I've seen a lot of back and forth posts about whether it's coaching or the players who are the problem with this team. Well it's pretty clear both are big problems, but I see the coaches as the BIG problem. Players will come and go but the coaches will stay and they are in charge of which players are on the team and which are playing.
I've seen way too many bad tendencies to not be concerned about the coaching and here are a few:
- Our team concedes entire halves of the game where one unit or the other just doesn't show up. Against UCONN our offense stayed on the bus for the first half, the defense never came out of the locker room for the second half and the special teams never left their dorms in Syracuse from what I can tell. I guess if this was a one game thing I could accept it, but this has happened in every game this year other than WVU. The inability to get the players to function for an entire half or more of a game is inexcusable and is all on the coaches. How they are prepping the team and what they are telling them are not sinking in and that's totally on the coaches.
- Our coaches are extremely slow to make in half adjustments. My favorite quote of the year is from Hackett against Wake where he said that at half time they had to throw out their entire game plan... umm why the did it take you to half time to adjust to what was going on on the field? That change should have been made within a drive or two. Then there was the defenses inability to stop UCONN's one play in the second half, this might be acceptable if it were a one time thing but this has happened to Shafer many times last year and a few times this year like against Rhode Island of all teams. If plan A is not working there does not seem to be a plan B or if there is a plan B it takes forever to show up. This is again on the coaches.
- The same players make the same mistakes game after game after game. I give you our secondary's repeated inability to cover receivers game after game because they are constantly peeking into the backfield or we can talk about Hay's and Sharpe's amount of PFs this year. I don't even want to talk about the total ineptitude at tackling that we've seen for three years now. For a coach who's strategy is to take raw players and teach them fundamentals and discipline it would seem a bad sign when his team is terrible at the fundamentals and discipline.
- The shittiness that is our oline after year 3. Marrone came in as a former olineman and an oline coach of some renown surely he'd fix the oline, right? There has been absolutely no improvement in the oline in 3 years as far as I can see. It's still the biggest weakness on the team and I don't see it changing. I don't know how Marrone, an oline expert, could look at this oline in the preseason an proclaim it a strength of the team. This would be less galling except there were a bunch of transfers from oline players who might have helped. Anyways if it were a one year thing it would be understandable but this is year 3 and the trend hasn't gotten any better. That's coaching.
- The disaster that is our special teams. We are in year 3 and we have a shitty punter and a kickoff guy who can barely reach the 10 yard line in a freaking dome. We lost the UCONN game due to special teams just like we lost games last year and the year before due to STs suckage. How many times have we kicked it out of bounds btw on kick offs? Yet out damn punter can't kick it out of bounds to save his life... are you kidding me? This is ALL on coaching and please don't tell me we don't have a ST coach because that is again a coaching decision in itself
I am not saying we need to fire HCDM but he needs to look into the mirror and ask himself if he's really cut out for this job. I see someone who probably would have made a great oline coach, but I am not seeing someone who has the feel to be a head coach at a college level. I wish HCDM all the success in the world because if he fails it scares the crap out of me where we go from there. Marrone is the ideal coach for Syracuse based on resume but he needs to do some serious introspection to succeed in this day and age because whatever he's doing ain't working.
I've seen way too many bad tendencies to not be concerned about the coaching and here are a few:
- Our team concedes entire halves of the game where one unit or the other just doesn't show up. Against UCONN our offense stayed on the bus for the first half, the defense never came out of the locker room for the second half and the special teams never left their dorms in Syracuse from what I can tell. I guess if this was a one game thing I could accept it, but this has happened in every game this year other than WVU. The inability to get the players to function for an entire half or more of a game is inexcusable and is all on the coaches. How they are prepping the team and what they are telling them are not sinking in and that's totally on the coaches.
- Our coaches are extremely slow to make in half adjustments. My favorite quote of the year is from Hackett against Wake where he said that at half time they had to throw out their entire game plan... umm why the did it take you to half time to adjust to what was going on on the field? That change should have been made within a drive or two. Then there was the defenses inability to stop UCONN's one play in the second half, this might be acceptable if it were a one time thing but this has happened to Shafer many times last year and a few times this year like against Rhode Island of all teams. If plan A is not working there does not seem to be a plan B or if there is a plan B it takes forever to show up. This is again on the coaches.
- The same players make the same mistakes game after game after game. I give you our secondary's repeated inability to cover receivers game after game because they are constantly peeking into the backfield or we can talk about Hay's and Sharpe's amount of PFs this year. I don't even want to talk about the total ineptitude at tackling that we've seen for three years now. For a coach who's strategy is to take raw players and teach them fundamentals and discipline it would seem a bad sign when his team is terrible at the fundamentals and discipline.
- The shittiness that is our oline after year 3. Marrone came in as a former olineman and an oline coach of some renown surely he'd fix the oline, right? There has been absolutely no improvement in the oline in 3 years as far as I can see. It's still the biggest weakness on the team and I don't see it changing. I don't know how Marrone, an oline expert, could look at this oline in the preseason an proclaim it a strength of the team. This would be less galling except there were a bunch of transfers from oline players who might have helped. Anyways if it were a one year thing it would be understandable but this is year 3 and the trend hasn't gotten any better. That's coaching.
- The disaster that is our special teams. We are in year 3 and we have a shitty punter and a kickoff guy who can barely reach the 10 yard line in a freaking dome. We lost the UCONN game due to special teams just like we lost games last year and the year before due to STs suckage. How many times have we kicked it out of bounds btw on kick offs? Yet out damn punter can't kick it out of bounds to save his life... are you kidding me? This is ALL on coaching and please don't tell me we don't have a ST coach because that is again a coaching decision in itself
I am not saying we need to fire HCDM but he needs to look into the mirror and ask himself if he's really cut out for this job. I see someone who probably would have made a great oline coach, but I am not seeing someone who has the feel to be a head coach at a college level. I wish HCDM all the success in the world because if he fails it scares the crap out of me where we go from there. Marrone is the ideal coach for Syracuse based on resume but he needs to do some serious introspection to succeed in this day and age because whatever he's doing ain't working.
