5. Cut and Run. When you start to see the cracks in a coach’s armor, it is time to cut ties. Joel Maturi did the right thing letting Mase go when he realized that his team had given up on him at the Debacle Bowl. Michigan AD Dave Brandon did the right thing when it seemed that nobody at UM wanted to embrace Rich Rod and his reluctance to do things the Michigan way. I realized right after the near escape from South Dakota State that the Gophers were not going to get where they wanted to go. But then Joel Maturi extended Brew to save what was not a great recruiting class. Did we really think that Minnesota would not be able to continue on without players like Josh Tauaefa? The real gets like Jimmy Gjere, Lamonte Edwards probably would have come to Minnesota regardless of who the coach was.
4. Beating Iowa is good. Winning a trophy game may not be enough to make you forget an entire god awful season, but it sure does help. The nine game slide was pretty tough to stomach and the Illinois victory was a pleasant surprise, but beating Iowa after a four year trophy game drought was sweet. It was also nice to see that the team had not given up and there was some fight in them.
3. 9 + Tim Brewster < 10. It is the head coach that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole. Seeing how ineffective the Gophers have been the last two years, and then watching almost every member of that coaching staff take a lateral (or better) position makes me think that Brew and he culture he cultivated was the main culprit in his lack of success. Roof is the DC at Auburn, Fisch is the OC at Miami(FL), D Lew is at Florida, George McDonald is at Miami(FL), Tim Davis reconnected with Norm Chow at Utah, Hammock is at Wisconsin, Horton is the QB coach at San Diego St, Butler went to SCAR, Coz is the DC at Akron, Mark Hill is at Indiana, Cross even almost got the DL job at Auburn as did Brez at Oklahoma. The coaching community has accepted these coaches as competent. The results must fall on Brew.
2. Leadership is crucial. Teams take it from the top down. Without leadership from above it fell to the players to lead. Everyone was willing to rally around Eric Decker, but I don’t think that the team was amenable to follow Weber which was evident in 2008 and 2009 when the team was doing great until Eric Decker went down and each respective team just crumbled. It seems that the majority of the players want to follow Marqueis Gray and he will take his cues from the coaching staff which should provide a consistent message of what they want and expect.
1. That was then this is now. Just because you were a very successful defensive coordinator for a long period of time (even a couple years ago) doesn’t mean that you are still worthy of leading a BCS defense. We saw this with Cosgrove where he was very successful at Wisconsin and even his early years at Nebraska but his schemes were not prepared to stop spread offenses. Some could claim that we didn’t have the talent level to stop them. But then you look at John Tenuta at ND and it was the exact same thing. He had stints as a DC at KSU, Oklahoma, tOSU, UNC and GT before taking over at ND. But the results were similar in that he allowed lesser talented teams to gain a schematical advantage over his highly recruited players.
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