State of the program

[NJcatsfan]

Crisis. Team unwatchable, again. Offense totally incompetent. Defense had a pulse, but still in rough shape. Rutgers isn’t good. Much has and should be made of how the last head coach exited the program. But I can’t stop thinking about the state in which he left this program. Hank retiring really exposed a LOT of weakness, and things have just shattered.

What makes this situation feel worse is that under the Morty / Phillips / Fitz regime, those people at least loved the school and the game. The new regime (Braun excluded) seems to be inept and weak — plus lacking any meaningful connection to NU or even really pretending to care. The president is sports ambivalent at best. The AD is truly awful.

My hope is we will bring in a good head coach next year to totally reboot the program. Root and branch rebuild. But I’m worried strong candidates won’t want to come here / the people in charge will continue to make bad decisions / a solid new hire might get hounded out by our outrage mob for some reason they conjure up.

It’s brutal out there right now. Chris Collins needs to build a protective wall around his program, especially from university “leadership.”

 

[pawildcat]

With an interim guy in place this year, they should have a jump in hiring a new guy and they'd better get busy. It's a crapfest now, but it's still a job in one of the two strongest conferences in the country with a great practice facility and possibly a new stadium on the way. And it's not like there will be a lot of pressure on the new guy to win right away after the last couple of seasons. It would be great if they could wave money at somebody like the Duke guy who is used to getting it done at a non-football factory.

 

[Sheffielder]

Colorado's win over TCU this weekend proves that you really can change a program's fortunes in one off season. I'm not saying Prime & Co. are heading for the national championship this season or that we can be (or want to be) anything like them; but they prove it's not 25 years ago where you'd need 5-7 years to undo a program's tangled knots. Change is possible, and fast...even at a place like Northwestern. I maintain that the key is spending a fortune (which is all relative, really) on mercenary coordinators who can each mind their side of the ball while our head coach plays the media and recruitment game as well as Fitz most certainly could.

Of all things, my main concern is that we have a GD boob sitting in the AD's chair and a guy who doesn't really give a sh*t about football in the president's chair. I trust them to make no strategically smart moves when it comes to our athletic programs.

 

[FanatiCat]

Agree they better be recruiting/wooing multiple bigtime coaches. I think that's what it will take. I like Braun but his rebuild would take years that I don't think we have because it would be a grind from the ground up. We need someone as close to the impact of Coach Prime that we can get, who can actually get the 4* players that are NU-admissions eligible, as well as the A-list (not G5/FCS) grad transfers who are easier to get in.

 

[corbi296]

Colorado's win over TCU this weekend proves that you really can change a program's fortunes in one off season. I'm not saying Prime & Co. are heading for the national championship this season or that we can be (or want to be) anything like them; but they prove it's not 25 years ago where you'd need 5-7 years to undo a program's tangled knots. Change is possible, and fast...even at a place like Northwestern. I maintain that the key is spending a fortune (which is all relative, really) on mercenary coordinators who can each mind their side of the ball while our head coach plays the media and recruitment game as well as Fitz most certainly could.

Of all things, my main concern is that we have a GD boob sitting in the AD's chair and a guy who doesn't really give a sh*t about football in the president's chair. I trust them to make no strategically smart moves when it comes to our athletic programs.

Rapid change is not possible at NU unless our entrance standards for football players change (Not happening). You cannot count on the transfer portal to remake your roster at NU like what happened at CU. Unfortunately things will get worse before they get better. This is a minimum of 3-4 year rebuild to respectability and that assumes NU is able to hire the right AD and Head Coach after this season. I am highly skeptical.

 

[Sheffielder]

Rapid change is not possible at NU unless our entrance standards for football players change (Not happening). You cannot count on the transfer portal to remake your roster at NU like what happened at CU. Unfortunately things will get worse before they get better. This is a minimum of 3-4 year rebuild to respectability and that assumes NU is able to hire the right AD and Head Coach after this season. I am highly skeptical.

"Respectability" to me is six wins and a bowl bid. I really believe we could get to six wins next season with the right moves. There are a TON of very good players with good grades entering the portal now because they are impatient as f*ck and want to start somewhere...might as well be Northwestern over New Mexico State, North Texas, or FIU. I actually hate this trend but it's not going away, so we have to get better at leveraging it.

I look at a guy like AJ Henning with a lot of optimism, and I don't believe he's one in a million - he's a smart guy and quality player who decided to come back to his home state.

With the right coaching staff, a return to respectability is not a far-off pipe dream.

 

[corbi296]

"Respectability" to me is six wins and a bowl bid. I really believe we could get to six wins next season with the right moves. There are a TON of very good players with good grades entering the portal now because they are impatient as f*ck and want to start somewhere...might as well be Northwestern over New Mexico State, North Texas, or FIU. I actually hate this trend but it's not going away, so we have to get better at leveraging it.

I look at a guy like AJ Henning with a lot of optimism, and I don't believe he's one in a million - he's a smart guy and quality player who decided to come back to his home state.

With the right coaching staff, a return to respectability is not a far-off pipe dream.

That's how I define respectability and I think we have no chance of winning six games next year. If you think the team looks lackluster with limited talent now, just wait at the what happens after the exodus that happens after this season. We will lose most of our talent from the two deep and will have very limited talent available from the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes. Let's not even talk about the difficulty of the schedule. This is a long term rebuild.

 

[Jaguar 88]

Rapid change is not possible at NU unless our entrance standards for football players change (Not happening). You cannot count on the transfer portal to remake your roster at NU like what happened at CU. Unfortunately things will get worse before they get better. This is a minimum of 3-4 year rebuild to respectability and that assumes NU is able to hire the right AD and Head Coach after this season. I am highly skeptical.

That rebuild could be longer if your HC candidate isn't all that. It will be harder to hire a real football guy with nerds for bosses.

 

[corbi296]

That rebuild could be longer if your HC candidate isn't all that. It will be harder to hire a real football guy with nerds for bosses.

There will be no rebuild if they hire the wrong head coach. We will be a perpetual cellar dweller if that happens.

 

[Sheffielder]

There will be no rebuild if they hire the wrong head coach. We will be a perpetual cellar dweller if that happens.

On this point, we most certainly agree.

And don't get me wrong - my optimism is not blind. I don't believe we will make a show-stopping hire, nor do I think we'll spend $5M on coordinators for the new coach. The sad part is, we are an absolutely wealthy program with the means to do so, and I might argue we should be considering it as much or more than the Iowas and the Michigan States of the conference, because we have our own set of built-in competitive challenges...doing "more with less" on the coaching side should not be one of them.

 

[Jaguar 88]

There will be no rebuild if they hire the wrong head coach. We will be a perpetual cellar dweller if that happens.

Yeah, you are most likely right on that. Another 4 years of this and the program will be permanently dropped a notch in terms of stature. Two rounds of expansion will make it worse. They need the next Carroll or Leach type HC to get it back on track, attracting better players, via an innovative offense with a complimentary solid defense.

 

[gocatsgo2003]

Rapid change is not possible at NU unless our entrance standards for football players change (Not happening). You cannot count on the transfer portal to remake your roster at NU like what happened at CU. Unfortunately things will get worse before they get better. This is a minimum of 3-4 year rebuild to respectability and that assumes NU is able to hire the right AD and Head Coach after this season. I am highly skeptical.

Throw in the fact that the new stadium endeavor means that the team will be nomadic for two years in a best case scenario… and… yeah, it’s gonna be hard to make an impact hire.

 

[corbi296]

Throw in the fact that the new stadium endeavor means that the team will be nomadic for two years in a best case scenario… and… yeah, it’s gonna be hard to make an impact hire.

I seriously doubt the stadium project will move forward until there is more clarity about the direction of the program. If I were Pat Ryan, I would wonder what’s the point once he sees the product on the field and the resulting attendance at Ryan Field.

 

[CoralSpringsCat]

"Respectability" to me is six wins and a bowl bid. I really believe we could get to six wins next season with the right moves. There are a TON of very good players with good grades entering the portal now because they are impatient as f*ck and want to start somewhere...might as well be Northwestern over New Mexico State, North Texas, or FIU. I actually hate this trend but it's not going away, so we have to get better at leveraging it.

I look at a guy like AJ Henning with a lot of optimism, and I don't believe he's one in a million - he's a smart guy and quality player who decided to come back to his home state.

With the right coaching staff, a return to respectability is not a far-off pipe dream.

Please pass whatever it is you’re smoking.

 

[NUCat320]

. If you think the team looks lackluster with limited talent now, just wait at the what happens after the exodus that happens after this season. We will lose most of our talent from the two deep

“Talent” is a relative term, right? “Talent”
was just uncompetitive with Rutgers.

It’s virtually impossible for it to get worse.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

“Talent” is a relative term, right? “Talent”
was just uncompetitive with Rutgers.

It’s virtually impossible for it to get worse.

Schill has only been on the job for 3 months.
Give him time to raise the academic requirements for all male athletes.
Then he can kill the athletic budget and tell the world that athletes are all violent criminals.

 

[Katatonic]

Uncompetitive against the bottom-rung of the B1G; this reeks of the Dark Ages.

 

[WaveJumper]

Schill has only been on the job for 3 months.
Give him time to raise the academic requirements for all male athletes.
Then he can kill the athletic budget and tell the world that athletes are all violent criminals.

Ya, but his sister is really making the decisions.