Tried saying this in the post game thread, but couldn’t finish my post due to technical difficulties so here it is > Fire Nickerson. Never seen so much out of place defense in my life.
The thought behind this is obviously that firing Lovie is undesirable and maybe not possible and the defense is atrocious and Hardy is the guy with the "defensive coordinator" title. And while the 2016 and 2017 defenses were better, they weren't great and it's not like Hardy is an elite recruiter or otherwise hugely qualified for the job.
But you don't fire a coach as punishment for a poor job, you fire a coach in order to be stronger moving forward. This is going to be Lovie Smith's defense going forward from a scheme perspective if he's the head coach, HE is the real defensive coordinator, and look at what Hardy has to work with from a staff perspective at the current moment:
- A 28 year old whose only previous experience was as a grad assistant and was still in college in 2014
- An NFL DB's coach with zero previous college coaching experience who stepped up to the title of "Passing Game Coordinator"
- Another 20-something with no college coaching experience who was still in college in 2013 and only has the job because he's Lovie's son
Hardy is the "Defensive Coordinator" but the thing he has most control over is defending the run game and linebacker play. To the extent there's an area of our defense that is something short of embarrassing, that's it.
To summarize, it's not like Hardy Nickerson is doing some hidden excellent job with his piece of the coaching staff work. He's not. But if you believe firing him and bringing in some name guy with success elsewhere solves the problem of Lovie's scheme and an unqualified staff, I think you're fooling yourself.
Assuming Lovie himself is not fired, what I would do is clean up the responsibilities on defense, make Hardy the proper DC and playcaller, get rid of Clark and Miles Smith and hire a dedicated LB coach, a new DL coach, and "demote" Byrd to just DB's coach where he can focus on technique across our DB group.
Really though, does anyone have any ideas as to who could come in and keep the 2 main recruits we have on board and not lose all our young talent.
I don't think you should look at that all as one thing. An exodus of active players is unlikely regardless of what would happen with a coaching change, but losing IWill and Beason is probably something close to a certainty even with the most miraculous possible hire. Maybe not IWill if the new coach wants to stick with the promise of making him a QB, but that's just speculation on my part.
It's a bit like the Jeremiah Tilmon situation, don't overthink what it means to fire a recruit's coach. That's who they're coming to play for. But existing players already live in Champaign and have formed bonds with their teammates and face higher hurdles to going elsewhere. It's a different situation.