At what point is it fair to compare Marrone to Pasqualoni?

[PoppyHart]

It seems that Marrone is going to be perpetually referenced in comparison to GROB, and given the threshold that the latter set, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts of that he will succeed and enjoy a long tenure as head coach.

One of GROB's glaring weaknesses was his lack of game/clock management skills, which led to a handful of inexplicable losses. Marrone has stabilized this area, and found away to pull out (more than?) his fair share of squeakers. That difference alone can explain why a team goes 6-6 as opposed to 4-8.

Perhaps there are other significant explanations, such as the talent level of players brought in, but it seems as if Marrone has merely grabbed the low hanging fruit that GROB left, and done little more to instill dreams of a return to the "glory years" of 1987-2002.

Pasqualoni inherited a thriving program, and he ran with it to extreme early success. He suffered a grand total of one losing season, and led his team to a tie for first place in the BE in the year he was fired. His reward was being fired.

If GROB had 4-5 years of 6-6-type seasons, presumably AD Gross would have issued a similar pink slip, as he had already set the precedent that mediocrity is not acceptable.

Now that Marrone has returned the team to statistical mediocrity, I think it's time to start comparing him on an apples-to-apples basis to Pasqualoni, and not with the favorable biases that accompany following GROB. Instead, there's talk of "1 step back, 2 steps forward", being handicapped by poor facilities, etc... Isn't year 1 supposed to be the "step back" year? At some point such qualifications ring hollow. I think by now the caveats should be discarded, and the clock should be running comparison-free.

 

[Cusefan95]

The worst thing some programs do is have a revolving door of coaches - each guy stays 4-5 years, fails to meet expectations, get fired, new guy comes in...wash. Rinse. Repeat. Check out Beamer at VT, how long did they give him before he got things rolling?

I think the fans getting all worked up and nervous about Marrone need to settle the **** down. Maybe we shouldn't compare him to GRob...but comparing him to Coach P is just as stupid. Right now, the five year trend for the program looks encouraging. When it's not, Then it's the time to evaluate how Marrone is doing.

 

[OrangeMuskyFish]

I have backed Marrone ever since his hire, and I will surely continue to do so. However, I would be lying if I didn't say the ultra conservative approach and overly humble weekday mannerisms concern me greatly. We are definitely seeing improvement, we are 4-2, playing a stronger schedule than last year, and it took the worst game of Marrone's career to keep us from being 5-1. All this despite the fact we have yet to play a full game on offense, let alone a full game as a complete football team. The recruiting is not nearly as bad as people make it sound, and we have a lot of upside awaiting us in the ACC. That all said, it scares me that the staff seems discombobulated when playing teams that we are clearly better than. That is classic Coach P. The question is, does this approach come from not yet having the players he needs to do what he wants to do, or because he is deathly afraid that taking the slightest step backwards will ruin all the progress? Or is it just Marrone being Marrone? For all the positives, I just am starting to doubt that he will be capable of managing an aggressive team even as the pieces start falling into place, because as we get better, we will be expected to beat better teams. He is definitely grinding us through our rebuilding phase, and the upside for this program is growing at a good pace, and he himself is still learning the nuances of being a head coach. So the future looks bright, but we will have to wait a couple of years to see what the ceiling really looks like.

 

[BoomStickO]

Right, so let's fire Marrone and rehire Pq :bang:

It seems that Marrone is going to be perpetually referenced in comparison to GROB, and given the threshold that the latter set, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts of that he will succeed and enjoy a long tenure as head coach.

One of GROB's glaring weaknesses was his lack of game/clock management skills, which led to a handful of inexplicable losses. Marrone has stabilized this area, and found away to pull out (more than?) his fair share of squeakers. That difference alone can explain why a team goes 6-6 as opposed to 4-8.

Perhaps there are other significant explanations, such as the talent level of players brought in, but it seems as if Marrone has merely grabbed the low hanging fruit that GROB left, and done little more to instill dreams of a return to the "glory years" of 1987-2002.

Pasqualoni inherited a thriving program, and he ran with it to extreme early success. He suffered a grand total of one losing season, and led his team to a tie for first place in the BE in the year he was fired. His reward was being fired.

If GROB had 4-5 years of 6-6-type seasons, presumably AD Gross would have issued a similar pink slip, as he had already set the precedent that mediocrity is not acceptable.

Now that Marrone has returned the team to statistical mediocrity, I think it's time to start comparing him on an apples-to-apples basis to Pasqualoni, and not with the favorable biases that accompany following GROB. Instead, there's talk of "1 step back, 2 steps forward", being handicapped by poor facilities, etc... Isn't year 1 supposed to be the "step back" year? At some point such qualifications ring hollow. I think by now the caveats should be discarded, and the clock should be running comparison-free.

 

[NKR1978]

It took Mac 5 or 6 years to be successful. If Jake had such an hair trigger we might never have had the golden age of the 80s and 90s.

We have 16 wins in less than 2.5 years of Doug Marrone. We had 16 wins from 2004 to 2008.

We are not auburn or SU basketball. We are still rebuilding. It will.take time and will look really ugly at times. We are 4-2 with a pretty young team. One loss was to usc and another double ot loss to a decent Rutgers. We beat a real good wake and Toledo. We are not great but we don't suck, and this team has been held together by duct tape.

 

[BoomStickO]

It took Mac 5 or 6 years to be successful. If Jake had such an hair trigger we might never have had the golden age of the 80s and 90s.

We have 16 wins in less than 2.5 years of Doug Marrone. We had 16 wins from 2004 to 2008.

We are not auburn or SU basketball. We are still rebuilding. It will.take time and will look really ugly at times. We are 4-2 with a pretty young team. One loss was to usc and another double ot loss to a decent Rutgers. We beat a real good wake and Toledo. We are not great but we don't suck, and this team has been held together by duct tape.

I think you've missed the point though. Marrone should be fired b/c some fans think they could have coached this team better. He's not controversial enough, and that is the controversy. I know, we should hire Kiffin or Leech or another one of those a**h***s.

 

[SUskibum]

I dont think the point is to compare him to coach P. I think you should start with an independent decision on what you want the program to be in X years with X investment.

Step One, whats the barometer for ulitmate success and whats your committment $

If i had to guess, DG and company think the football program should/could strive to have similar success of the basketball program. Top 25 with a chance to be anyone most years with a shot at the title once a decade or so when the chips fall right. I think thats a fair bar to set for a small private school in the north east. Also it seems they will are making resonable decisons in terms of the $ it will take to get there.

Step two, how long till we get there and what are the benchmarks along the way to be confident progress is being made.

Again a reasonable approach may be that with a somewhat watered down schedule like ours, we should be able to become a .500+ program with bowls within 2-3 years with what we have. Then there should be another time table for being rankedoff an on fairly consistantly with 8-10 win teams. Again maybe 4-6 years. Finally I would say 3-4 years after building a 3-5 loss program one could expect that 2-4 losses would be our down years and our up years would be 1-2 losses while competeing for some portion of the top recruits.

You can nit pick all the micro decisions all you want but at the end of the day you need to figure out what your benchmark for success is. If its having the perfect personel and playcalling decisions everyday Im not sure JB would still be here. However if you judge a coach by his overall sucess, win/loss and overall program momentum then I think you cant dislike Marrones job so far.

 

[sufandu]

I think you see where the program is trending after 5 years or so and no sooner. Coach P was fired not because he had 1 losing season and flirted with .500 in his last, but because the program was in a definite downward trend. It was obvious in retrospect that it started in '99 but noone would've known for sure until a few years after. Every team will have blips and those need to be set aside. The '93 and '94 seasons were bad blips in the midst of success. The '01 season was a good blip in the midst of decline. Overall the trending at the end of P's tenure was obvious and we need to give Marrone at least 5 years and maybe longer to see where it's going.

 

[matcuse]

how can you compare coach p and coach marrone...Coach p took over a program that was loaded... remember 91-92-93..never better than 10-2 for the regular season...Coach marrone took a program that was consideried at one point one of the worst teams in the country with a bunch of D1aa talent...i applaud what coach marrone has done with the lack of talent hes had to work with...you wanna know why coach p isnt our coach anymore...watch uconn and you'll start swearing at the tv...Give doug a chance to beef this team up with the players we need to compete because right now...we have alot young talent still holes yet to be filled...guys.. give it time...be happy we are winning again and be happy we have a coach loves
syracuse as much as we do!

 

[Fjoinkay]

how can you compare coach p and coach marrone...Coach p took over a program that was loaded... remember 91-92-93..never better than 10-2 for the regular season...Coach marrone took a program that was consideried at one point one of the worst teams in the country with a bunch of D1aa talent...i applaud what coach marrone has done with the lack of talent hes had to work with...you wanna know why coach p isnt our coach anymore...watch uconn and you'll start swearing at the tv...Give doug a chance to beef this team up with the players we need to compete because right now...we have alot young talent still holes yet to be filled...guys.. give it time...be happy we are winning again and be happy we have a coach loves
syracuse as much as we do!

Yep- like night and day. Coach Mac built the program in the 80s. Marrone is doing the same thing now. Coach P inherited a great thing, and the rest is history. No way imo that Coach P could have built a program like Mac did or like Marrone is in the process of doing. The question right now is whether Coach P will be able to maintain at UConn. It's too early to decide at this point, but the facts so far paint a familiar picture.

 

[RoysRunts]

7 Years

 

[SWC75]

The relevant comparison is to the coaches charged with rebuidling the program after a down period- ben Schwartzwalder and Dick MacPherson. Doug Marrone is 16-15 31 games into his tenure. Ben Was 16-15 at the same juncture. Mac was 10-20-1.

It's way early, folks. We can react to what we see but the time for making final judgements is far off.

 

[PeteCalvin]

The relevant comparison is to the coaches charged with rebuidling the program after a down period- ben Schwartzwalder and Dick MacPherson. Doug Marrone is 16-15 31 games into his tenure. Ben Was 16-15 at the same juncture. Mac was 10-20-1.

It's way early, folks. We can react to what we see but the time for making final judgements is far off.

^^^THIS, people^^^

Hammer hits the nail! Marrone still has very little depth to work with, but he has definitely increased the talent and athleticism on the team from the GROB years. Now he just needs more of it. He also needs some BIG UGLIES that can handle the trenches more effectively. Give the man some time. I get just as frustrated at the short screens, slants, roll outs, etc, but we have the ability to go long if Nassib would just settle down. I think the play calling is dictated by what he has to work with. If our line could create space for Nassib, I think we win the last two games going away, and I think we see many more home run shots. When guys don't play as expected, the playbook suddenly shrinks, and we become a more predictable offense. SEC teams run the entire playbook because they have the talent and depth to do so. Marrone needs more time. If we can win 75% of our games, have a couple signature wins, and win bowl games the next two years, I'll be happy. After that, we better start seeing some 10-11 win seasons and challenges for conference championships (ACC).

Oh, and if we're stuck in the BE one more season, he has no excuse not winning the conference. We'll be a year older and wiser and a definite favorite.

 

[ORANGEsPHK]

Good discussion fellas. Good to see the that reality is being discussed. I'm happy, because I watch SU Football again; I had a hard time watching Greg R's teams, even with ALL the promises of what GRob was gonna bring. Talk about disappointing!

I think good things are happening under the Marrone regime, there is potential in our young players and the recruiting is not bad given our situation. I am, however, looking to see improvement as the season moves along. I'm pretty optimistic that we'll see that.