So lets deal with the elephant in the room here. The last two years, despite rank incompetence and total chaos, respectively, in terms of coaching, we were 6-6 then 5-7. This year having more than doubled our investment in the staff we appear to be heading in a 3-9 or worse direction. Why? I think there are a few things to point out.
1. Luck. It cannot be overstated how ridiculously flukey the Minnesota and Penn State wins in 2014 and the Nebraska win in 2015 were. Random bounces of the ball, bad referee's calls, inexplicable opponent coaching, unprecedented levels of Christian Hackenbergitude. We were definitively, unambiguously the worse team in all three of those games and somehow won all of them. There were no games in those seasons where we were the better team and lost. Make those records both 4-8 and the trend line looks clearer.
2. Scheduling. Remember this season is the change to the 9 game Big Ten schedule. In each of the last two seasons we had 3 games against FCS or Group of Five teams that went no better than 7-5. We trailed late and barely escaped in 4 of those 6 games. We had only one such cupcake game this year. This is bad luck, bad timing, and nobody's fault.
3. Talent. Because Tim Beckman is the villain of the piece the tendency will be to blame anything that goes wrong the first few Lovie years on him, portraying what he left behind as a radioactive toxic waste dump of a program. That's a big oversimplification, we have a number of good players, but Beckman's focus on Juco's, especially along the offensive line, and the general weakness of his recruiting efforts certainly did not leave a full cupboard. A bad and thin offensive line is a tough thing to coach around, and that's what we've got. Chris Boles and Teddy Karras were a couple of solid Zook recruits who brought stability if not excellence at guard the last couple years.
4. Fit. Bill Cubit is a screen play svengali. Josh Ferguson is the prototypical screen play back. That happy coincidence alone was an enormous contributor to our success the past two years. Cubit also built an offensive system that was made-to-measure for Lunt. Which kinda leads to the next point.
5. Focus on Win Now. Is Lovie and staff's focus on absolutely maximizing what we do right now, or is there more of a view to the future? I'm not 1000% sure what the staff's perspective is on building a base for the future, but certainly if you were in absolute hot seat mode you'd be using all of your allotted practice time, for instance, or spending your bye week gameplanning for your next opponent. I take the slow-burn of the Lovie era to be at least partially long-term thinking as opposed to NFL style player friendliness.
6. Current Coaching. The current staff can't be made blameless however. A team with the talent we have on the defensive line has to have better gap integrity against the run game than we did yesterday. It was a really shockingly bad performance from our front 7. It's clear McGee has no trust in our OL in the run game and would rather rely on Lunt's arm and decision making. But you're not putting him in a position to succeed by abandoning the run game so blatantly. And then there's all the penalties which don't reflect well on the fundamentals work that was the focus of our training camp. And at the position coach level, did we assemble the best $4 million staff we could get in March? Seems pretty doubtful. I would not view some changes this offseason as an admission of wrongdoing whatsoever.
So I think rather than banging on any one hobby horse and arguing against the others, we ought to look at the situation in its full context.
1. Luck. It cannot be overstated how ridiculously flukey the Minnesota and Penn State wins in 2014 and the Nebraska win in 2015 were. Random bounces of the ball, bad referee's calls, inexplicable opponent coaching, unprecedented levels of Christian Hackenbergitude. We were definitively, unambiguously the worse team in all three of those games and somehow won all of them. There were no games in those seasons where we were the better team and lost. Make those records both 4-8 and the trend line looks clearer.
2. Scheduling. Remember this season is the change to the 9 game Big Ten schedule. In each of the last two seasons we had 3 games against FCS or Group of Five teams that went no better than 7-5. We trailed late and barely escaped in 4 of those 6 games. We had only one such cupcake game this year. This is bad luck, bad timing, and nobody's fault.
3. Talent. Because Tim Beckman is the villain of the piece the tendency will be to blame anything that goes wrong the first few Lovie years on him, portraying what he left behind as a radioactive toxic waste dump of a program. That's a big oversimplification, we have a number of good players, but Beckman's focus on Juco's, especially along the offensive line, and the general weakness of his recruiting efforts certainly did not leave a full cupboard. A bad and thin offensive line is a tough thing to coach around, and that's what we've got. Chris Boles and Teddy Karras were a couple of solid Zook recruits who brought stability if not excellence at guard the last couple years.
4. Fit. Bill Cubit is a screen play svengali. Josh Ferguson is the prototypical screen play back. That happy coincidence alone was an enormous contributor to our success the past two years. Cubit also built an offensive system that was made-to-measure for Lunt. Which kinda leads to the next point.
5. Focus on Win Now. Is Lovie and staff's focus on absolutely maximizing what we do right now, or is there more of a view to the future? I'm not 1000% sure what the staff's perspective is on building a base for the future, but certainly if you were in absolute hot seat mode you'd be using all of your allotted practice time, for instance, or spending your bye week gameplanning for your next opponent. I take the slow-burn of the Lovie era to be at least partially long-term thinking as opposed to NFL style player friendliness.
6. Current Coaching. The current staff can't be made blameless however. A team with the talent we have on the defensive line has to have better gap integrity against the run game than we did yesterday. It was a really shockingly bad performance from our front 7. It's clear McGee has no trust in our OL in the run game and would rather rely on Lunt's arm and decision making. But you're not putting him in a position to succeed by abandoning the run game so blatantly. And then there's all the penalties which don't reflect well on the fundamentals work that was the focus of our training camp. And at the position coach level, did we assemble the best $4 million staff we could get in March? Seems pretty doubtful. I would not view some changes this offseason as an admission of wrongdoing whatsoever.
So I think rather than banging on any one hobby horse and arguing against the others, we ought to look at the situation in its full context.
