Rojas Leaves

cowboyjoe · Post by **cowboyjoe** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:40 pm

These are "harsh" comments? After Wisconsin game: "We didn't execute the kick and that really got us. It's frustrating on us, because we really worked hard on that during the off -season. We have young guys and we have to fight through the growing pains." After Miami, Ohio game: On Sean Ellis trying to rebound
"He's got to rebound from that. He doesn't have a choice. He's a Division I kicker and he'll have his ups and downs. He'll have some great opportunities in his career and I think he's got to be able to handle the good times and bad times and treat them the same." Don't see it. Please post harsh comments if you can find any.

Warthog · Post by **Warthog** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:44 pm

From a Blade story last week:
"The staff is also looking at junior college kickers to handle kickoffs and give some competition to Sean Ellis.

"We're not even talking about kickoff coverage if our kicker gets the ball into the end zone or out of the back of the end zone," Brandon said"

Squarely laying the blame for horrendous kickoff coverage strictly on the kicker. Can somebody come up with the average of kickoffs that are touchbacks? Maybe 25%?[/u]

FalconFanatic · Post by **FalconFanatic** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:03 pm

This makes me sick to think about 2 freshman kickers on scholarship quitting our team. Not to sound unsympathetic, but good riddence. Personally I do not want quitters on our team. I want mentally tough players that can handle the harsh criticism of college football, not unreliable quitters that cannot be counted upon for anything. I wish them the best of luck with their lives, but we need tough players.

Rojas and Ellis = not tough enough

Let the comments fly boys.... I feel it had to be said.

orangeandbrown · Post by **orangeandbrown** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:10 pm

Boy, this comes right out of the hoops forum.

ctowndown · Post by **ctowndown** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:47 pm

maybe they decided to take up soccer

BGSU33 · Post by **BGSU33** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:59 am

Damn man, as if the season wasn't bad enough, now we've got all these players bolting too. This does feel like the basketball forum. But I’ll tell you what, as much as I hate to see these two promising kickers leave, like some of you, I almost can’t blame them. Our poor kicking schemes and lack of execution are flat out embarrassing. We weren’t bad in one area, we were piss poor in all areas of special teams. We couldn’t protect for a punt let alone boot one away, we couldn’t protect for a kick let alone make many, and we sure as hell couldn’t tackle when kicking off or punting. I venture to say Rojas will have been hit more and will have had more punts blocked in one year in our ass-backward schemes at BG than he will have in his next three years combined elsewhere. As for our kickoffs and Ellis, teams were almost guaranteed to start at the 35 against us because we’d either kick short, kick out of bounds or we kick deep and they’d get a long return. We had no answer and no team can afford to give teams that good of starting field position at the rate we gave it to them. What’s frustrating the most is though, the last two years we have been miserable in special teams and haven’t shown any signs of getting better. I believe a lot of that goes back right to coaching and we are not putting these kids in position to succeed. And by the looks of it after two years of falling on our face, I don’t think our coaches have a clue how to fix it. Because if they did, we’d have seen something different. Time and time again we fail in special teams execution. The thing most troubling to me is, we used to actually excel in special teams at BG. We had some exceptional kickers and punters in recent years. Even when we were bad in the mid to late 1990s, we had good kickers. Now we’re recruiting good kickers and we fail miserably in specials teams. To me, the writing is on the wall as to why that is.

Schadenfreude · Post by **Schadenfreude** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 7:12 am

This is reallly gonna hurt team speed.

We all know Floridans are fast, right?

PGY Tiercel · Post by **PGY Tiercel** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 8:40 am

Warthog wrote:From a Blade story last week:
"The staff is also looking at junior college kickers to handle kickoffs and give some competition to Sean Ellis.

"We're not even talking about kickoff coverage if our kicker gets the ball into the end zone or out of the back of the end zone," Brandon said"

Squarely laying the blame for horrendous kickoff coverage strictly on the kicker. Can somebody come up with the average of kickoffs that are touchbacks? Maybe 25%?[/u]

Wow I can see how saying we are going to give a kicker some competition is a bad thing. Should the kicker be the only player on a the team that isn't competing for a roster/starting spot. Turner didn't leave the team after GB recruited 2 QBs and offered them scholarships.

I think 25% of kickoff's being touchbacks would have been a 10 fold improvement and no doubt would improve the coverage of kickoffs even when they weren't touchbacks.

Flipper · Post by **Flipper** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 8:59 am

That's a VERY selective look at that quote. I don't hink anyone has a problem with him talking about brining in a JC kicker to compete. I think his saying Ellis's kickoffs were, if not the cause of the coverage issues, a factor that could have eliminated them was the statement that angered people.

I read that as an attempt to shift the blame for poor execution by the unit and by extension, the coaching staff, to an individual. I have a problem with that just as I had a problem with hin singling Partridge out earlier in the year.

PGY Tiercel · Post by **PGY Tiercel** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:19 am

I guess I just don't read the comments the way you do.

Warthog · Post by **Warthog** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:50 am

What Flipper said. No issue with competition. Concern is over the coach blaming the kicker for the poor kickoff coverage. By week 2, 3, 4 it should have been obvious to the coach that Ellis wasn't going to be kicking the ball out of the end zone (especially given the windy conditions in BG), so he should have accepted that fact and focused on what needed to be changed on the coverage unit to help them improve. But alas, we come to the end of the season and he still lays it all on the kicker and not the scheme.

Dayons_Den · Post by **Dayons_Den** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 9:54 am

Flipper wrote:I read that as an attempt to shift the blame for poor execution by the unit and by extension, the coaching staff, to an individual. I have a problem with that just as I had a problem with hin singling Partridge out earlier in the year.

Ding ding ding, I concur with Flip on this. Again, as I have pointed out, by making these comments he is breaking a number of cardinal coach-speak rules- especially odd considering by all accounts GB is a "player's coach."

1. Singling Out Players in a TEAM game
2. Commenting on freshman, TRUE freshman
3. Commenting specifically on kickers, who are generally considered to be "strange birds" (excuse the pun) to begin with

As someone who watched every game save the Wisconsin game, the kickers fundamentals were there. Ellis can make a 40+ yard field goal. Brandon knows that otherwise he wouldn't have sent the 10 guys out on the field to attempt that ill-fated kick at Ohio State. I saw our kicking game as some what of a work in progress and I liked where it was going with these two kids, just hoped the set up around them would improve.

Also, it was troublesome to me that he had the time to single out things like the kicking game when there were things that were 10 times more glaring on the field that needed corrected.

PGY Tiercel · Post by **PGY Tiercel** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:29 am

These are quotes coming from a newspaper article. Does it not occur to you that questions may have been asked specifically about the kicking game. Maureen writes some pretty good articles but what quotes are used is up to her, and the questions she may have asked. So I think it is a bit unfair to say that Brandon was singling out the kicking game. Maureen's writing in the blade article that the quotes warthog brought up transitioned to the kicking game after talking about recruiting. She probably asked what the focus was, one of them is kicking. She asked why and then chose to write that response, and not the quotes about DBs or RBs. Could it be that he had more to say on the other issues, I think so.

Flipper · Post by **Flipper** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:40 am

I think she touched on some of that in the rest of the article...it would be interesting to know if GB singled out other individuals when discussing other positions on the team. It wouldn't make it any more right or fair, but it might have diminished the overall effect of singling out Ellis' performance as a specific problem

PGY Tiercel · Post by **PGY Tiercel** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:59 am

Alright, to get back to the specific individual this thread is about, are there any comments made by GB about ROJAS in a "negative" way. Examples listed have all been about Ellis.