Fire the d coordinator tonight
- Thread starter RUdepressed
- Start date
How he made it to the end of the season is a mystery. Or course the year we have our best offense in a decade is the same one in which we have our worst defense.
Split the 1.5 million between rob Smith and the young guy from jmu.zach Sparber.
Should have been fired after the Iowa game.
Schiano couldn’t find anyone else to work for him this year, and next year would be no different
anyone who really knows the program and what’s going on knows this ^^
No established or proven coach will come work for Greg, even when we’re paying top salaries. Instead we had to circle back and beg a guy who Greg fired in the past and was our last ditch effort. Would’ve been better off giving Fran the job a few years ago and let Greg call the defense. At least then we would’ve kept an ace recruiter for another couple of seasons.
Look for someone like Vince Kehres from Toledo. He'd jump at a chance to coach D at a P4 level. Son of a coach, guy has won everywhere he's been, took over Mt. Union continued to win DIII Championships going 95-6, took over Toledo's D and has them ranked #2. Guy has been slowly moving up the latter. He's an up and comer that I think could do wonders. But this is Greg, it'll be someone he's known or worked with before.
Smith didn’t do a good job but from day one it was called out by analysts that we lacked talent on D, especially in the backfield. Lack of talent was a much bigger issue than bad coaching, planning or scheming.
My only problem with that is, absolutely no one progressed and actually they all regressed in their ability. For that to happen coaching plays a huge part. As you can't name one returning player who got better. Look at Djabome, last year a budding stud at LB, this year lost and unable to make plays. That's not talent.
Change is needed, but to be fair the D improved as the season went on. Guys got loose or open who shouldn’t have but defense was killing it on mop up duty and made some great tackles to save td’s. They also forced a few punts and a FG when it mattered, and held off the 2 pt conversion.
Only this Defensive staff could make Djabome look like a shell of himself. They placed cement boots on him at gametime.
Season is over. Why fire him now? He should never have been re-hired but who wants to work for a lame duck Schiano.
This is the first time I’ve looked at an RU unit and thought on a consistent basis they don’t know what they are doing.
No he’s not. The offense has shown steady progress and the narrative around DC is going to be a circumstantial sell. We had no president and no AD. There was a lot of uncertainty around the program at the time when we hired a DC. Greg will absolutely get one more chance to right the ship on D with a splash hire. Greg is known for being a D first guy - so correcting the narrative that he can’t produce a decent offensive team is an elephant off his back. If we retain Kirk and bring in someone with true promise at DC, the off-season outlook should be reasonably positive and certainly not hopeless.
Not closing out PSU hurts but playing a competitive game was still important for the program looking ahead to the offseason.
This type of move is the most likely. I do agree that no top DC is going to join staff at this point. But get an up and comer and they will come. We also would not have to pay nearly as much.
Let’s see. Money talks. Part of the reason working with Greg as DC was unattractive is because his good defenses have notoriously gone to waste with dreadful offenses, and the prior DC did a pretty good job so there wasn’t a ton of upside coming in to fill Joe’s shoes. There’s nowhere to go but up with our defense right now. There’s a real opportunity for a DC to come in and stand out by even bringing it to a servicable level.
True that the D can only get better but Shelby thinks the O will take a significant downturn with AK leaving, and due to that, probably either Duff or Strong.
And yet we just had an excellent DC who left to try to ignite a head coaching career. This board too often sounds like drama queens and reactionaries. If RU is able to build a decent NIL stash and compete meaningfully in the off season player acquisition market, RU will have the opportunity to hire a good DC.
I agree. Look - everyone wanted to write Greg off on producing a competent offense. He did that. And yeah, this regime already brought in one DC who worked out and left for a head coaching job. There’s at least reason to hope we can find another good one and turn things around on D.
Maybe - but we really have no idea. Kirk at least seems to know what he wants in a QB to make his offense effective so my bet is if we don’t already have that in the locker room we’ll be going to the portal (and maybe he does have it). Gavin Wimsatt was a situation he inherited - not a Kirk pattern. We’re not going to roll with someone who can’t help us just because they waited patiently behind AK for 2 years. No way.
Agreed. There are a few folks maintaining that no competent DC wants to work with GS. And that may be somewhat true. But I have to think that the vacant AD and President situations along with the pitiful NIL bank account also played a part.