BG vs Memphis Game Thread

[ZuluWarrior]

I only hope the players don't start getting in to off-field troubles. We hit that point and this will officially be the worst year (and it still may very well be) since I started attending BG back in 1985.

[guest44]

I'm more worried that players will just flat quit. Would you want to sit through that second half, or that flight home?

[kdog27]

All the posters who have bashed EMU for years here.

Well time to take your medicine. Lucky to have 2,000 people in the stands the rest of the year.

[Warthog]

There are way too many things wrong with this team, but I am still going to focus on one thing: QB play. In order for this offense to work, you have to complete passes and keep moving the chains. Matt Johnson completed between 65% and 69% of his passes and averaged like 8.5 yards per attempt. That is pretty efficiend and keeps our defense off the field.

Knapke has started for more than a full season now. His completion percentage is in the low 50s and the average yards per attempt is in the low 6s. In this offense, incomplete passes are deathly. You have to keep the defense on their heels. Incomplete passes slow everything down. With Knapke on the field, and he has had ample time to prove his skills, the offense just isn't working. We have to get better QB play and that will help all phases of the team as it allows the defense to get more rest on the sidelines. (And in reality, we need to keep the clock moving so teams can't score 70 points in three quarters!)

[BGSU33]

I'm more worried that players will just flat quit. Would you want to sit through that second half, or that flight home?

I'm more concerned about players we are trying to get to come here - the recruits.

[MarkL]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

[BGSU33]

There are way too many things wrong with this team, but I am still going to focus on one thing: QB play. In order for this offense to work, you have to complete passes and keep moving the chains. Matt Johnson completed between 65% and 69% of his passes and averaged like 8.5 yards per attempt. That is pretty efficiend and keeps our defense off the field.

Knapke has started for more than a full season now. His completion percentage is in the low 50s and the average yards per attempt is in the low 6s. In this offense, incomplete passes are deathly. You have to keep the defense on their heels. Incomplete passes slow everything down. With Knapke on the field, and he has had ample time to prove his skills, the offense just isn't working. We have to get better QB play and that will help all phases of the team as it allows the defense to get more rest on the sidelines. (And in reality, we need to keep the clock moving so teams can't score 70 points in three quarters!)

As bad as our QB play has been, our WR's are even worse. Zimmerman completely whiffed on a touchdown past that went right through his arms that he didn't even touch, DP essentially handed them their first int with his drop, and Ronnie Moore is proving more and more each week that he is not a WR, this week with a pair of drops including one that led to a pick. Moore is an athlete, not a WR. He made the comment in the preseason that he wanted a bunch of dogs at WR and that there were only cats. Well right now he's looking like a mouse himself. He can be dangerous with the ball in his hands, but there in lies the problem. He can't seem to catch it anymore, and we saw what happened when we had him try returning punts.

[BGSU33]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

A few weeks ago he was talking about how "we have guys who could play in the Big 12" and how some guys "have potential to play on Sundays." My oh my how his tune has changed since then. Last night he was talking about "this is what we have to play with," essentially alluding to the fact that there's nothing to fix what's going on. To me he seems completely overwhelmed and beyond the point of being in over his head. This guy stepped into a pit of quicksand and instead of sinking slowly, he plummeted into the abyss immediately.

[kdog27]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

I think most people at some point in their careers are hired or promoted into a position they aren't really qualified for. But most people aren't making 400k? to do that job.

Kingston knew he royally effed this hire up and bailed.

[jpfalcon09]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

He bombed his opening press conference and nothing has changed since. I don't know what compelled Kingston to hire this guy but it may go down as the most disastrous hire in Bowling Green athletic history. That's likely hyperbolic but I can't help to think how much worse things are going to get before this season is over.

[MarkL]

I was cautiously optimistic about the hire but one thing he said nagged me.

"It was out of nowhere," he told reporters in the spring. "I didn't have an agent. I wasn't actively pursuing head coaching positions, definitely not 1,500 miles from Texas."

http://www.cbssports.com/college-footba ... -big-time/

If he wasn't considering being a head coach, was he ready?

[guest44]

Since the Sentinel and Blade will need something to talk about the next 8 weeks, how about seeking Kingston for comment on possibly the worst turnaround in college football history? All you will get is smoke from the people still around.

[Falconfreak90]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

I think most people at some point in their careers are hired or promoted into a position they aren't really qualified for. But most people aren't making 400k? to do that job.

Kingston knew he royally effed this hire up and bailed.

There it is. Kingston is to blame for this. Thanks CK.

[hammb]

I listened to Jinks' press conference. Two takeaways. One, he said the coaches and players have to take ownership of the loss and dig their way out as a team, not point fingers at each other. Two, he sounds out of his league. Lots of pauses, "you knows", etc, as if he is uncomfortable taking questions. If he cannot address two BG friendly reporters, how can he possibly address an embarrassed, frustrated, upset locker room and inspire them to turn this ship around? He comes off to me as in over his head.

I think most people at some point in their careers are hired or promoted into a position they aren't really qualified for. But most people aren't making 400k? to do that job.

Kingston knew he royally effed this hire up and bailed.

There it is. Kingston is to blame for this. Thanks CK.

This is true, but I don't wanna bash Kingston too much. He had a pretty damned good track record of coaching hires at BG. Dino was a HR, Bergeron seems pretty solid. If not for the bar incident(s) Jans probably was a HR. Moving quickly on the Jans thing and following up with Huger appears to be a pretty good hire as well.

I dunno if he knew he was leaving and kinda mailed it in on the Jinks thing. I don't know if he bailed because he could tell right away he whiffed on the football hire. I partially suspect he realized that the current landscape of college football didn't allow him a very deep talent pool to find a good coach, reached badly to take what he could get, and realized that MAC level AD wasn't in his heart anymore.

I posted it upthread but I'll continue to harp on it. When we're looking for coaches I don't think we should look anywhere, really, beyond the FCS ranks. The current landscape of college football makes it impossible for us to land top level assistants from the Power5 conferences. They'd have to take a paycut to come here, and there isn't much incentive for them to do so anymore. They can jump directly from assistants to Power5 HC jobs and get a much better payday to rebuild a program than they'd ever get at the MAC level. And I think the mega jobs have also realized that coaching candidates are more prepared coming up through the Power5 ranks than they are to go poaching MAC coaches. Sure, some of that will always go on, but it's not the necessary rung on the ladder anymore. Coaches aren't going from the MAC to OSU/UM type jobs anymore. They're going to Syracuse, Wake, Illinois, etc...

We will find our best coaches by doubling the salary of a successful FCS coach that can bring his own assistants with him. Yes, we'll struggle to keep that guy for long (as will always be the case), but we will have a MUCH better track record of success that way than we will poaching young low level assistants (the only ones that will take the job) from P5 schools. Division 1 college football has passed the MAC by. It's done it in many ways, but one of the biggest is that we will always have more trouble finding quality coaches to take our HC gig. The one way we can still do it is to explore FCS. P5 teams aren't going to look that direction very often, so a MAC gig is a nice rung on the ladder for those guys. It's not really for the guys that are already knee deep in the P5.

A bit rambling, but I do wonder if seeing that landscape play out contributed to Kingston's departure. EIther way, I think he failed miserably in his last hire, and I am worried that we're going to be looking at 3-4 Louis Orr type seasons from football. Given my general distaste for the college football game anymore, i cannot see wasting too much time to watch this program flounder like I did with the Blackney and Brandon issues (neither of which looked as woefully inept as Jinks team has thus far).

[BGSU33]

SEMO, from the FCS, only lost 35-17 at Memphis two games ago. Their loss was by 18 points. We lost by 74, and that was with Memphis essentially taking a knee and standing there running time off the clock before snapping the ball. That is beyond embarrassing.