A name I liked last offseason was Vince Kehres. Parker coached with him at Toledo
DC Bobby Hauck out at Illinois
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
I would assume someone on the current staff who knows the defense will take over for the rest of the season and Bret will hire a new staff the second this season ends.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
What sucks the most is how good the offense is. An Aaron Henry #45 ranked defense likely gets us to 8 wins this year. Now, I’d put the O/U at 5.5.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
We've been sold so many just-so stories about all of this by the insiders here, the program itself, about Henry, NIL, Partridge, Hauck, the pluses and minuses of 3-3-5, all of it.
There is something refreshing about just ripping that whole page out of the book and just saying okay, go fix it.
There is something refreshing about just ripping that whole page out of the book and just saying okay, go fix it.
My guess is Cooper or Bradford will call the defense for the remainder of the season. Then after the season Bret will make a new hire. Probably had to happens, I don’t think Bobby was truly Bret’s first choice when hired, I think someone went back on their word and forced Bret to pivot. Bret has known Bobby for awhile and I think Bobby thought he would be reinvigorated to coach again with just being able to focus on the defense now. Obviously I don’t think that was the case. Too many mistakes that can’t happen at this level, heck even at the high school level you don’t see a lot of this stuff. We will know more tomorrow at Bret’s presser though.
blackdog
- Champaign
Yes. These guys are professionals and they've known each other for a long time. I've had to fire people I absolutely did not like and there was no reason for it to ever go that way.
Man, I’ll be real, I don’t think there’s a positive way to spin this one. This isn’t even a “traditional” midseason firing, it’s early season. Not only is this difficult to recover from in the current season but I worry that this quick and early of a firing after 4 games may result in some serious negative recruiting and difficulties in hiring a new DC past this season.
Based on the low talent level of the DL and LB group, such little push and penetration I don’t think there’s really a good answer here. We knew offseason switching schemes without the talent or personnel would be a major issue and it would take time for the players to learn the new system and execute. And while we were clearly far more behind schedule than expected, I do think we have been improving week to week, just our starting point was so low and we have to sell out so much to stop the run, it still looks terrible.
So overall I don’t love the timing of this firing at all even if the poor play of the defense, the communication issues, and the clear lack of player understanding of the defensive scheme and playbook, supports letting him go. I think this is an absolute mess and I pray that this is only going to be 1 season of suffering that we can somehow still eke out 6 wins and not a death blow to our program momentum.
Really shocked by the timing of this.
Based on the low talent level of the DL and LB group, such little push and penetration I don’t think there’s really a good answer here. We knew offseason switching schemes without the talent or personnel would be a major issue and it would take time for the players to learn the new system and execute. And while we were clearly far more behind schedule than expected, I do think we have been improving week to week, just our starting point was so low and we have to sell out so much to stop the run, it still looks terrible.
So overall I don’t love the timing of this firing at all even if the poor play of the defense, the communication issues, and the clear lack of player understanding of the defensive scheme and playbook, supports letting him go. I think this is an absolute mess and I pray that this is only going to be 1 season of suffering that we can somehow still eke out 6 wins and not a death blow to our program momentum.
Really shocked by the timing of this.
Let's go Lou Boudreau revisited.
Matthew Bailey for DC.
Matthew Bailey for DC.
TheFlyingIllini1317
- Chicago, IL
Retired happily in Tucson
Homecoming 2019
- Chicago
Smh...Bret forgot to ask Hauck if he would consider playing 9 on defense, due diligence on Brets part is lacking...
We don’t have the talent to have a #45 ranked defense. We lost Gabe, Rosiek, Miles Scott, James Thompson, Angelo McCollum, Tomiwa, Eli Coenen, Curt Neal, Hood..etc we literally replaced them with FCS back ups. Tomiwa is the #8 ranked dt by pff. We had a lot of talent on defense the last couple years.
Purdue, MSU and Maryland are games we need to win.
I see no problem with potential hires understanding it. Just look at defensive performance in those four games, culminating with a 9-person goal line stand. We don’t want to hire anyone who’d consider such results even remotely tolerable.
JSpence
- Evansville, IN
Sure. I'm not sure how many snaps have seen us actually use three down linemen with backers stacked or ends wide. The problem is the personnel - we can't conjure more B1G-ready DTs from nowhere.
Until someone with knowledge of practices and our depth chart tells us that we have big kids ready to go, we've got to assume that our light 4-man and 5-man fronts are no worse than our best attempt at a normal heavy one.
No experienced head coach would allow a new coordinator to stick his program with a 3-3-5 for pride or funsies, and Bret knows his stuff more than most. In that same vein, he wouldn't need to wait until midseason to fire a coach to get a scheme change. In our situation, he can ultimately only be upset at himself for choice of scheme. What he won't and shouldn't hold himself responsible for is the major flubs and perceived inadequate coaching. He's talked about getting that addressed, and this weekend he took it to the next level.
He's not a perfect head coach, but he's a very good one.
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
I get why Bielema was trying for the soft landing, but unfortunately sometimes you just have to be ruthless with personnel moves and do your best to deal with the human issues. I know looking back on times I’ve had to make personnel moves like this, the ones I regret are the ones where I waited too long hoping a situation would work itself out.
Sometimes, you just have to do the hard thing. Bielema made a mistake there.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Fair. But without a scheme change / staff change, there wouldn’t be confusion on the field, miscommunication, etc. That alone’s worth 20 spots in the rankings.
JSpence
- Evansville, IN
He might have made a mistake there. I truly believe that he sees still sees high potential in Henry as a schemer, coach, recruiter, or all of the above. We all think that he's overly optimistic about that, but it's not blind loyalty if he's setting him up as well as possible for his own purposes, such as a return or reunion.. or just avoiding coaching against him.
We had a ton of miscommunication on the field and blown coverage last year. We ran one of the worst zones I had ever seen. No DC would look good with this talent but I do agree that the coaching was extremely bad. I think just getting rid of Hauck will be an addition by subtract. Roger Cooper has called this defense before and it made no sense that Hauck was calling the plays in to Cooper who would then talk to the green dot on the field.
Anyone worth a darn will realize it’s not the norm for Coach B. It would be concerning if this was his normal operating procedure with how he handled termination of coaches. The issue is with the hiring to begin with and not the timing of the termination.