Pretty short as I only got to watch snippets of the game and haven't had an opportunity to go back and watch it closely yet:
Mullen really has screwed himself with recruiting. There are lots of mistakes that you can point to, but every team makes mistakes on the field and from the sideline. The real problem is that Mullen wasn't willing to do what it takes in recruiting and it's caught up to him.
There might be a development problem too. A. Williams seemed to show some flashes of why he's not our primary back. He made mistakes that a guy in his third year in the program shouldn't be making. But if none of our young backs are ready to take over? That seems like a coaching problem. But maybe it's just a recruiting problem and all our young backs suck.
Next year is not likely to be better. First, we are not young. We keep hearing that excuse, but it's just not true. We have upperclassmen just getting experience because they weren't that good. And some of those upperclassmen shouldn't be getting experience now if we had done better in recruiting. Next year we will lose our best receiver and three starting offensive linemen. We'll lose our best DL and Nick James. We'll also lose Brown and Coman, although we're better positioned to replace them. At first I was hoping that we were hitting Juco so hard because we had a couple of holes to fill to solidify an otherwise good team, but it seems pretty clear now that we have significant talent needs and are hoping that JUCOs will be big contributors for us. We'll see how that works out but obviously the track record is not promising.
God love Holloway, but it's almost comical watching him block. The play that stands out to me is one where he did pretty much everything right except for not being 160 lbs. He's a gamer but there's just not much he can do in that situation but be a speed bump. That would be enough for Dak; not going to be enough for our current QBs.
Mullen is no longer a fresh offensive mind. He seemed to do more with roughly similar offensive talent his first couple of years here. It would make sense that he's no longer on the cutting edge offensively. He had a system that worked for a while and he hasn't been in a situation where it's obvious he needs to update his philosophy in response to defenses getting more familiar with his version of the spread. But maybe this is a recruiting problem too and our talent is just too limiting. Certainly seems like we had some good plays called up that we didn't execute.
People talking about Mullen getting fired this year are off their rocker, but I do think Mullen is going to be hard pressed to turn it around at this point. He's put himself into a position where he's got what looks like a multi-year rebuild project. A lot of fans are going to be too impatient for that with a coach that's been here almost a decade, so even if Mullen fixes his issues, you're looking at probably missing a bowl this year, winning six or seven next year, and then hopefully taking a good step forward the next. But that's going to be hard to do without momentum and with a lot of fans dissatisfied. It will take Mullen really outworking a lot of other coaches he competes with, a group who already for the most part work their *** off, and presumably some of them (LSU's next coach? Auburn's next coach? UM's next coach?) will have the advantage of being in a fresh situation rather than starting a rebuild after already being in a place for seven years. This is why you see so few coaches make it to ten years or beyond in one place. Once you let things slip a little bit, it's so hard to right the ship. Fans are impatient and coaches have to find a new way to stay motivated. Very few coaches are going to both be given time to fix it by fans and then be able to have the drive that got them there in teh first place when they do have the chance.
ETA: LSU is not good. That was probably a fight for 7th in the West on Saturday, although we may get to sixth since we hopefully will have two SEC East wins. Getting close at the end doesn't make me feel any better.
Mullen really has screwed himself with recruiting. There are lots of mistakes that you can point to, but every team makes mistakes on the field and from the sideline. The real problem is that Mullen wasn't willing to do what it takes in recruiting and it's caught up to him.
There might be a development problem too. A. Williams seemed to show some flashes of why he's not our primary back. He made mistakes that a guy in his third year in the program shouldn't be making. But if none of our young backs are ready to take over? That seems like a coaching problem. But maybe it's just a recruiting problem and all our young backs suck.
Next year is not likely to be better. First, we are not young. We keep hearing that excuse, but it's just not true. We have upperclassmen just getting experience because they weren't that good. And some of those upperclassmen shouldn't be getting experience now if we had done better in recruiting. Next year we will lose our best receiver and three starting offensive linemen. We'll lose our best DL and Nick James. We'll also lose Brown and Coman, although we're better positioned to replace them. At first I was hoping that we were hitting Juco so hard because we had a couple of holes to fill to solidify an otherwise good team, but it seems pretty clear now that we have significant talent needs and are hoping that JUCOs will be big contributors for us. We'll see how that works out but obviously the track record is not promising.
God love Holloway, but it's almost comical watching him block. The play that stands out to me is one where he did pretty much everything right except for not being 160 lbs. He's a gamer but there's just not much he can do in that situation but be a speed bump. That would be enough for Dak; not going to be enough for our current QBs.
Mullen is no longer a fresh offensive mind. He seemed to do more with roughly similar offensive talent his first couple of years here. It would make sense that he's no longer on the cutting edge offensively. He had a system that worked for a while and he hasn't been in a situation where it's obvious he needs to update his philosophy in response to defenses getting more familiar with his version of the spread. But maybe this is a recruiting problem too and our talent is just too limiting. Certainly seems like we had some good plays called up that we didn't execute.
People talking about Mullen getting fired this year are off their rocker, but I do think Mullen is going to be hard pressed to turn it around at this point. He's put himself into a position where he's got what looks like a multi-year rebuild project. A lot of fans are going to be too impatient for that with a coach that's been here almost a decade, so even if Mullen fixes his issues, you're looking at probably missing a bowl this year, winning six or seven next year, and then hopefully taking a good step forward the next. But that's going to be hard to do without momentum and with a lot of fans dissatisfied. It will take Mullen really outworking a lot of other coaches he competes with, a group who already for the most part work their *** off, and presumably some of them (LSU's next coach? Auburn's next coach? UM's next coach?) will have the advantage of being in a fresh situation rather than starting a rebuild after already being in a place for seven years. This is why you see so few coaches make it to ten years or beyond in one place. Once you let things slip a little bit, it's so hard to right the ship. Fans are impatient and coaches have to find a new way to stay motivated. Very few coaches are going to both be given time to fix it by fans and then be able to have the drive that got them there in teh first place when they do have the chance.
ETA: LSU is not good. That was probably a fight for 7th in the West on Saturday, although we may get to sixth since we hopefully will have two SEC East wins. Getting close at the end doesn't make me feel any better.
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