Chip
Creature of Bad Habits
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2011
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Were there question marks about players going into the season? Sure. But there were also question marks about the staff.
Prior to SU, Fran had never been a head coach and, in fact, had only been a coordinator for one year. At Temple, and only a CO-DC at that. Robinson had one year as CO-DC under his belt.
So once you got past the "DART", "Northeast Tough", "Matt Foley van down by the river" motivational speaker stuff, there was always going to be a lot of on-the-job training with the guys at the top. It seemed inevitable that the lack of experience would raise its ugly head at an inopportune time. It seems inevitable that it probably will again.
And that's OK, as long as you realize that's the trade-off with a fairly inexperienced staff if you feel they are the answer longer term. Only time will tell. I try to be agnostic about a new coach and ignore the hype until he has accomplished something. The staff and team clearly have some potential. We will see where it takes us.
I'd give more thumbs up for the Matt Foley reference if I could.
What keeps sticking out to me is the SUDad comment that Fran was telling the team all week we were going to blow them out. I get wanting the players to feel confident, to have swagger. But you have to be careful that they don't think they're going to win just by showing up.
The good news going forward is that if they didn't fully realize that before, they sure do now.