What kind of bad coach couldn’t eke out more than one win with this guy, Skoronski, Cam Mitchell, among other good players on the team?
Off topic conversation removed from the Evan Hull thread
- Thread starter peatymeanis
- Start date
Interesting then how NU’s depth went from win the west quality down to bottom of the cellar seemingly over night.
The tail-end of the Cushing years really hurt us on the OL. Springer also proved pretty ineffective developing any kind of impact WR. The QB issues are well documented. Combine all that with the schematic disaster that was JON’s defense and it was a recipe for failure.
The mismatch between scheme and talent the last few years aside, to me the issue the last two years was more weak links than depth per se. Lack of depth does cause weak links, but sometimes a team can almost miraculous get through a season with only a few injuries, or that the injuries occur in position groups that are deep. The clearest weak link the last 2 years was QB, but even the starters at DT ere so weak that they gave opponent’s offenses leverage to exploit the defense, especially considering the scheme.
So our problems were:
- Cushing (coaching)
- Springer (coaching)
- QB recruiting/development (coaching)
- JON scheme (coaching)
Looks like there was a pretty wide systemic failure in coaching!
I actually think the issues with Cushing/OL, Springer/WR, and McCall/Bajakian/QB mostly start on the recruiting and personnel side. We just simply didn’t have enough good enough players.
Yes it is obviously the coaches’ job to recruit good players as well, but it’s a separate issue from on-field coaching. Plus there’s a whole army in the recruiting office who, in my mind, should be questioning why they still have jobs.
Good players want to play for good coaches.
You have always seemed reasonably intelligent in your posts, even if I disagreed.
I don't get this latest "Fitz was a bad coach" line you've chosen to pursue.
If Fitzgerald had been fired and there was a negotiated payout on the money he is owed, that would have been completely understandable.
Nobody thinks otherwise. Not even CoralSpringsCat (correct me if I'm wrong).
But it seems like you are arguing that Fitzgerald deserved to be fired for cause for losing - that comes off as vindictive, petty and frankly, dumb.
Don’t forget our special teams coaching! We’ve really set the world on fire there.
Sorry @gocatsgo2003 but depth wasn’t the only issue. Our coaching was terrible the last two seasons, and it’s been terrible except for Hankwitz for years longer.
Case in point: somehow, Hull only ran the ball 21 times for 63 yards against Miami of Ohio. Running behind a future All Pro OL in Skoronski. How did that game turn out again?
Congratulations to Evan Hull - I’m always going to cheer for him to succeed in life… unless it comes out that he was one of the Shrek Squad ringleaders.
This is inconsistent with all of the foaming at the mouth (perhaps not by you) about how each successive team was our most talented ever.
Never meant to say that depth was the only issue, just that it’s a big issue. My subsequent response should make pretty clear that I thought a lot of the coaching was also quite shitty.
I don’t care if Fitz was fired for cause or not. Simply, he failed as a coach both on and off the field and deserved to be fired, period. His settlement money is not my concern.
Its my concern - a big concern - because Fitzgerald was highly regarded nationally and was a very positive force for the university... not only in recruiting regular students, but in projecting a positive image and stressing the importance of graduation... and raising lots of money for the university.
Working out a settlement on his remaining contract would have been fine.
His termination is a disaster for Northwestern because of the way it was done.
As far as his record as a coach - the numbers are there. If you throw out the last 2 years, I believe NU was above 500 in Big Ten games and had gone to 10 bowls in 15 seasons. Then Hankwitz retired, the transfer portal opened up, NIL happened, Fitzgerald got a 10 year contract and he hired JON.
So the last 2 years have been terrible. I'll agree with you on that. But that seems to be the entire extent of your argument.
I mean, this is college football. Throwing out the last 2 years is not a thing. It's common for coaches who won the natty 2 years prior to be fired. If we won the West last year, Fitz would still be here. Hell if we won 8 games last year, Fitz would still be here.
I agree that the way the termination and original investigation was handled was a massive bungle. Gragg is a clown in over his head and Schill is unequipped to handle the job. They both deserve to go, as does most of the board of trustees for overseeing and making these hires. But it doesn't mean that Fitz shouldn't have been fired.
Amazing how you turned what should have been a celebration thread on Evan Hull into a Fitz bashing thread!
PWB said it best, there would not be the uproar from many if Fitz got canned for performance. I personally think it would have been stupid. Instead, Bozo and Cookie destroyed the program and the current players that stayed are collateral damage.
All you daydreamers think we just reset after this year and suddenly get back to competitive football with the top programs in the conference. Well, you better pay a lot of money to the new staff and make “a real” commitment to get better players here. Not a Pat Ryan commitment, he has given this school a long runway for improvement, but the pencil necks keep FUBARing everything.
To be fair, the comment was that the coaching staff was bad top to bottom, not just that Fitz was bad. Then PWB did what he does.
@gocatsgo2003 , it’s here now!
Across the board, lots of coaches got too long. JON should’ve been dismissed after one year. Springer got a five year recruiting cycle more than he deserved. And perhaps Genyk will be allowed to coach special teams this year. (NDSU returned 17 punts last season…so maybe we’ll see some returns.)
(Interestingly, LinkedIn says that Springer left coaching fairly quickly after he lost his job at NU. He’s currently in finance for a company called Prestige Staffing.)
Springer proved? Many on this board called out Cushing and Springer for years. The true culprit was the one that provided cover, retained them, dared others to question his god-ness. Then hired JON to double down.
Never should have gotten the contract. But definitely, via buyout or dryhump, needed to go.
As this plays out in the court system, so many of us will rue the day. Might be me. Maybe not. So many necks stretched out.
That’s like saying throw out the bowl victory years…throw out data cuz it doesn’t work for you?
And it’s three of the last four and this was looking to be yet another. Gonna keep saying it until y’all stop w the two year disinformation.
Daydreamers and enablers. What a colorful crew we are together.
You seem to believe he deserved to be retained on the basis of a 1-11 season and 4-20 in his last two. Your bar is apparently very low.
I never said he deserved to be retained on 4-20 in the last two seasons.
I said they were terrible seasons - we looked awful (and small) on defense.
But Fitzgerald had 8 years left on his contract..
Personally I would have given Fitzgerald two more years to get it back together, thinking Braun would re-invigorate the defense and hoping (there's that word again) that Ben Bryant and AJ Henning would provide an immediate spark to the offense.
Yeah but if you throw out the last 5 years of that contract, he would only have 3 years left!
Despite the dismal performances of the last couple of seasons, there was some good young talent either on the roster or in the pipeline.
We lost transfers and decommits to:
Ohio State
Wisconsin
Oklahoma
UCLA
Stanford
Auburn
Iowa State
Oregon State
This was set to be a big year for Fitz…a chance to re-set the program with the new coaching hires. It’s a shame he got his legs cut out from under him.
We lost transfers and decommits to:
Ohio State
Wisconsin
Oklahoma
UCLA
Stanford
Auburn
Iowa State
Oregon State
This was set to be a big year for Fitz…a chance to re-set the program with the new coaching hires. It’s a shame he got his legs cut out from under him.
OMG....22-28 players required, minimally.....with depth on DL and WR...plus special teams.Football is a game of several compartments working together . To say because we had 4 or 5 superiour players we should have taken on ALabama is ludicrous. You want to be Alabama you need 5 Skoronskis....The fact that over the Fitz years we have been competitive with the rosters we have had is commendable. It has always been a thin line for success at NU...W/o changes in admissions and making the pool of kids we can recruit the same as other schools....will be hard pressed to find anyone that does as well as Fitz. THe # of kids that said they chose NU because of Fitz ,,,,,nuff said.
Not to mention that NU is ranked #1 in the APR rankings:
https://collegefootballnews.com/ran...ress-rate-2023-apr-football-rankings-1-to-133
I mean, that's something.
You just wish he had taken the opportunity more seriously, don’t you?
How do you, in any way, think you’re in a position to tell how “seriously” Fitz was taking the 2023 season (and, beyond that, the future of NU football)?
Chris Collins would like to speak with you in his office.
He just bought a Purge mask.
Oh I’m not in that position. But the implication that Fitz was blameless, which is what lots of people are going with, is just so stupid.
Maybe the rare decommit or transfer that @CoralSpringsCat trashed over the years just didn’t want to be run, you know.
I am 100% supportive of this response.
If Richardson had only told this to Fitzgerald, or even his favorite, most trusted assistant coach on the staff, then the investigation would have been able to conclude that Fitz knew.
Right. But is it acceptable for a head coach to not know that there’s hazing or something hazing-adjacent happening in the program when a freshman manager who *never* goes in the locker room does?
(This goes eternally in circles. But also, the idea that Fitz was just an innocent victim demands to be challenged. Because it all happened under his watch. If he knew, he failed. If he didn’t know, he failed.)
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I don't think there are many who believe Fitz was an innocent victim.
Many of us are waiting for credible evidence that he was aware of the painful effect the locker room antics had on some of his players and did nothing to stop it.
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The two female managers said they knew. Guess they knew more than Fitz. Sad this statement isn't disappointing to the Enablers.
I don't know what they knew because I asked them directly and they wouldn't answer. We already had this conversation.
She also didn’t know what was considered “voluntary “. I will stick by my guns that these are Alpha males and would fight to the death before getting someone’s junk whacked across their forehead. Makes no sense to anyone that has actually been part of a college locker room. None, zero. Stupid rite of passage crap, but if someone said this ain’t happening to me, I have a hard time believing that it still happened to them. Also, does anyone really think that the players would sit back and allow this abuse to happen if there was a player violently resisting? I thought we had players of strong character? Must had had 25 years of over-evaluating the type of young men that came through the program.
