I mean, "why would people come to NU games if the chances of winning the B1G are very small" is not going to be a new problem for us.
Offensive Futility
- Thread starter Catdude
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Braun is kind of a shot at an "up and comer" type, wouldn't you say? He's still in his 30s, coming from an FCS school (albeit the Cadillac of FCS schools).
There are two schools of thought on JON, I think. Which do you subscribe to?
- JON really was just a buddy hire. Fitz decided to spend his goodwill to help a buddy revive his career.
- Fitz felt that Hank's D, while effective and competitive, was never going to win the Big Ten Championship outright. Two tries against OSU convinced him that OSU's superior depth and talent would always wear down NU's D in a match-up. To take down OSU, Fitz wanted to bring in some fresh ideas that would innovate the defense. Something about JON's "read and react" philosophy and complex schemes appealed to him.
Even if the truth is entirely the 2nd, I still think it was a mistake. Don't make such a drastic change from the fundamentals that worked. It reminds me of Luke Donald, #1 ranked player in the world, changing coaches because that's what he thought it would take to win a major. He would never reach those heights again.
But if Fitz was experimenting, that's much less of a sin than a buddy hire. Randy Walker, after all, brought in some innovative ideas (on offense) that earned NU its last conference championship.
Ok. I think we were near dead last. Seems like the +/- argument from last week. One can twist stats many ways to make them appear to tell a different story.
Another interesting observation. I don't think Paterno and Fitz were alike but I do think there is substance to the observation that people become comfortable over time - for varying reasons - and begin to resist change even when evidence suggests otherwise.
Or, ya know, ignore them when they don’t fit your narrative.
That definitely happens around here. Get your implication but still support your thesis broadly applied
That definitely happens around here. Get your implication but still support your thesis broadly applied
https://northwestern.forums.rivals.com/threads/offensive-futility.68356/post-1038712
Nothing there?
We were 83rd in scoring defense in 2022, and while that is certainly not good, it is nowhere near dead last out of 133 teams.
What was near dead last was our offense, which finished 128th in scoring.
Whatever the reason, Buddies were kryptonite for Fitz. Whether hiring buddies, or keeping buddies too long because - buddies....
Wow - guy is a genius. Better lock him down to ten years and $50MM before one of the big boys snap him up, or worse, the GB Packers come knocking…
You all love to live in black/white, or in your case, yes/no. Those are outlets to the rest of the world. Whatever Braun may become is still a complete unknown quantity. He’s playing with other guy’s l players in a pressure cooker scenario. And he was hired for DC spot, not HC.
I want to see NU put some money on a real coach or I’ll play contrarian until proven wrong by top 25 appearances leading to a decent bowl victory. If NU wants to go the east Gagg route then I want to see Evanston flip then the bird on concert revenue and see how eager donors are to pay for mediocre at best.
Not sure where Ryan’s wealth was pre-1995, but I don’t recall hearing much about him until NU was a pretty stable and competitive Program.
I’m happy for Braun having a better than expected season along with the kids. But as a dark ages survivor, I’ll be bitchy about participation trophy efforts until the day I die or NU gets competitive again.
Great. So having terrible O and mediocre D deserves heaps of praise and big money contracts…. Whatever.
Nobody is saying that we should lock him up for 10 years and $50MM. We’re saying that the improvement on defense has been noticeable and immediate with the same or worse personnel. You’re the one constantly moving the goal posts. The comment that set off this string of posts was “we suck” and me responding “not on defense.” That’s just not correct in 2023.
The ideal case is Braun going back to the role for which he was originally hired and is doing quite well with, namely DC. Might be hard to pull off, but I’d be all for matching him up with a younger, offense-first HC like Sean Lewis. He could also plausibly stay if we hire a more established HC he respects like Leipold, etc.
I think the JOn hire was an attempt to bring in a system that was more geared towards stopping the pass happy spread offenses..but we were not close to having the athletes to be successful for this and the attempt was painful...whether we ever would have been able to transitions successfully and match recruiting with scheme ????? same with Bajakian..Fitz saw the model of what he wanted on offense....a run orientated. tight end focused , ball control old school B10 offense...and the why of why it didn't/hasn't worked is up for speculation...take your pick. NO qb, no wide receivers. horrible O-Line...wrong type of recruits and players for the o-line. poor coaching.......but I never saw ego-centric from Fitz...I saw NUcentric and he defended the team and coaches and any of their faults with a ton of energy. He saw anyone asking questions of a negative sense as someone attacking NU and the team...never saw Fitz as anything but a WE guy . His overall record, bowl victories etc. speak for itself. You want to hold him accountable for the bad years you have to give him credit for the good. This year the chance to coach his son at Loyola Academy has to be a small remedy for a really big wound.
More directly, when was the last time you saw someone change their mind about anything important?
Braun is a pretty good Defensive Coordinator.
I could run a bunch of stats to prove that, but his detractors will just deny the proof, so I am not going to bother.
People are either not watching the games or just spewing venom.
I especially love the idiocy that Fitz got lucky when he hired Braun because his history of hiring assistants was so terrible. As if the person saying that has any clue about lower level assistant coaches. (News flash - you don't know jack squat) Did Fitzgerald have a 63-60 against the Big Ten because he sucked as a coach, the assistants all sucked and the players had no talent? Its as if some folks on here got Covid and forgot everything that preceded it.
Fitzgerald hired a bad defensive coordinator and we went 2-16. Then he fired that guy and hired Braun, who has proven his quality in a terrible situation. So the Fitz-haters now hate the new guy for not letting Schill and Gragg destroy the program.
No amount of bitching and re-writing history is going to change anything. But nothing requires you to root against the football team. Thats on you. I get that some of you guys are jealous and miserable. Thats on you too, but I am open to being sympathetic if you want to talk about it.
I could run a bunch of stats to prove that, but his detractors will just deny the proof, so I am not going to bother.
People are either not watching the games or just spewing venom.
I especially love the idiocy that Fitz got lucky when he hired Braun because his history of hiring assistants was so terrible. As if the person saying that has any clue about lower level assistant coaches. (News flash - you don't know jack squat) Did Fitzgerald have a 63-60 against the Big Ten because he sucked as a coach, the assistants all sucked and the players had no talent? Its as if some folks on here got Covid and forgot everything that preceded it.
Fitzgerald hired a bad defensive coordinator and we went 2-16. Then he fired that guy and hired Braun, who has proven his quality in a terrible situation. So the Fitz-haters now hate the new guy for not letting Schill and Gragg destroy the program.
No amount of bitching and re-writing history is going to change anything. But nothing requires you to root against the football team. Thats on you. I get that some of you guys are jealous and miserable. Thats on you too, but I am open to being sympathetic if you want to talk about it.
These are a whole lot of straw men that you're building here.
I did? Where? I see where corbi said it. I have not deleted nor edited any such language from any post. So, please show me.
Right here:
I then provided actual statistics, which you conveniently ignored. Perhaps fitting.
Again, didn’t say we suck. I said I didn’t see notable improvement. And to have a middling defense be notable improvement is akin to winning tallest midget award. Cool. Participation trophies have been ordered.
Seems like I said top half in my part prior to these stats. You simply affirm my conjecture. But you seek acknowledgement. Here is me acknowledging your stats show a mediocre D.
You’re wrong that there hasn’t been “notable improvement.” Goalposts moved. Again.
Bulls@#$!!!!!!!!!!! Why do I say that? Because alot of us in here have already moved on from Fitz. The guy thoroughly tarnished his legacy within the span of 5 seasons removed from the Holiday Bowl victory over Utah. He also never brought in top coaching talent over the 17 seasons he was HC. His offenses were atrocious, lacking imagination, which hurt recruiting. All you have to look at is Fitz's coaching tree that he compiled over those 17 seasons. The only name I can come up with is Hankwitz, and he might not really count as he was on his farewell tour with NU. And yes for sure a hot shot candidate could outshine Fitz. If Stoops did take the HC position, leaving Braun with the D, many in here would be ecstatic. We might land some 4 star Qbs and Wrs with that arrangement. Actually have a 21st century offense for a change!!!!!!!!!!
I guess you don’t understand that I am one of Fitz’s detractors.
I didn’t just want him gone, I was prepared to walk away from NU football entirely rather than listen to him excuse another season of failure. I quit the Rock, because I didn’t think I would be on this site anymore. (It is the entire sport I am losing interest in. Fitz was just one of many factors driving me away, and nowhere near the top of the list.)
But if you think that most of the program’s supporters, especially the large donors and the older alumni dotting the stands, feel the way that you and I do, you are just wrong. There is no way that the bulk of the fan base would have turned on Fitz just because he hired somebody like Lane Kiffin for OC.
But that doesn’t even seem to be the point of your strange outburst. This started off with a discussion of Fitz being outshined by some coordinator hire, and you turned it into hiring Bob Stoops to replace Fitz? WTF?
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If that was the case, it was incredibly foolhardy, as Fitz already had a bad experience with Colby's read/react scheme, not to mention the problems it brought on the offensive end with McC.
Fitz already got burned with complexity when it took them nearly half a season before they realized that the secondary (despite having 2 talented, upperclassmen) was repeatedly getting burned because complexity caused confusion, so from that point forward, they simplified things.
Huh?
The secondary had become one of the strengths of the D.
During the Colby Swiss days, it was a mess because players were often confused.
And the reason why ball control O didn't work out was for the obvious reason that one cannot run that sort of O, without at least a decent O-line, if not an above average one.
The fact that Fitz kept that O philosophy for so long despite never having adequately addressed the O-line shows his limitations.
How many times have the Cats gotten behind early and were forced to pass the ball?
Going to disagree with you a bit on this one.
Fitz started to get pretty snarky about criticism, including coming from this forum.
But Fitz really had no basis to stand on, because he would eventually implement the changes advocated by the board, but in his usual overly slow, delayed way.
Problem is, the JON was a mistake that many if us knew at the onset, and even more problematic, it was Fitz making the same mistake again.
Fitz benefited greatly from playing the sisters of the poor of the B1GW (even more so with Wisky being a shell of itself and Nebby being a complete dumpster fire).
A better coach would not only have a better B1G record, but would have won the W a couple more times (also wouldn't have so many bad losses).
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Leaving out the hazing mess (other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...) we have to give credit to Fitz for a solid program from 07-18. Longest period of sustained competitiveness for NU ever. We just do. Then 3 of the last 4 years, he was a poor man's Gary Patterson. Surly, stubborn and entitled.
I’m not sure a guy who was insisting on not playing a modern offense was thinking that his tried and true, highly effective defensive scheme wasn’t enough.
We lost against OSU because we weren’t good enough overall the first time (realistically that team wasn’t that great) and because we couldn’t score the second time, when we were pretty darn good, at least defensively. The OSU OL was always going to be a tough matchup but when we couldn’t move the ball the defensive line got exhausted and OSUs OL was shoveling snow and feeding Sermon.
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