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Message: [QUOTE="OttoinGrotto, post: 1294429, member: 297"] Let's just respond to a bunch of things. I think the staff would identify the offense as run-based, yes. To his credit though, Marrone put the ball in the air a lot more than we were used to beginning with Paulus. Let's parse this out. 1. It doesn't actually matter if anything malicious has happened or not. The truth is in our recent history every time there's been some buzz and excitement around the program and people filled the Dome they were immediately let down. That has happened. The fans have not been rewarded for showing the faith to come out. This isn't even something that can be argued. 2. I'm excited about some things. I'm discouraged about a lot of things too. That's what happens when you don't feel like you can trust your staff. Again, the context matters here. We're not talking about a brand new program with no history building a fanbase from scratch. People can thump their chests and talk about how a fan's duty is to support the team through thick and thin, but we're not talking about some ridiculous co-dependent relationship here. If the fans are treated badly, and they have been, they can leave, and they have. It's morons like us that are still around. I think there's a lot of fool's gold in those records. 2010, we got a game winning drive on the road vs USF, hung on vs WFVU on the road, and if not for a win over Rutgers by a field goal would not have been bowl eligible (could only count one win between Maine and Colgate, people forget that because they see the 8 wins and think we were a lot more solid than we really were), then limped into our bowl, and the bowl went way better than expected. 2011 we failed to sustain the momentum, which isn't surprising when you white knuckle everything, losing 5 straight in games that we didn't even really compete all that well in. Don't forget, we also needed a huge rally to beat Wake in the opener, and then a fortunate call to beat Toledo, otherwise that record could have been really ugly. 2012 the stars aligned, but even at that we pulled out three really close wins vs Pitt, USF and Mizzou. 2013 we barely scraped in to bowl eligibility, losing a close one to Pitt and then winning on the last play vs BC. That earned us the chance to win another bowl game, which also required a late rally and fluky punt return to pull off. There's a theme here. When you don't have much margin for error you might end up on the right side of things now and again, but it's not going to happen every time. It's a loser's game long term, and I think we've been lucky more than good. Rah rah, I know, you make your own luck, that's fine. It runs out. At some point you have to make a move to be good. I'm not seeing that from our program. I'm seeing us get content with a low ceiling that we've built for ourselves, and worse, we make bad decisions in game (ie, punting on the opponent's side of the field). And not only would it probably increase the chances of winning, it would actually take advantage of our home field AND be more fun for the fans! Which leads us to... That sounds great, and lets people take pride in being hardcore fans, but that's another lie we're telling ourselves. It's just another lie that makes it excusable that we've been watching horrible football for a really long time, and blames people for being smart consumers instead of acknowledging that if you want people to participate in what you're doing you need to help them believe in something special. With Robinson it was Super Bowl rings and Little Engines, and, well... To his credit, Marrone sold something special, but then he stopped believing it. Shafer tried with #hardnosed, and then the fans got nut punched. We don't even know what we're doing right now. I guess we're trusting Lester to be a good OC with no resume to suggest that he can be and half a season of really crappy offense under his belt. I mean, that's the plan, right? Of all things [I]that's[/I] the plan? I'm saying hey, there are these offenses all over college football that are thriving in places that aren't talent rich that would be really well suited to the Dome, let's do that, but the plan people want me to buy in to is that Lester and whatever is behind the mystery door that is his offense are the thing to believe in? Uhhhhhhhhhh... So, to wrap it all up - no, it's not about "just win, baby." Our program [I]lost[/I] that privilege. Now it has to earn some trust back, and I'm telling you, if defense-first-ball-control-field-position is the way we think we're going to do it just accept that we're going to see more of the same. We'll have all kinds of time to talk about how close we were to winning games during our losing seasons, and we'll get conned by 7 whiteknuckled win seasons in to thinking we're actually seeing progress. Meanwhile we'll be amazed when we stop watching our own games and watch the bowl games at the types of things other teams are doing. [/QUOTE]

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