Yep. What I heard is the following, for those curious:
Skyy from day one wouldn’t listen to coaches about running sets and plays in practice, and would always mouth off. Mayer, a natty winner and a transfer being brought in for the culture guy, was the opposite and was a do your job or get out guy. One day in practice skyy was being a whiny baby and Mayer said if you don’t start doing your job here today I’m going to clock you. Skyy continued to go off script in practice and !!!!! and Mayer went over and socked him. After practice, skyy went to coach and said you either kick him off the team or I’m leaving, and coach said “you better toughen up” and Skyy quit later that week.
After hearing the story, it made sense to me why coach stuck it out with Mayer despite him falling off a cliff. He was rewarding the tiny piece of culture he thought remained, and it was more important to protect that in a lost season than it was to try to mix up a line up with a team that wasn’t going to go anywhere