ASU has clinched a bowl bid and is in the hunt for the Pac 12 South title. I don't think many thought Herm Edwards would ever have ASU in that position, let alone in his first year.
Props to Herm Edwards
- Thread starter phoenix4nu
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has a veteran qb...that goes a long ways in a weak conference. Heck even CU was in this thing until they lost their all-american wr. If you look back historically at first year coaches...having an upperclassman, who is familiar with the program and scheme is the first ingredient to success. If we had a senior version of AM we are probably going for 9 wins this year...CU,TROY, NW, BC, PURDUE, ILL, MICHIGAN STATE, IOWA, and one other.
We will see where he is at a couple of years from now.
Really? Most of my ASU friends here in AZ thought they should do this well. They were 7-5 in the regular season last year — vs 6-4 currently — and returned many key players including senior, experienced QB and perhaps the top WR in the next NFL draft.
I am not a Graham fan, mostly because of his irritating good old boy personality, but he left a decent team behind. This was no 4-8 mess with holes everywhere. Has Herm done better than Frost this year with what they each inherited might be a good debate, though. Not sure I would pick Frost but like our future a lot whereas Herm’s recruiting looks spotty so far.
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Yes, really. I guess you and the others who have replied to my post didn’t read any of the national commentators ratings of the coaching hires before the season began. All of them predicted he would be an absolute failure at ASU. Although it’s only one season, he has done much better than any of them predicted. That’s a fact.
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I agree with the value a veteran QB can bring, but I disagree that we would be looking at 9 wins if AM were a senior this year. That would suggest our problems this year have been due to a freshman QB, which is not the case at all. Our Freshman QB has been lights out pretty much all year. The issues have been elsewhere.
I thought it would be a full blown nose dive at 1000mph into the ground, so he has exceeded my expectations.
I like Edwards, hope he succeeds at ASU. A few years down the road when he has mostly his players, we'll see where things are going, hopefully well for them.
Gee I guess those national folks follow ASU football more closely than my friends and I most of whom worked at ASU for 20 years+ and attended most of the games last year and this — and that’s a fact. The record this year is very comparable to last year. As for Herm’s long term prospects, we’ll see if he improves the program, which was the rationale for firing Graham. So far, he has not and will have a real challenge when his QB and top wr graduate.
I was never referring to you or your friends in my post. If you don’t get what I’m saying, that’s on you.
this seems, to me at least, to be an old pattern for asu. they seem to do well the first year or two with a new coach, then the bottom drops out, so to speak
It's still a new Coach with a new system for guys he didn't recruit. Good for Herm...he took a ton of grief. Rubber meets the road when his recruits start playing.
Herm never should have taken grief but his old pal the AD richly deserved grief. He had a questionable plan to bring in old Herm as an NFL style CEO who would nurture the smart, holdover young coordinators for the future, one of whom would someday take over. (This isn't my fantasy. The AD said it when he hired Herm.)
The AD is probably the only person on the planet who didn't foresee what happened next: Both smart young coordinators jumped ship. Now they have an old coach whose recruiting is not good and whose current success is about the same as Graham.
He will likely be a failure...he hasn't improved his record yet with an experienced team from a bowl team last year. Similar to MR taking over for a 9 win team, with an all-conference qb, and only winning 5 games. The road of coachdum is littered with the corpses of coaches who had winning records in their first few years....but couldn't recruit, keep their assistants, and face the pressure of having to keep winning 10 games like their first season.
I was surprised that he's done so well.... but when looking at the context of it with a returning QB and other veterans it makes sense. I look forward to seeing how he does going forward. He's an entertaining dude... I'm glad he's not our coach... but he's definitely entertaining.