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Message: [QUOTE="anomander, post: 1211881, member: 2766"] I sadly agree. I like TheCusian's positive attitude, it's much needed when it comes to Syracuse Football, but sometimes things are just too tough to difficult to justify. I have a few problems with Shafer, but first i'll start with some positives...His teams always play hard. I think they showed this year they wanted to play hard for their coach. He's a players coach and it shows. The guys love him. It really feels like he has maintained the family atmosphere. Next, he is a great guy. High character, which makes it easy to route for. Unfortunately that's doesn't make a great Head Coach. My main problem is that I don't see a plan. What he did by demoting McDonald mid-season smelled of desperation. What was his rationale? Did he think this offense was talented enough to be better then they were showing? Was it factored in that Lester doesn't even run the same offense, and all of the offensive recruiting for the past 2 years might have been wasted? I really can't come up with any reason that move would have been made if there were a long-term plan. After the season if he felt a change needed to be made is fine, but he basically ended the season after game 5 by doing that. What's his recruiting strategy? I've heard it changed from year 1 to year 2. First year we had a target list, and went after the top guys, and worked down. This year I heard they had a cut off and anyone above the cut off they would accept a commitment from. It didn't matter if you had a list of 30 guys, made a cutoff at 15, and the 14th guy wanted to commit. I think you can see how that worked out by looking at some of this years early commits. We have a bunch of guys with no other offers. Finally I am worried about game planning. There were a few things that popped up last year that really raised an alarm. I heard they hired someone before the GT game that was a supposed "option guru". What is that? Can you imagine any other top coach hiring out a specialist to help game plan that week? That was even on his side of the ball, the offense has been it's own disaster. I've yet to see a game he has coached where he went in and out coached us to a win. That's my biggest worry because I don't see that changing. [/QUOTE]

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