DC Bobby Hauck out at Illinois

#301      
therealmiket86
Second place is 1st loser said:
People don't want to admit that because it's self soothing to believe that firing one guy fixes the problem, when the problem is the lack of money we have to spend and what we do spend greases the wheels of the offense.

This is a talent problem. This will be our third DC in 4 games. We'll see what he can do to better things.
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They needed to know what the dline market was going to be. Imagine if a NFL team said they ran out of money and only added undrafted players to the defense. Our offense has looked very good and we have been missing several starters. I think it’s crazy to completely neglect the defense during portal season then be shocked it’s bad.
 
#303      
PleaseMakeABowlGame
Second place is 1st loser said:
People don't want to admit that because it's self soothing to believe that firing one guy fixes the problem, when the problem is the lack of money we have to spend and what we do spend greases the wheels of the offense.

This is a talent problem. This will be our third DC in 4 games. We'll see what he can do to better things.
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I think its a good thing that "what we do spend greases the wheels of the offense."

I'd rather be really good on one side and bad on the other, than being average in both.
 
#306      
ChiefGritty
Jet Jockey said:
Sounds like from the press conference that BB was completely in the dark and taken by surprise
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The way I interpreted it is that the situation obviously needed to be dealt with and handled differently, Bielema had one vision of the changes that needed to be made, Hauck (who remember is an even more experienced head coach than Bielema is) came on his own with a different vision of the changes to make, and they were so misaligned that it was better to just make a clean break.

I don't think Hauck just up and quit, I don't think Bielema even suggested as much today, he kept saying "there was no point", whatever Hauck wanted to do going forward just wasn't acceptable to Bert.
 
#307      
bkocain
Talent matters, but I think coaching is way more important. Iowa always seems to overachieve with the least amount of talent, especially on defense. A&M, which I follow because of my wife, always seems to massively underachieve year after year despite having 4- and 5-star recruits at nearly every defensive position.

Heck, Spoon was only a 2- or 3-star recruit when he got here, and he turned out pretty damn good. So I’m one who would rather have a better coach than a roster full of stars.
 
#308      
BretMyBeachHouse
ChiefGritty said:
As a matter of fact it is precisely what we heard from those good sources that makes me think this way.

During the period days after the transfer window had opened, when it looked like we were on track for the smaller number of departures we had been used to, defensive front seven guys started trickling out, and the response from the insiders was that the staff didn't think these players were worth the money they were asking for and that we could do better replacing them. Later the insiders told us there was a deal in the works to bring Tomiwa Durojaiye back which didn't come to fruition.

And then of course the insiders (and other sources) told us we had a deal in place with Chris Partridge that he backed out of when they won the Super Bowl. What the Seahawks do isn't exactly a Rocky Long 3-3-5, but the principles are comparable in terms of a tradeoff of size for speed within the box and generating uncertainty as to who is rushing and who is dropping on any given play. Both are ways of answering the question "how do we get results on defense if we can't afford quality and depth among 300+lb DT's?"

It's not my speculation that our change in defensive philosophy was forced by the price level for size on the interior going through the roof, Bret Bielema has said that publicly. But that's not something that became apparent until pretty late in our process, when we suffered something that has hit every program in the country at one time or another: sticker shock at the portal prices.

That's a much more coherent and plausible story than us spending five critical weeks sending letters of recommendation around for someone to relieve us of the burden of firing our incompetent DC. That line actually doesn't align with the information we've gotten here at all, nor does it follow basic common sense, but it DOES stoke the dedicated anti-Henry campaign around here that certain of our wise sages have chosen to lend their credibility to for reasons that I can't fathom.
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I think you've got a few things wrong here.

First, I don't recall much talk from insiders that we were going to be able to do better than the guys we lost. Maybe in one or two instances. It was much more about not being able to spend so much on those players. I remember much more about the money constraints than the idea that we'd do better. If you've got some quotes, I'd love to hear them.

I'm still not understanding why you think that the Henry exit wasn't a case of Bret wanting him gone but waiting for him to find a spot to go. It fits the timelines more than anything. If you think that the decision to go with a speed over size defense was made pre-Hauck, then it even supports that notion more. Why not fire Henry right after the season.

As to the five weeks of us finding a landing spot, that's hardly a stretch. If what we mean by a soft landing is one that saves face, then the options there are limited. There aren't many near lateral moves for a DC at a B1G school. He's not getting a head coach in a lesser conference, so it means a position coach at a top program. There aren't that many that come up in a given year, and they often come up as part of the carousel. Not a firing, but someone moving to another spot. Notre Dame's DB coach left for the Ravens a week before they hired Henry.
 
#309      
blackdog
therealmiket86 said:
We spent a lot of money on offensive players that haven’t played a snap so far. Some of that money could’ve been on defense and we would be a much better team.
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I don't think it's fair to penalize the staff for players getting hurt. Obviously roster construction would look very different if they could predict the future.
 
#310      
therealmiket86
blackdog said:
I don't think it's fair to penalize the staff for players getting hurt. Obviously roster construction would look very different if they could predict the future.
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TJ Taylor was paid a lot and can’t get on the field. It’s reckless to spend that much money on one side of the ball and then say you ran out of money for defensive linemen.
 
#311      
RowdyFromRow22
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