(11-14-2016 04:16 PM)allbig8 Wrote: I knew I would get killed.... I just think the game is more complex than a message board can explain.... Schematically? I don't like the Air Raid... Rice WR's lack the speed to beat man coverage... Stehling has faced a ton of zero safety man coverage... Hard for him to look good when there is no separation by the WR's... To the staff's credit, his rushing numbers have been pretty decent lately (especially against Charlotte) and that's likely a bi-product of the zero man defenses and the necessity to outnumber the box where the only way to do that is run your 11th guy (QB)... So yeah... the coach in me cringes at Air Raid with this skill group... But, they've made adjustments... All I'm trying to say is unless you're sure these other "candidates" bring something you haven't already seen, then give the man who brought the only conference title in four generations a chance to right the ship in a new building. The earlier poster that lamented how great Hatfield was is right. He was a really good coach and a great man. He was accomplished. But.... according to some "experts", the game had passed him by and it was time to go. I would just warn against letting that sentiment repeat itself again. The fact is, DB has been successful, and he's a great man. Just tap the breaks a little.
How did we get onto the Air Raid? I for one am certainly not wedded to it. But my impression is that it depends much more on scheme and technique and execution than raw athletic skill, and that would not necessarily rule it out for this bunch. RUOwls is very much of the opinion that our WR problems with lack of separation are more technique and execution that raw skill. I also don't think our scheme is designed to make best use of what we have. Given how many capable running backs we seem to have right now, it would seem a slam dunk either to go to a more run-heavy attack or alternatively to see if some of those athletes could be more valuable plugging the hole at the back end of the secondary, without which we are pretty much dead meat, week in and week out.
You did not answer the question I posed, so I will ask it again.
Do you really, seriously believe that David Bailiff gets the maximum out of the players that he has? I don't, and I don't by a long shot, but I'm willing to explore another point of view on the matter.
On both sides of the ball, I don't see us doing much that is schematically different from what everybody around us is trying to do. Yeah, not everybody runs a 4-2-5 defense, but the way we run it seems to be a lot more doing what everybody else does, just out of possibly a somewhat different pre snap look, whereas if you look at TCU they are doing some things that are radically different. Rather than some sort of unique or contrarian scheme that presents preparation issues for opponents, we seem content just to line up and do what everybody else does, and when we out-athlete you we can win and when we don't we can't. That seems to me to be a horrible approach to try at a place like Rice, where we have some self-imposed limitations that aren't going to allow us to out-athlete opponents at any level with any consistency.
If you see something different going on, I would appreciate your commenting about it. But that's what I see, and I don't think that's ever going to deliver what we want.
Bum Philips said there are two ways for a football team to get better--get better players or get the players you have to play better. Bailiff's approach, and the comments of those who support him, seem to be totally on the side of getting better players as the solution to our problem. I actually think we'e done that, and I would hope the EZF lets us do even more. But I don't think we're going to win without doing some of the getting the players we have to play better. And I just don't see that happening. Play hard, but sloppy execution and lots of unforced mental errors, seems to be the mantra of David Bailiff coached teams. And I don't think that will ever get it done at Rice.
