1G West. INSANE.
The color red is one of their primary or secondary school colors.
Coincidentally, another 8 of the 15 schools play for a conference once known as the Big Ten.
Will USC, Oregon, and Washington understand the power of complementary B1G West football? Or are they going to try and score 40 a game like OSU and Michigan do?
How about for a change we have a head coach who actually cares about performance??
I don't know why you’re such a Bajakian lover. He hasn't had an offense ranked better than 93rd. Somehow he survived the two years when his offenses ranked almost dead last in the nation at 125th and 128th. Which may be the only reason you think he did a decent job this year compared to those purely putrid seasons of scoring ineptitude even though his offense ranked 104th in the country this year.
Really can't understand how anybody would stomach this performance much less defend Bajakian for what is utter incompetence by any objective measure.
Even if Fitz was here, he might be helping Bajakian find a soft landing spot (a la Anderson, Cushing, etc.).
All evidence pointed to Bajakian being on an extremely hot seat this year; yes we won 8 games, but I think Fitz would probably still think we need to change that position before getting to new Ryan Field.
I don't think the 8 wins would have been enough to keep Bajakian in place given the offensive output; this team leaned extremely heavily on a great defense combined with heroic plays on offense (Bryant, Porter, Johnson, Kirtz, Henning, Himon all did their parts). But there were way too many stretches of too many games where nothing was happening (obviously Bryant's injury played a significant role).
Also felt like half our entire season's offensive output happened in a handful of quarters, just not enough consistently.
Excellent post. Would be very likely Fitz would be conducting a search very similar to the current OC search. He had great success dipping down a level for all his most recent hires. With Braun’s great success as DC I’m sure he would be instrumental in suggesting top OC candidates from the FCS level (Roehl).
The T-shirt thing is him supporting the HC that was let go without due process and the remaining players that had a large shadow cast over them.
Pretty sure he wasn’t coming back under any circumstances before he donned the shirt.
So nobody knows if
a) Gragg fired Bajakian
b) Gragg told Braun that Braun had to fire Bajakian
or
c) if Braun said to Gragg "Look I'd like to fire Bajakian."
Thats fine.
Personally I think it matters who runs the football program.
a) Gragg fired Bajakian
b) Gragg told Braun that Braun had to fire Bajakian
or
c) if Braun said to Gragg "Look I'd like to fire Bajakian."
Thats fine.
Personally I think it matters who runs the football program.
Yeah to me (and I think to Fitz and Braun as well) it comes down to QB development.
Past 4 years we've had 2 great years because Fitz convinced a pair of highly polished QBs to give us a senior transfer year (Ramsey and Bryant). But those guys just need a playbook that fits their skills and they're good to go; they already have experience, leadership, intangibles, etc.
It's hard to keep an OC without any QBs developing in the program across a 4 year window.
That ultimately was Bajakian's undoing.
Scary to think that 22 PPG was a significant improvement for us
The t-shirt might be the best thing Jake did. He gave the middle finger to Ggarg and Schill, and got a ticket out of town.
Seriously, I won’t miss our offense, but I am glad Jake stood up for the players after Ggarg shat on them.
The real indictment against coach Bajakian, IMO, is not the play on the field this past year, which -- especially when Ben Bryant was healthy -- was at least acceptable, and superb in places (e.g., the final TD drive against Utah). The real indictment is that Bajakian is the quarterbacks coach, and we have done nada in recent years as far as recruiting and developing quality QBs out of high school. If it weren't for transfers who were trained and developed by coaches at other schools, we'd be in sad shape.
Gragg didn’t fire Bajakian. Braun did. How many more times do you need me to say it?
You can say whatever you want as many times as you want.
I'd like evidence.
Yeah 100%, that was my 2nd post.
I think we all have to acknowledge that the past 4 years is probably easily the worst stretch of internal QB development that we've had over the past 3 decades.
That ultimately is the big problem for Bajakian; yes 2 of the years were saved by transfers (and Fitz deserves credit for convincing Ramsey and Bryant to come and deliver 2 great campaigns), but we had far better QB development during any 4 year stretch of McCall's as compared to the past 4 under Bajakian.
And while that isn't 100% on Bajakian: we've had QB recruiting issues that weren't due to our staff, and players are in part responsible for their development, but for whatever reasons this just hasn't worked. Other than extremely brief moments from Marty, Sullivan, etc.; we just haven't seen anything to show that QBs are developing in the program into capable full-year starters.
Nothing that happened this year was different from the past 3 in the one area where Bajakian had to show some improvement (QB development), and that's why his tenure had to end.
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You’re not going to get primary source evidence publicly. It seemed pretty easy to tell based on his press conference comments the whole season that (1) Braun was not involved in the offense at all and (2) wasn’t exactly thrilled with the decisions and results. That’s buttressed by what people in and around the program are saying.
Braun wanted to fire Bajakian at the end of the year. Bajakian wearing the Fitz t-shirt and then making an ass out of himself made that decision even easier.
…but also, it was a super easy decision without the shirt.
Such a good question. Easy to see why a team like Utah struggled to compete in the Pac-12 with their antiquated complimentary football style.
I was curious so checked out scoring defense stats.
NCAA College Football FBS current team Stats | NCAA.com
Discover the current NCAA FBS Football leaders in every stats category, as well as historic leaders.
www.ncaa.com
The top 4 are B1G (Michigan OSU PSU Iowa), and 6 of the top 18 (Neb 15 and Wiscy 18)… Rutgers at 30, NU 42, Maryland 46.
Don’t quite have 8 of the top 15 scoring D’s, but lots of good defenses in this conference - and yes mediocre QB play.
