JWEIII wrote:
So who do you want? Everyone says he does this wrong... he does that wrong... he screwed that up... but has no input (other than he stinks).
If you've been reading this forum for any amount of time I think you'd know that I've given countless arguments about Gregg Brandon. I've supported them with facts, and laid them out pretty well, IMO. I'll try to duplicate some of that, but if this post is not detailed enough for you feel free to look back on some of my MANY posts (stemming all the way to the 2003 OSU game) that describe my take on Brandon as a HC. I've become more vocal overtime, because in the beginning he was a head coach who was learning, he's now had 3 years, and like it or not that's more time than most get to prove themselves.
For starters, I already told you I don't know who I want. I'm not an AD, it's not my job to be abreast of which assistants are most ready for a promotion. It's real hard for me to have enough intel to figure out that the RB's coach at LSU has a HC mentality and is bucking for a promotion. That said, I do think that Krebs has that ability. He pulled Urban Meyer out of thin air, and I think he's got a pretty good feel for what it takes to be a good coach...unfortunately he hired Brandon to keep the ship sailing in the direction it was heading, which it has not done and is starting to take on water. I wish I could give you a good answer about who I want, but I just cannot as I don't know enough about any of the potential candidates. I do know that I don't care for what I've seen in Gregg Brandon as a head coach, and I'm quite confident that if Krebs put his mind to it he could come up with a better candidate for the job.
On to my take on our current coaching staff. My first inclination that this current staff was not going to be up to snuff was the 2003 OSU game. Yes, many will think back to that game and think how fun it was to have a chance to win in the shoe, how we came oh so close, etc. Well it was my opinion at the time that we took ourselves out of that game moreso than OSU did anything to stop us. We changed our offense a lot in that game, and you could almost see the urine running down Brandon's leg. We didn't let J5 be J5, with only 8 rushing attempts...4 of which were sacks. We threw almost exclusively to the sidelines (something we've seen more of in recent years), and threw countless bubble screens. We had some success doing this, but we had much more success when we ran the slants & posts that were what our offense had been built upon in previous seasons. We tried a trick play (that fooled everyone) where we have a WR throw a ball to a seldom-used TE. Then in the end we try to chuck it deep to our senior CB who had never played WR in his 3 years at BG and never played it again. WHY? At certain times in this game we had great success moving the ball on OSU, but we seemed afraid to stick with what had worked for us at Purdue and in the previous two seasons...immediately I wanted to know why we refused to try and run our own offense. Since that time we've seen countless big games where we either didn't show up to play or we altered our gameplan so much that our scheme didn't give us a chance to win. I do believe that a lot of our altered playcalling styles are on the fact that our OC is also not ready for his position, it's not solely on the HC, but the staff as a whole.
Since that time I've noticed a trend that is pretty obvious. Wins & Losses notwithstanding, look at the actual product on the field. Wins & Losses are one way to measure the team, but you get a lot better feel, IMO, for how well the coaching staff is doing its job when you watch the actual games than what you do by just examining the record. Especially when you play in the MAC where there are 2-3 games every year that are against some of the bottom 5 teams in all of Division 1A. The trend that is obvious, in my mind, is that we've become a worse team each year under Brandon's tenure. The 2003 team did take a step up from the 2002 team, much of which can be attributed to playing the big games at home rather than on the road, and the maturation of Josh Harris. The 2004 team basically lost all the games I thought they would and won the ones I thought they would. They were not as good of a team as the 2003 team, although they might have been an overall more talented team. The 2005 team was clearly a step below the 2004 team, and nobody can argue that...again they were at least the equals talentwise of the previous year, but took a huge step backwards. I don't like that trend.
Another fear I have is that we have yet to see more than a couple impact players come from Brandon's recruiting classes. Devon Parks & Lichtensteiger are his two best guys, with Partridge probably being 3rd. Briggs, Smith, Thomas, and others have shown some promise, but have not made a great impact yet. You look at the teams that Brandon has had and they're reliant, almost solely, on Urban Meyer guys (and some Blackney guys). Conversely, when Urban came in we saw immediate impact from a number of his own guys. Granted when Meyer got here the program was in shambles, and Brandon took over a winning program, so for that I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. This year we finally started to see some plays made by some of his guys, still I'm fearful that he's not bringing in the same level of players that Urban did. Even the best teams in the country usually get 1 or 2 guys a year that come in and make plays as true freshmen, unseating some upperclassmen. Time will tell on this issue, but it is a fear I have.
Like J4H mentioned above 3rd quarters have been our downfall over the past couple years, and it is oftentimes called the "coaches' quarter." There have been times where we would come out in the 3rd and look lost after a successful first half because the defense made adjustments, it then seems to take us till the 4th quarter to adapt. Conversely there have been times where we were unsuccessful in the first halves, and rather than make adjustments to fix those problems we come out with more of the same old stuff, and wonder why it still doesn't work.
Another point that J4H mentioned was how Brandon is in the media. I cannot stand it. He tried to throw Omar under the bus after Toledo last year. I have heard from various sources (of unknown reliability, hence it's small in my mind) that Omar dislikes Brandon because of those comments. Beyond that, some of the stuff he's said this year on the air has been ridiculous. The comments he made following the Akron game were embarrassing enough, then he made it worse with one of the worst interviews I've ever heard on 1470 later that week. That interview was the sound of somebody who has no answers to a lot of the questions. Not good at all. Another thing that I don't care for from his media interviews is how he always wants to harp on his W/L record. As you have, saying that they're winning so they must do something right. I prefer to hear the coach say that he's not satisfied and they have things to work on, rather than have him come into the media and say, yeah we weren't real good at that, but we're winning so it's okay. I get the distinct impression that he shrugged off a lot of our deficiencies in recent years because we overcame those and won the games because our offense was so good. Now that our offense isn't all that, all of a sudden those deficiencies are glaring.
Finally, and worst of all, we have become a TERRIBLE fundamental football team. We lack focus, leadership, and we don't do the little things that it takes to win. Our OL was very good to dominant for the past 4 years, and now this year they played awful for a good deal of the season. Our tackling has gotten steadily worse each of the last couple years. Our STs have been circling the drain as well. Under Meyer we were good blockers, strong tacklers, and we had dominant STs units. Most of the best coaches have teams that excel in these areas, and we have become bad in all of them. Name me one coach who's considered at the top of his profession that doesn't have strong STs, blocking, and tackling; I don't think you'll find one. They're the fundamental building blocks of this game, and we seem to have neglected them completely.
I could probably come up with more, but my train of thought has been all over the place by writing this post in pieces between actually having to work
I'm not saying that I think Brandon is a bad guy, I'm not even advocating his termination. I've only had personal contact with him one time and he was very cordial and understanding to my desires, so I assure you this is not some personal issue with him. I think he's done well enough to earn one more season, with lowered expectations, and see how he comes out of it. But if next year is another disaster, I do think he should be replaced. I don't have the answers of who would be better, but it's not my job to. I do believe we can do better than him as a head coach, and at some point the administration must realize that. It's a lot easier to maintain success at this level than it is to build it, IMO.
