(03-20-2018 04:00 PM)wrysal Wrote:  Take a 1-11 team, remove the ten or so best players from that team (seniors, transfers and medical, etc.) and what have you got left? Bare cupboard, meet Bloomgren.

So.. do we have more than 53 players for Spring Practice?

Such is life. I still see us winning more than 1 game.. several more.

(03-20-2018 04:01 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 03:37 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  2-11 seems about right for 2018.

I'll take the over. Always liked Tyner.

True “pro style” offense should fit his skill set well. Much better than the MSO we’ve all been subjected to the last couple seasons.

Also, if Bloomgren doesn't play Tyner... is this the ABO 2.0? Super convenient that the acronym gets to stay the same.

(03-20-2018 04:00 PM)wrysal Wrote:  Take a 1-11 team, remove the ten or so best players from that team (seniors, transfers and medical, etc.) and what have you got left? Bare cupboard, meet Bloomgren.

isn't this what a coach is supposed to do? Make lemonade from lemons and pull it out of a bare cupboard? Make his team play above their talent? isn't all this what Bailiff failed to do?

If Bloom is half the coach people think he is, we still have a decent year. If not, then fire him after one year and get on to the next young hungry assistant.

Anyway, seniors leaving, people unable to overcome injuries, even transfers is part of the landscape in college ball.

Everybody settle down, and let Bloom do his job.

(03-20-2018 04:05 PM)Antarius Wrote:  Also, if Bloomgren doesn't play Tyner... is this the ABO 2.0? Super convenient that the acronym gets to stay the same.

Haha that’s a good one ....ABO 2.0
I think the ABO died with all the guys still on unemployment. Bloomgren will do whatever is going to win games now. Whether it’s Tyner, stank, true fresh whatever it takes to get points on the board. Looking forward to seeing the intellectual brutality in action.

(03-20-2018 04:07 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 04:00 PM)wrysal Wrote:  Take a 1-11 team, remove the ten or so best players from that team (seniors, transfers and medical, etc.) and what have you got left? Bare cupboard, meet Bloomgren.

isn't this what a coach is supposed to do? Make lemonade from lemons and pull it out of a bare cupboard? Make his team play above their talent? isn't all this what Bailiff failed to do?

Bailiff's 1st year, he took a team with Chase Clement, Jarrett Dillard, James Casey, Andrew Sendejo, Scott Solomon, and Cheta Ozougwu and went 3-9. That is 2 guys with pretty substantial NFL careers (Casey and Sendejo), 3 guys who spent multiple years on NFL rosters (Dillard, Solomon, Ozougwu), and 1 guy who had multiple NFL tryouts and was an excellent NCAA QB (Clement). If Bloomgren had that kind of talent returning and went 3-9, sure, fire him.

But unless you are making the argument that, after these transfers and injuries, Bloomgren has anywhere near that kind of talent, then I don't understand why your point. I'm all for making lemons out of lemonade. But you can't make a gallon of lemonade if you only have 2 lemons.

And settle down? We're just bemoaning the loss of talent from a team that already was low on talent. And lowering our expectations based on the new information. Is there some problem with this on a message board? Isn't that basically the purpose of message boards? These comments have nothing to do with Bloomgren (certainly mine didn't).

(03-20-2018 04:17 PM)RiceOL83 Wrote:  ...Whether it’s Tyner, stank, true fresh whatever it takes to get points on the board. Looking forward to seeing the intellectual brutality in action.

Put me in, coach

(03-20-2018 04:36 PM)mrbig Wrote:  But you can't make a gallon of lemonade if you only have 2 lemons.

Sure you can. It just won't be very strong lemonade.

(03-20-2018 04:36 PM)mrbig Wrote:  And settle down? We're just bemoaning the loss of talent from a team that already was low on talent. And lowering our expectations based on the new information. Is there some problem with this on a message board? Isn't that basically the purpose of message boards? These comments have nothing to do with Bloomgren (certainly mine didn't).

It is an attempt to make the claim that we were mean to Bailiff by expecting him to win and stuff. Basically if we don't do great next year and aren't angry, it will come back up as Bailiff only had 53 men at Spring training... had injuries.. that injuries are no excuses, there was no EZF in 2007 etc. etc.

Just watch. We've seen this before.

(03-20-2018 04:36 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 04:07 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 04:00 PM)wrysal Wrote:  Take a 1-11 team, remove the ten or so best players from that team (seniors, transfers and medical, etc.) and what have you got left? Bare cupboard, meet Bloomgren.

isn't this what a coach is supposed to do? Make lemonade from lemons and pull it out of a bare cupboard? Make his team play above their talent? isn't all this what Bailiff failed to do?

Bailiff's 1st year, he took a team with Chase Clement, Jarrett Dillard, James Casey, Andrew Sendejo, Scott Solomon, and Cheta Ozougwu and went 3-9. That is 2 guys with pretty substantial NFL careers (Casey and Sendejo), 3 guys who spent multiple years on NFL rosters (Dillard, Solomon, Ozougwu), and 1 guy who had multiple NFL tryouts and was an excellent NCAA QB (Clement). If Bloomgren had that kind of talent returning and went 3-9, sure, fire him.

But unless you are making the argument that, after these transfers and injuries, Bloomgren has anywhere near that kind of talent, then I don't understand why your point. I'm all for making lemons out of lemonade. But you can't make a gallon of lemonade if you only have 2 lemons.

And settle down? We're just bemoaning the loss of talent from a team that already was low on talent. And lowering our expectations based on the new information. Is there some problem with this on a message board? Isn't that basically the purpose of message boards? These comments have nothing to do with Bloomgren (certainly mine didn't).

Correct, I made no statement dealing with my expectations for Bloom this year. But since you bring it up, dbag graham lost exactly one player of note from the 1-10 2005 team: Syptak. Had he also lost Armstrong, Clement, Smith, Rucker, Dillard, Berken, Chukwu, Scruggs and Price I really doubt if we would have won a single game, and we would have been stuck with him. Based on our lack of returning talent my expectations for wins in '18 are unfortunately very low. It is possible we might go 1-12 and still show obvious improvement. Short of more wins, that's what I'm hoping for.

(03-20-2018 04:47 PM)InterestedX Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 04:36 PM)mrbig Wrote:  But you can't make a gallon of lemonade if you only have 2 lemons.

Sure you can. It just won't be very strong lemonade.

I think at that point it is lemon-flavored water!

Bloomgren should have a solid 3 years of runway before the rotten fruit comes out. Obviously the football team is in disarray after the prior 2-3 seasons. Bailiff took over a team that had just gone to the first bowl game in decades (and Bailiff did return to a bowl in his 2nd year). Bloomgren is taking over for a team that was in the bottom 5 of all FBS teams last year and wasn't far off from that the prior season. Statistically the worst Rice football team of all time.

It does suck that some of the guys that were positioned to be team leaders are not involved in spring practice and potentially ruled out for next year. However, we are in the worst conference ever and the eye test from last year would tell you that we should be at a minimum competitive in said conference even with these losses of key players. So winning 3-5 games isn't some Herculean effort at this point. If we find ourselves in November 2019 and Bloomgren is over there clapping along to his 3rd conference victory, then we can have a talk about Indians and arrows and whatnot.

All of these player losses are going to hurt in a big way. There is no getting around this.

However, something tells me that even with the attrition, we won't see Bloomgren's team pull a Nicholls State. That said, I also don't think we will see Bloomgren get a road win in a place like Hattiesburg in his first campaign. Bloomgren's teams will be more consistent, and that consistency will build to something sustainable. It has to.

I think... we will still get four wins in 2018 in football. There are obviously some games where getting a win will be impossible, but I think steady improvement from week to week will be readily apparent.

I'm ready for those of us who liked the Bloomgren hire to be proven wrong, because after all, this is Rice. But I don't think we will be.

(03-20-2018 04:07 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(03-20-2018 04:00 PM)wrysal Wrote:  Take a 1-11 team, remove the ten or so best players from that team (seniors, transfers and medical, etc.) and what have you got left? Bare cupboard, meet Bloomgren.

isn't this what a coach is supposed to do? Make lemonade from lemons and pull it out of a bare cupboard? Make his team play above their talent? isn't all this what Bailiff failed to do?
If Bloom is half the coach people think he is, we still have a decent year. If not, then fire him after one year and get on to the next young hungry assistant.
Anyway, seniors leaving, people unable to overcome injuries, even transfers is part of the landscape in college ball.
Everybody settle down, and let Bloom do his job.

Agree with the last, but questions about what led up to it.

At Rice, yes, unfortunately a coach does have to get his team to perform above the levels of their individual talents. The whole has to be greater than the sum of the parts. That just comes with the territory. And yes, that is what Bailiff failed to do.

I would not fire him after one year, unless we find him banging a co-ed or something like that (which I certainly don't expect). I've said before, 4 years is a good time frame to evaluate and make that decision. I would have fired Bailiff after four (or 3 or 5, for that matter).

We will be however good we are going to be next year. What I expect to see is a team that is better organized, more disciplined, and more focused. I don't know how to describe those things to you, OO, and efforts over the years have failed, so I won't go into that here. It's like Potter Stewart said about porn, "I know it when I see it." If we do that, I expect the win total to rise, and possibly significantly. Yes we lost a lot of talent, but most of the people we play don't have much talent and aren't very well prepared. If we are better prepared, we will beat some of them, just like 2006.

But whatever the quantitative measure, I'm more interested in the qualitative. If the process looks like one that can succeed, I'm willing to wait it out. I never trusted Bailiff's process, so his successes always seemed the exception to me rather than the rule. They happened, but they didn't happen consistently. I hope and expect that changes with Bloomgren. If not, I hope it changes with his successor.

I expect Tyner to start unless one of the Frosh or the Vandy grad really grasps the new system. My retweet to Glynn was this news set it up for the newcomers since none of the returning QB’s would have a full spring learning the system. With Tyner we would have the most physical QB and with Stewart out we will need some ground help. I think Intellectual Brutality will need to apply at QB this year too.

Overall disappointed about those leaving and those medically DQ’ed but in the end it will get us to the type of team Bloom wants quicker...it may be more painful the first year but pay off sooner. I am looking for 3 wins, hoping for 4-5, but more importantly not having to listen to the non-Rice announcers making jokes about the team or quality of play.

Amazing. We are already turning to excuses before the first snap. Based on the comments I have heard on this board, it doesn't matter what problems a team has, the coach's job is overcome them.

Way too many of you turned, by habit I guess, to explaining how Bailiff is worse than Bloom. Well, Bailiff is gone.

My only concern is the 2018 version of the Rice Owls. Too bad players X, Y, and Z won't be here. It is his job to get players A to W to perform at a level that produces wins. it is his job to put together players A thru W in to a team that wins. No excuses.

Judging from the comments here, he has a pretty low bar to clear.

I have no expectations of him taking us to the moon. But I do have hopes that he can make whatever players he has win at a greater rate than expected. I have hopes we will have less penalties from the players we have, less missed assignments, less dropped balls, etc. I have hopes that we will go into the last two minutes of every half with three TOs available. So far, just hopes, but come this fall, we shall see.

The one year comment was because some of you have made a point about posting every time some other school fires its coach after two or less years, the point being that we should be quicker on the trigger. Personally I think four years, plus or minus one, is a reasonable time to determine if the coach can do the job. But if you are one of the quick trigger advocates, can you keep your mouth shut if we go 0-13? 1-12? Or will you be making excuses, oh, he had the best players leave?

Save the excuses for after failure. Personally, I expect to see success. Because I think Bloom can do the job without the graduated seniors et al. It's his job. He took it on that basis. Sorry the rest of you lack the confidence to expect him to do well.

(03-20-2018 03:37 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  2-11 seems about right for 2018.

As long as we can continue to double our win total each year for four years, I could be ok with that.

I predict to be ranked in the top 25 NLT December 31, 2020. You heard it here.

Well remember that goldsmith had an awful first year and you started feeling positive towards the end of that season......

I remember back in about 1968 or so, both Bo Hagan and Don Knodel had been head coaches for a couple of years, and neither had experienced a winning season. A friend made the comment, “Neither of them has won yet, but you get the impression that Knodel will but Bo never will.” The reason: He could see a process taking shape under Knodel, but not under Bo. Knodel won the SWC and followed that with another winning record before things fell apart for reasons not worth discussing here. Hagan never had a winning record. Maybe Knodel wasn’t that much better, but watching him you just got the idea that his process was better.

Similarly, when Fred replaced Berndt, you got the idea that the process was better, and improvement followed. He had a clear philosophy—play sound defense, win the kicking game, and have a quarterback, and you can win any game—and he made that work. We knew what Ken’s philosophy was—do something different and make it hard for teams to prepare for you. He made that work—at least until his teams quit playing defense. You could see those philosophies in action and producing results. I never really figured out what David was trying to do. I don’t see how you mix a conservative game plan with bad defense and kicking games. I think the ultimate plan was to out-recruit people and out-athlete them. Given Rice’s academic requirements, I just don’t see how that works ever.

Bloomgren has already given us hisphilosophy—pound the rock, run the clock, and play great defense. What I want to see is the process in place to implement that strategy. If I see that, then I will trust the process. If that happens then I expect an uptick in wins. But to me the process is more important than the record, especially in the first couple of years. If a Rice team can go 60 minutes without a WTF are they trying to do moment, that will be significant improvement. When we do, we will win that game.

I repeat, it’s like Potter Stewart and porn. I’ll know it when I see it.