(09-20-2021 11:52 AM)Dog Fan Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:46 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  Progress isn’t linear so I’m still on board and expect good things down the road. But if you’re honest you gave Hammock at best a C- so far. Last year and last week were all-time lows for the program. Coaching has been questionable at times to say the least. And I’ll buy some of the youth excuse on defense(though Kramer and Heflin were both major contributors in their second seasons. You saw they were good immediately while Hammocks Tackles haven’t shown much in their 2nd or 3rd year so far). But on offense…there’s veterans all over and they better light it up starting next week.

Again, I see a coaching issue here. We all know about the debacle on defense. But, for the life of me, I do not understand why the offensive coaches don’t open up the pass at least to give the defense something to worry about. Will we see loaded boxes from here on out because of our unwillingness to vary the offense?

I think he’s really hung up on this “we are tougher than you” mentality. It worked at GT and he believes it now. When you read his quotes it’s always about toughness. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes that’s bad. A coach needs to be flexible. It was one of the worst things about Carey. Pig(dog)headed.

(09-20-2021 11:32 AM)NorthCoast Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 10:53 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  The progress bar should be based on where the team should be three years into a regime. Not just relative to last year.. Going 0-6 in the MAC is absolutely rock bottom bad and inexcusable. If you should be three steps forward in year 3 you don’t get to say 1 step forward in year three is good because you went 2 steps back in year 2. Progress is where the team is now relative to when you started. As I said before: is the 2019 squad worse-equal-better. That’s your progress.

Everyone is considering progress to be this squads potential next year or in 2023. And that’s all hypothetical today.

**DING** **DING** **DING**

This is absolutely correct, and especially because ‘last year’ was an unprecedented COVID year; regardless of what Captain Strawman tries to convince everyone of otherwise.

There could have been no COVID last year and they still would have been horrid lol

(09-20-2021 11:52 AM)Dog Fan Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:46 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  Progress isn’t linear so I’m still on board and expect good things down the road. But if you’re honest you gave Hammock at best a C- so far. Last year and last week were all-time lows for the program. Coaching has been questionable at times to say the least. And I’ll buy some of the youth excuse on defense(though Kramer and Heflin were both major contributors in their second seasons. You saw they were good immediately while Hammocks Tackles haven’t shown much in their 2nd or 3rd year so far). But on offense…there’s veterans all over and they better light it up starting next week.

Again, I see a coaching issue here. We all know about the debacle on defense. But, for the life of me, I do not understand why the offensive coaches don’t open up the pass at least to give the defense something to worry about. Will we see loaded boxes from here on out because of our unwillingness to vary the offense?

I would think any team would just stack the box and force us to throw. We're not consistent enough in the passing game to make that a huge concern.

(09-20-2021 12:14 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:52 AM)Dog Fan Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:46 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  Progress isn’t linear so I’m still on board and expect good things down the road. But if you’re honest you gave Hammock at best a C- so far. Last year and last week were all-time lows for the program. Coaching has been questionable at times to say the least. And I’ll buy some of the youth excuse on defense(though Kramer and Heflin were both major contributors in their second seasons. You saw they were good immediately while Hammocks Tackles haven’t shown much in their 2nd or 3rd year so far). But on offense…there’s veterans all over and they better light it up starting next week.

Again, I see a coaching issue here. We all know about the debacle on defense. But, for the life of me, I do not understand why the offensive coaches don’t open up the pass at least to give the defense something to worry about. Will we see loaded boxes from here on out because of our unwillingness to vary the offense?

I would think any team would just stack the box and force us to throw. We're not consistent enough in the passing game to make that a huge concern.

My concern is that even with a stacked box, we will continue to run.

(09-20-2021 12:28 PM)Dog Fan Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 12:14 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:52 AM)Dog Fan Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:46 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  Progress isn’t linear so I’m still on board and expect good things down the road. But if you’re honest you gave Hammock at best a C- so far. Last year and last week were all-time lows for the program. Coaching has been questionable at times to say the least. And I’ll buy some of the youth excuse on defense(though Kramer and Heflin were both major contributors in their second seasons. You saw they were good immediately while Hammocks Tackles haven’t shown much in their 2nd or 3rd year so far). But on offense…there’s veterans all over and they better light it up starting next week.

Again, I see a coaching issue here. We all know about the debacle on defense. But, for the life of me, I do not understand why the offensive coaches don’t open up the pass at least to give the defense something to worry about. Will we see loaded boxes from here on out because of our unwillingness to vary the offense?

I would think any team would just stack the box and force us to throw. We're not consistent enough in the passing game to make that a huge concern.

My concern is that even with a stacked box, we will continue to run.

Yea that is a concern.

Does anybody else think we need a dual option QB? I think it tends to cancel out some of the other team's advantages when they have to worry about the QB running and wondering who has the ball. Lombardi is somewhat mobile but we haven't had anybody that could really run since Lynch. Maybe Hare. At least, not anyone that could pass. At a minimum, we need to make the handoffs good so that it's hard to tell right away who has the ball.

So here’s my thing with Hammock:

In an ideal world, should NIU have needed to hit reset on the program and bottom out and rebuild from scratch? The answer to this is of course not. I think if you go back to the fire Rod Carey threads, I repeatedly said the risk of changing coaches was there’s always a chance you either A. Completely swing and miss or B. Bring in a coach who wants to more or less reset the program. Hammock came in and completely Fleck’d the program and decided to build it from the ground up.

They were a better team in 2019 than 5-7. With that defense, they should have been able to at least make a bowl. The Ball State and EMU games (two teams Carey never lost to) in particular that year are games they lost they should have won. You can probably throw Vandy in there too.

Then they completely just blew everything up and went young last year. Starting from 0.

This year, they’ve played 3 games.

Georgia Tech: boneyard win at an ACC team. A great moment for the program. Georgia Tech followed it up with a win against FCS and played Clemson(!!) tough and lost 14-8.

Wyoming: Battled and lost 50-43 to a Wyoming team who is now 3-0 and just beat the tar out of Ball State on Saturday.

Michigan: call it what is, a total embarrassment. They just didn’t show up and the coaching staff coached like a team who they know had no shot. There’s no excuses for that and they need to get better.

They’ll play Maine this weekend and despite some hysteria on here I imagine they’ll handle business. So having played Georgia Tech, Wyoming, Michigan, and Maine OOC they’ll be 2-2, which is a totally acceptable result for just about any NIU team.

They have real concerns on defense and that’s probably why they’re a year away from being a legit contender in the MAC. On the flip side, they just played two P5 teams and Wyoming and as a team they’re averaging 5 YPC. Even the Lynch teams struggled to run the ball against P5 teams. The offense is likely going to be very good and should also help to (hopefully) mask some of the defensive struggles.

If we’re sitting here two months from now and NIU is 3-9 and people want to freak out, I’ll understand it. While there’s certainly some valid concerns about the defense overall they’re pretty much where you would expect them to be coming off last year.

Like I said earlier, the EMU game is going to be a really good test of whether this team can actually compete for the West this year of if we’re playing for a bowl game at best.

(09-20-2021 12:10 PM)7 Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 11:32 AM)NorthCoast Wrote:  

(09-20-2021 10:53 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  The progress bar should be based on where the team should be three years into a regime. Not just relative to last year.. Going 0-6 in the MAC is absolutely rock bottom bad and inexcusable. If you should be three steps forward in year 3 you don’t get to say 1 step forward in year three is good because you went 2 steps back in year 2. Progress is where the team is now relative to when you started. As I said before: is the 2019 squad worse-equal-better. That’s your progress.

Everyone is considering progress to be this squads potential next year or in 2023. And that’s all hypothetical today.

**DING** **DING** **DING**

This is absolutely correct, and especially because ‘last year’ was an unprecedented COVID year; regardless of what Captain Strawman tries to convince everyone of otherwise.

There could have been no COVID last year and they still would have been horrid lol

CORRECTION: Princess Strawman making my point.

(09-20-2021 12:38 PM)7 Wrote:  So here’s my thing with Hammock:

In an ideal world, should NIU have needed to hit reset on the program and bottom out and rebuild from scratch? The answer to this is of course not. I think if you go back to the fire Rod Carey threads, I repeatedly said the risk of changing coaches was there’s always a chance you either A. Completely swing and miss or B. Bring in a coach who wants to more or less reset the program. Hammock came in and completely Fleck’d the program and decided to build it from the ground up.

They were a better team in 2019 than 5-7. With that defense, they should have been able to at least make a bowl. The Ball State and EMU games (two teams Carey never lost to) in particular that year are games they lost they should have won. You can probably throw Vandy in there too.

Then they completely just blew everything up and went young last year. Starting from 0.

This year, they’ve played 3 games.

Georgia Tech: boneyard win at an ACC team. A great moment for the program. Georgia Tech followed it up with a win against FCS and played Clemson(!!) tough and lost 14-8.

Wyoming: Battled and lost 50-43 to a Wyoming team who is now 3-0 and just beat the tar out of Ball State on Saturday.

Michigan: call it what is, a total embarrassment. They just didn’t show up and the coaching staff coached like a team who they know had no shot. There’s no excuses for that and they need to get better.

They’ll play Maine this weekend and despite some hysteria on here I imagine they’ll handle business. So having played Georgia Tech, Wyoming, Michigan, and Maine OOC they’ll be 2-2, which is a totally acceptable result for just about any NIU team.

They have real concerns on defense and that’s probably why they’re a year away from being a legit contender in the MAC. On the flip side, they just played two P5 teams and Wyoming and as a team they’re averaging 5 YPC. Even the Lynch teams struggled to run the ball against P5 teams. The offense is likely going to be very good and should also help to (hopefully) mask some of the defensive struggles.

If we’re sitting here two months from now and NIU is 3-9 and people want to freak out, I’ll understand it. While there’s certainly some valid concerns about the defense overall they’re pretty much where you would expect them to be coming off last year.

Like I said earlier, the EMU game is going to be a really good test of whether this team can actually compete for the West this year of if we’re playing for a bowl game at best.

That’s all pretty fair 7. But my concern that is growing is less about the players and more about the coaches. They coaching wasn’t great in 2019(the missed wins you listed). Way worse in 2020. And they’re off to more bad than good in 21. Youth gets older. Hopefully bad coaching gets better. It’s all about Mac play now.

(09-20-2021 12:38 PM)7 Wrote:  So here’s my thing with Hammock:

In an ideal world, should NIU have needed to hit reset on the program and bottom out and rebuild from scratch? The answer to this is of course not. I think if you go back to the fire Rod Carey threads, I repeatedly said the risk of changing coaches was there’s always a chance you either A. Completely swing and miss or B. Bring in a coach who wants to more or less reset the program. Hammock came in and completely Fleck’d the program and decided to build it from the ground up.

They were a better team in 2019 than 5-7. With that defense, they should have been able to at least make a bowl. The Ball State and EMU games (two teams Carey never lost to) in particular that year are games they lost they should have won. You can probably throw Vandy in there too.

Then they completely just blew everything up and went young last year. Starting from 0.

This year, they’ve played 3 games.

Georgia Tech: boneyard win at an ACC team. A great moment for the program. Georgia Tech followed it up with a win against FCS and played Clemson(!!) tough and lost 14-8.

Wyoming: Battled and lost 50-43 to a Wyoming team who is now 3-0 and just beat the tar out of Ball State on Saturday.

Michigan: call it what is, a total embarrassment. They just didn’t show up and the coaching staff coached like a team who they know had no shot. There’s no excuses for that and they need to get better.

They’ll play Maine this weekend and despite some hysteria on here I imagine they’ll handle business. So having played Georgia Tech, Wyoming, Michigan, and Maine OOC they’ll be 2-2, which is a totally acceptable result for just about any NIU team.

They have real concerns on defense and that’s probably why they’re a year away from being a legit contender in the MAC. On the flip side, they just played two P5 teams and Wyoming and as a team they’re averaging 5 YPC. Even the Lynch teams struggled to run the ball against P5 teams. The offense is likely going to be very good and should also help to (hopefully) mask some of the defensive struggles.

If we’re sitting here two months from now and NIU is 3-9 and people want to freak out, I’ll understand it. While there’s certainly some valid concerns about the defense overall they’re pretty much where you would expect them to be coming off last year.

Like I said earlier, the EMU game is going to be a really good test of whether this team can actually compete for the West this year of if we’re playing for a bowl game at best.

I think this is a pretty solid take overall. I also agree with your assessment of 2019. The Carey regime would have run their predictable QB draws with Childers and won 7 or 8 games and contended for the MAC championship with that team. Not that I pine for Carey since he's on his way to getting canned at Temple, but that team could have done better. The current coaching staff has definitely been on a learning curve. Before the season I said realistic progress would look like 1 - 3 nonconference and 4 - 4 conference with no blowouts by MAC opponents (see CMU in 2019 and 2020). Hopefully they can meet or exceed that standard.

(09-20-2021 11:46 AM)Rabid Squirrel Wrote:  Progress isn’t linear so I’m still on board and expect good things down the road. But if you’re honest you gave Hammock at best a C- so far. Last year and last week were all-time lows for the program. Coaching has been questionable at times to say the least. And I’ll buy some of the youth excuse on defense(though Kramer and Heflin were both major contributors in their second seasons. You saw they were good immediately while Hammocks Tackles haven’t shown much in their 2nd or 3rd year so far). But on offense…there’s veterans all over and they better light it up starting next week.

People here are unrealistic.

Even after playing our FCS opponent, Sagarin still has our SOS ranked 22nd.

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm