LOL, spoken like someone who has no clue about Bajakian’s background. Go look at at what his offense did at BC in 2019 and he did that mostly with his second string QB. Go look at what he did at Tennessee or Central Michigan.
WHAT ABOUT BAJAKIAN?????
- Thread starter EvanstonCat
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Great salesmen don't necessarily make great practitioners of other crafts. He was very lucky to get the NU job, but definitely over his head.
ECat, CALM......DOWN. This is a good start. Fitz is awake. Get a good QB in place and a better WR room and give him another year, and then two if next year looks good.
Maybe it’s because the offensive problems start with Fitz and he’s finally realizing that. He fired McCall and the offense got worse. Time for Fitz to stop pointing fingers and start pointing thumbs.
That makes a lot of sense. Coach A has an impeccable track record at multiple other schools including his stop prior to NU where he led a top 30 offense in the country. He comes to NU and all of a sudden his performance drops off. According to your logic, the problem is with the coach who has experienced success at all of his previous stops rather than considering that other variable(s) specific to NU are at play. Like I said, makes a lot of sense.
We've had 3 stars, no stars, walk ons, a 4 star (that passed for 361 yards and 4 TDs against Alabama) and a 5 star play QB for us in the last few years. We've lost with them all, the exception being with one 5th year transfer we didn't even want coming out of HS who developed at another school and who came in and did worse with this offense than he did at Indiana and yes, still won a B1G title with the 96th ranked offense carried by a top 5 D.
When are we going to realize that its not simply the QB talent that's an issue?
So, I looked it up and confirmed that Kevin Wilson had been Coach Walker’s longtime OC, starting in the early 90s at Miami, and continuing as they both made the move to NU in 1999.
In 1999, of course, NU was baaaad and boring, while RichRod was the OC setting the world on fire with Woody Dantzler at Clemson.
That offseason, NU learned the no-huddle, learned the playcalling system, and learned the read option from RichRod and — poof — first mover advantage led to a 6-2 B1G championship (tie).
In one offseason, Coach Walk and Coach Wilson’s philosophy changed.
While we certainly can’t expect that from Fitz, we also wouldn’t have expected that radical transformation from Walker, who had three years as an OC and ten years as a head coach when he made the change.
Fingers crossed.
(Side note: After GA’ing for three years at UNC, Kevin Wilson’s first two pro gigs were at HBCUs - Winston Salem State and NCA&T. That’s interesting. )
I think Fitz thinks the old model of having bottom quartile offenses is acceptable as long as you have a top 5 ranked defense. Welcome home complementary football!
If Bajakian hasn't been allowed to run the offense his way, then Fitz should be fired. You don't hire a guy and then hover over him to make sure that he doesn't do his job.
Bajakian's next year should be very different from the last 2.
I have 0 doubt of that.
There's no way in my mind that Fitz would want us to roll out the offense that we saw the last 2 years. It makes no sense.
And there's the hot seat factor, he's getting 1 year to prove that he can put together a competent offense.
The key difference between Bajakian and JON is that I had far less confidence in JON being able to turn around the defensive woes. I still think there's a chance that Bajakian can.
Maybe that belief will end up wrong in 12 months, but I think it was a lot more clear given JON's history that he was less likely to succeed as DC.
I have 0 doubt of that.
There's no way in my mind that Fitz would want us to roll out the offense that we saw the last 2 years. It makes no sense.
And there's the hot seat factor, he's getting 1 year to prove that he can put together a competent offense.
The key difference between Bajakian and JON is that I had far less confidence in JON being able to turn around the defensive woes. I still think there's a chance that Bajakian can.
Maybe that belief will end up wrong in 12 months, but I think it was a lot more clear given JON's history that he was less likely to succeed as DC.
7. Like everyone else, I was amazed that Bajakian’s name wasn’t on the release. In my eyes, the offense’s performance the last three years made him every bit of the candidate for dismissal O’Neil was – maybe more so. Bajakian’s offense has been on a downward slide since the Cats put up 43 points on Maryland in his first game as the OC in 2020. Even with the polished and efficient Peyton Ramsey at quarterback, Northwestern averaged 24.7 points per game in 2020, which ranked 93rd in the nation. In 2021, they scored 16.6 to rank 125th. This year, the average was an anemic 13.9 points per game – the lowest mark this century – to rank 128th and last among Power Five programs. He hasn’t been able to recruit or develop a bona fide Big Ten quarterback in his three years, either. At some point, I’d like to get a chance to ask Fitz about his reasons for keeping Bajakian.
I do think it's fair to say though that there's more reason to believe that Bajakian can produce a different result in 2023 than JON.
Yes the results in 2021-2022 were almost equally bad on both sides of the ball. Nobody's going to argue otherwise. And if that's grounds for dismissal, then sure one can argue that both were equally likely to be dismissed today.
The question is whether either could turn it around. No evidence that JON can be a DC with a competent defense. Nothing in his history suggests it.
It's fair to at least point out that there's a possibility that Bajakian can make the offense work. He'll get one final year to prove that.
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Here’s my thought on Bajakian. The offense was already pretty bad and so it would take longer to build a successful offense, and thus the continued badness is not an enormous dropoff. In addition, the West division has like 3 of the top 10 defenses in the country and we played OSU and PSU who are like top 15. Granted, we have to find a way to beat those defenses since those opponents aren’t going away, but getting boat raced by the worst offense in the country (Iowa) and SIU had to be the last straws.
Tell that to Josh Heupel who took Mizzou's 125 ranked offense and made it a top 10 offense in his first two years as OC there.
Or look at what Bielema and their DC has done for Illin (no longer lol) ois in short time.
It seems that competent coaches can have immediate impact.
When you look at all the factors here, Fitz has dug himself quite a deep hole in the past 2 years or so, which likely will take a several years to come back from. He's going to need to find one hell of a DC and WR coach, pray Jake is up to the task of creating a modern day offense, find or develop a great QB, not to mention O line, prevent a major exodus, and recruit like he never has. I hope he is up to it.
I hope so too Paulie!!!! I have never seen a HC shoot himself in the foot like this before.
I'm rooting hard for Fitz to succeed.
He's still the right HC in my mind but he clearly has a lot of work ahead of him given the deficiencies. Arguably the steepest climb ahead since he became HC.
I think with the changes he made so far and an obvious assumption that Bajakian has to "succeed or else" this season, that Fitz understands the urgency of getting the program back on track before an extended Dark Ages redux sets in...
With McNamara opting for Iowa, it doesn't really bode well for us getting another Ramsey via the portal. The NU brand is tarnished until Jake can build up a real potent offense.
2nd string Iowa guy in portal. Guy that couldn't beat out Petras. (But did beat JON in 2021)
Maybe Fitz doesn't think he has a QB problem, but a lot of us do. Hopefully he'll fix it, although it appears Iowa is being much more aggressive about fixing their problems.
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The West has statistically 3 of the top 10 defenses in the country because the West has the Northwestern, Iowa and Nebraska offenses.
Well, there’s a good chance that one helped cause the other. Which one is the cause and which one is the effect? Only the Magic 8 Ball and StreamCat know.
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