Thanks, President Barchi. Did not realize you watched games so closely.
Would you be happy with 5-7?
- Thread starter RUSK97
- Start date
My thinking, also. 5-7 is serious progress, although this is probably the easiest schedule we'll ever have, so 5 wins is probably the minimum we have to attain for Ash to keep his job, IMO. And the 5-7 can't include 3-4 absolute blowout losses (maybe 1 blowout - hard to not have one with the top teams on our schedule).
I will say as a rutgers fan you really don’t want 4 or 5 wins , because that means you’re in the gray area of nowhere. That means team still is a loser and good chance ash doesn’t get fired . Hope for six wins and we go bowling . Or 3 wins or less and ash goes . The worst thing that can happen is 4 or 5 wins .
FIFY. I continue to believe that, unless there's a scandal, the powers that be will let Ash coach in 2020. So while perhaps 5 is the minimum we should have to attain, Ash will be retained even if we do worse. BTW, my view is not based on any inside information, but rather on what Hobbs and Barchi have said and done in their time here.
You want the guy who went 1 win & 5 losses in Conference in his fourth year at RU & 4 wins & 7 losses overall, playing against a weak Big East back?????
Look back at Schiano's first 4 years in the BE & the similarities with Ash are striking. Year one 2001 0-7 conference & 2-9 overall, Year two 2002 0-7 in conference & 1-11 overall, Year three 2-5 in conference & 5-7 overall, Year four 1-5 in conference & 4-7 overall, all while playing in a weaker conference the the B1G.
I think it really depends who those 5 wins are against..if 5-4 and lose the last 3 to OSU,MSU and PSU in "respectable" fashion (i.e. most fans are still in seats and/or watching on TV without elevated blood pressure 5 mins left in 4Q) I think CA stays...
Ridiculous post. We all know Schiano took over the worst 1A team at the time and possibly ever, so it took a good 4 years to build a foundation, but every year showed improvement (apart from year 4 and most rational posters give him a pass on that team, which, not surprisingly tanked after the horrible accident). Ash took over a team that had fallen off under Flood, but still had many competitive pieces, except at QB and Ash simply failed to recruit a decent QB or much else and got even worse over his first 3 years. If Schiano had taken over after Flood, we'd have been to at least one bowl by now.
You may be right, but I do believe we should and will can Ash if he wins 3 or less with this schedule; 4-5 wins is harder to judge.
Indeed. But I have to tell you - watching a Whipple-led UMass slugging it out with SEC teams over the last few years...I’m just not buying that they’re in the same class with Texas State. I don’t care where any ranking system places them. It’s going to be a game. Now who knows how the team will respond to the new system, but you’re dealing with a coach who knows Rutgers well as an opponent and knows the tendencies of Buh.
Oh I painfully watched all of those games, all of them to the bitter end. Actually I think I missed the Michigan game because we were on vacation but watched a replay. In all of the other games, I never had the feeling that RU was going to win. I was rooting hard for Gio to pull it out in the MSU game. He missed some opportunities but left it all out on the field.
I think that you are missing that the opposing teams knew they were facing a team that got crushed by Kansas and Buffalo and they didn't exactly bring their A game when playing RU. I am not sure that RU was disrupting the other team as much as the other teams were not playing well.
Northwestern did not play well that day. Once they started clicking in the 4th quarter I knew that it was game over. RU did not use momentum to their advantage and needed to score more points. Pacheco needed to play the whole game.
Wisconsin rushed for over 300 yards. THREE different running backs had runs of over 20 yards.
Michigan - I don't remember this game that much since I watched a replay so I won't comment. Michigan just needed a win and got it.
PSU - McSorley didn't have a great game (17/37). We were on the field pre game and during warmups he was throwing great and looked loose. During the game, he did not connect on a lot of passes - don't know if it was him or the receivers but they were not clicking. It seemed like he was off more than RU was causing him to throw to the wrong place but I could be wrong. Rutgers did not score until the 4th quarter. It was not a good game. Rutgers had 46 yards passing and 28 of that was Gio after Sit got pulled.
The MSU game was an offensive hot mess for both teams.
Gio had 61 of the 109 Rutgers rushing yards. The pass he dropped in the endzone pretty much summed up the season. I don't know if it is accurate, but I was listening to the radio broadcast and I believe that Carlin said that Art was the one that practiced that play during practice, not Gio. Not great preparation, if true.
Stats and final scores don't tell the whole story. Your point of view definitely shapes how you look at the numbers.
Ok, so I have a decent sample of responses here. Yeah, I should have just conducted a poll, but by this very unscientific assessment (counting only yays or nays), we have 19 'yes, I would be happy' versus 13 'hell nos'.
With many of the responses saying he'll get no where near 5 wins.
With many of the responses saying he'll get no where near 5 wins.
I'll take 5-7 if Ash gets shitcanned at the end of the season.
I expect Ash will be head coach until after the 2020 season. I didn't agree with his hire because I knew he'd get at least four years and likely five. Knowing that should remove me from the "fire Ash at all cost crowd". The defense has been suspect for most of his tenure here. He was slow to take the defense over. Every positive you listed here was AFTER Ash took over the defense. Could you imagine what he could have done if he knew he was hired because of his defensive coaching and ran the unit from day 1? Yeah, the criticism is well earned.
I wasn't very impressed. Northwestern last year was the typical good Northwestern team where they win a lot of close games against teams they are better than as well as teams they should probably lose to. Their most lopsided win during the season was a 14 point win over Wisconsin. This was also the first game where Ash ran the defense. A month earlier, Northwestern lost home games to (8-5) Duke and (4-8) Akron.
You aren't fairly competitive when you trail 24-3 after 50 minutes. 21 points were scored in the last ~8 minutes of the game and 14 were by RU. The game was over when RU started scoring. This game was never in doubt. Let's admit how badly Wisconsin was overrated entering the season. They entered the season ranked #4 in the AP and #7 in the Coaches Poll and lost 4 of their last 7 games (RU was the middle win during this stretch) to finish 7-5 and unranked. This was a game that a competitive RU game could have won, but they never had a chance.
We weren't DOWN 7 at halftime. We SCORED 7 by halftime. RU allowed 21 point in each half en route to a 42-7 blowout. At least we were tied at 7 after the first quarter. I guess we just need Pacheco to run 80 yards every time he touches the ball.
RU had 63 yards of offense in the first half and trailed 13-0. RU's passing attack completed only 5 of 16 pass attempts for 46 yards with 0 TDs and 2 Ints. You have an interesting opinion about what is competitive. The defense played well and this was the lowest point total for Penn State in a win last year (they beat Wisconsin 22-10 [dang, everyone played well against Wisconsin last year!]) while their lowest point total was 17 in a 21-17 loss to Michigan State.
The improvement came on the defensive side of the ball after Ash took the unit over. Had he had the foresight to run the defense from day 1, things would probably be different. As someone who never believed in Ash, I'm at the point where I wonder if 0-12 might be the best record for RU this season because I don't think he will be the guy who leads RU to the promised land.
Awesome post. Should be E-mailed to Hobbs and Greg Brown.
Anyone who includes RU's performance in the Wisconsin and Michigan games as some sort of moral victories should re-evaluate those games. There was nothing to get excited about in either of those games, except for Art's performance against Wisconsin, which was his best game of the year. But scoring matters.
There were 3 games the entire year where we were actually in the game or winning: Texas State, Northwestern and MSU. The last two we couldn't score more than one TD and you knew that wasn't going to get it done.
Every other game we were usually down 3 TDs at halftime, the opponent let off the gas a bit and we scored some garbage time TD against their 2s to make the score look better.
I question if Ash will take over the D again. Because why the hell would you pay Andy Buh 450-500k a year to NOT call defense? I am fairly certain he's going to have another guy call the D, a guy who historically is not a good DC. Amazing incompetence if that happens.
Every other game we were usually down 3 TDs at halftime, the opponent let off the gas a bit and we scored some garbage time TD against their 2s to make the score look better.
I question if Ash will take over the D again. Because why the hell would you pay Andy Buh 450-500k a year to NOT call defense? I am fairly certain he's going to have another guy call the D, a guy who historically is not a good DC. Amazing incompetence if that happens.
Oh I agree I don’t see it happening either, but hell we can have hope. Maybe Art will turn it around this year and our receivers start actually producing
That Michigan State game was reminiscent of the 2012 Pinstripe Bowl game against Virginia Tech. Neither team deserved to win, and it was like watching a slow death.
SO .. you admit there was improvement... and it was related to the coaching of Ash.
Thank you for agreeing
The improvement came on the defensive side of the ball after Ash took the unit over. Had he had the foresight to run the defense from day 1, things would probably be different. As someone who never believed in Ash, I'm at the point where I wonder if 0-12 might be the best record for RU this season because I don't think he will be the guy who leads RU to the promised land.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for agreeing
The improvement came on the defensive side of the ball after Ash took the unit over. Had he had the foresight to run the defense from day 1, things would probably be different. As someone who never believed in Ash, I'm at the point where I wonder if 0-12 might be the best record for RU this season because I don't think he will be the guy who leads RU to the promised land.[/QUOTE]
In the prior 2 years the staff was ripped for getting destroyed by MSU... but somehow last year it is now spun as a negative that we were in position to win a close road game. OK. makes total sense to me now.
skoolie- would love your take on what Ash may have done differently calling the D from what was happening before that. Did the players on D like the change?
[/QUOTE]
See what skoolie wrote...Ash is now paying a horrible DC a lot of money. No way Ash continues to lead the Defense...
Are you really trying to equate a 10-3 MSU team from 2017 with the 7-6 crap show of a team of 2018?
You do realize that in other than the game against RU, Michigan scored exactly 6 points in each of the other other 3 final games of their season? We are supposed to click our heels and get excited?
I don't agree and I detailed my disagreement well enough that you needed to remove all context to make your point. The improvement was when Ash took over the defense. So he's a better DC than Niemann. Does this mean he cannot identify qualified coaching talent or that qualified coaching talent are not interested? Something else? We now have Buh, who appears to be Niemann-esque. Does that mean Ash continues to run the defense or that he's likely going to have to retake control of the unit during the season? The question isn't whether Ash can coach, but if he can be a head football coach. From what I've seen, the answer is unquestionably NO.
Who is being subjective now?
2017 Michigan State 10-3 (7-2)
2018 Michigan State 7-6 (5-4)
So MSU got much worse.
The game should have been closer.
Still waiting for your "objective" analysis of the improvements the offense made towards the end of the season and the upward trend it showed.
You and I were not totally objective. Remember in 2016 when a 3-9 Michigan State ripped RU 49-0?
See, see, year over year, 49-0 loss to a 3-9 MSU in 2016 to 14-7 loss to a 7-6 MSU team is a major improvement. We should be stoked! If MSU is better than 7-6 in 2019, we might actually tie or beat them!!!
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When you get your doors blown off by the de facto worst P5 team of the last 3 years, all bets are off. The Kansas coach was a dead man walking and he out schemed and out gamed our staff by a country mile.
That said, I think Ash is back for 2020 regardless of next year's record, even if he goes 0-12. Barchi does not give one iota of a crap about the football program. He does not even want to hear about it.
Completely agree on the first paragraph.
However, wrt to your second paragraph, if Barchi does not give one iota of crap about the football program, why did he personally fire Flood and Julie at the end of 2015? Seems to be the move of a person who cares quite a bit about the football program. Or has something changed?
My guess is that he fired Flood and Herman because of Flood's academic intervention and Herman's failure to supervise properly (as with the drug tests). I doubt it had anything much to do with our woeful on-field performance. My guess is that he believes that time must pass before our teams can be expected to be competitive in the B1G.
I concur with this. Never thought Barchi moved on from Flood and Herman because he cared about the football program. I actually think it's the opposite, he didn't want to have to keep dealing with it and those two were PR disaster after PR disaster. His hand was practically forced by the media, he wanted it off his desk, and he got it off his desk. Then he replaced Hermann with a lawyer who should know how to keep the football program off his desk.
How has that worked out?
Football team made a lot of embarrassing headlines on and off the field.
If you have been following closely,Barchi ONLY acts when the press gets hot and the blame starts going to the top,like in Rice mess where he refused to watch the DVD,or in the Hermann mess after he backed her hire without a true vetting background. When the blame arrow starts to point in his direction as the man in charge,he starts the Bus up and people get run over.Other then that I bet you Barchi couldn't tell you the record of Basketball or Football this past season.He obviously does not care for power five athletics.
But with Schiano we saw the immediate bump in recruiting over his honeymoon period... it slacked off with the results.. but that just created a negative bubble that eventually got filled with players recruited after the first bowl season and then 2006.
Ash has shown NONE of that.
As for 5-7... some of the more negative folk probably covered my fears well enough. I would LOVE to see us compete in every game. If Sitkowski beats his competition we'll have a sophomore QB.. if he plays well enough to compete in most every game.. I think I'll see progress.. but we're going to have to start winning some recruiting battles for it to make much of a difference... because while actually competing is nice.. we need to start WINNING games. And we'll need some top recruits for that and generally improve the classes.
The lawyer kept the football program off his desk -- for the most part -- but Rutgers had to pay a considerable settlement to another dismissed coach because the lawyer didn't do his job.
Doubt that Hobbs is doing his own lawyering on employment decisions. He is a tax lawyer. You can bet that he was counseled by in-house or outside employment counsel. Doubtful that lawyer in your post is Hobbs. Somebody did a job, but they misjudged one or more of the Palsgraf factors. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: