Neely's Ghost
Bench Warmer
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I Root For: Rice
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RE: To understand Rice football from another angle.
(10-25-2017 07:35 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote: (10-24-2017 02:30 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (10-24-2017 01:21 PM)Antarius Wrote: (10-24-2017 01:02 PM)Neelys Ghost Wrote: However, there's a very important side bar to that. The Head Coach must hold the people "he has put in place to conduct the actual on field coaching" accountable.
Changing Head Coaches is the easiest thing to do for any university wanting to change their culture. But, the issue at Rice is accountability. Coach Bailiff has coordinators in place that are hired to design and implement schemes that maximize talent (relative to the level of talent that exists).
I do not think Bailiff knows what his coordinators do and thus cannot evaluate them properly. He really looks like he got lucky with Herman. Looking at the rest of the list,
Dreisbach, Zaunbrecher, Naivar, Beaty, Reagan, Edmondson, Lynch, Thurmond (and this does not include our Special Teams), that's a who's who of who not to hire.
There's another way to look at this. What's been the constant? Bailiff. Coordinators have come and gone on both sides of the ball, with pretty much the same complaints persisting. Maybe the problem isn't the coordinators. Or maybe, to view it differently, Bailiff has micromanaged regardless of coordinators to the extent that it has been difficult to attract good coordinators. Of course, pay doesn't help either in that regard, I realize that, but mostly we've hired old guys on the back sides of careers, who maybe were just happy to have a paycheck and willing to do what they were told, instead of young up-and-comers trying to make a name for themselves.
Mensa is the interesting one to me. His offenses at Ohio State, UH, and Texas have not looked like his offenses at Rice. Rice's offenses since he left have looked more like his offenses at Rice than have his offenses since he left. Did he learn that much since leaving, or was he being held back by Bailiff? I doubt Tom would ever say anything negative about David, but I wonder. From his days at Rice until now, there have been various comments about wanting our QBs to stay in the pocket, even when that wasn't their best skill set. He has not appeared to have any kind of leash on any of his QBs since leaving Rice. It seems a bit puzzling to me. I was pretty critical of Tom when he was here, but seeing him elsewhere makes me think that he was not the problem.
Wait, our offenses have looked the same as the ones in 2007 and 2008?
We have become far more of a ground game oriented offense, even when we have had competent QBs under center. When was the last time we cam close to 111 catches for a WR in a year? We attempted nearly 40 passes per game in 2008. After that, it was slow trend downward to a more run-oriented offense:
38 -> 30 -> 32 -> 31 -> 25 -> 27 -> 31 -> 34
And our rushes per game went from 35 to above 40 every year but 2009 and 2011.
We were very much a passing, air it out offense under Herman, and once he left, DB shifted his focus to winning TOP and holding onto the ball. I mean, I never once remember us talking about TOP in 2007 or 2008, and I remember those games being crazy long because of all of the stoppages in plays from first downs and dropped passes.
Yes, DB has been the constant and hired OCs that more match his offensive philosophy, but out team's offensive identity was much different under Herman than after Herman. I think Herman and the players on his offense were able to voice their opinion effectively during 2007 and 2008 and DB went along. I think the issue is that after that, DB has kept hiring OCs with a more similar idea of how to run an offense than him squelching their offensive philosophy. That's not to say that isn't problematic, but I don't see the issue being that DB is telling OCs what to do, it's just that he hasn't hired any good ones since Herman.
The bolded section above..... Just sayin... The Tyner kid was asked to throw 35 times at Stanford and 32 at Pitt.... No one else asked to do that.. 3-9, 1 TD, 2 INT, fumble and 3-5, INT....
I'd like to present as exhibit B in the case against Rice Football for the penalty of driving an "agenda" based offense....
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