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Message: [QUOTE="RF2044, post: 1231071, member: 40"] I'll disagree--I thought we were on precarious footing when Marrone left. He departed after the 2012 season, which ended on a high note with that dominating win over WVU in the bowl, but took a significant portion of the staff with him. We also graduated several key players [most notably Nassib, Lemon, and Pugh]. So when Shafer was hired, all of the talk was about "continuity" -- but what continuity was there? The coaching staff got ransacked. And after years of offensive futility, we finally had a good year of offensive production, but all of the key prinicpals were graduating. When Shafer was hired in lieu of a national search, I was quite leery--and expressed that on the board repeatedly. Nothing against Shafer, but I thought we were in danger of backsliding if we didn't bring in someone with a proven track record as a head coach, since Marrone left the job unfinished and the roster was still in flux. I also viewed it as an opportunity to "modernize" our offensive system by bringing in new offensive coaches with new ideas. Now I'll admit--Shafer impressed me in year one. We got off to a lousy start, but righted the ship and won all but one of our 50/50 games [except Pitt, which we lost by 1], got to a bowl, and beat a decent B1G team. So several of my concerns seemed unfounded, which I owned up to last January after the season ended. There had been some bumps in the road, but that's to be expected with an inexperienced staff, and they looked like they had things figured out. Future looked bright last January. But today, after the debacle of a season we just went through, I'm right back to wringing my hands about Shafer not being the right guy for the job. Justifiably so, IMO. And I am not grabbing torches and a pitchfork, so this is by no means reactionary--this is what I feared when he was initially hired. He DOES appear to be in over his head, our offense DOES appear to be rudderless, and we DO appear to have backslid. If they don't stop the bleeding next season, Shafer has to go. [/QUOTE]

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