HELL YES it is fair, how long would Saban take to turn this around? This is not Texas state, this is Texas - you have some of the best talent around, but if you can't coach em up, or teach them how to win, go back to a mid tier school you have peaked, welcome to the Peter Principle. Good bye Charlie, you are just not a good enough coach. DD
Going into this weekend, 10 of the Top 25 teams have new coaches in their 3rd year or less, 6 of them have their team in the Top 10.
As I've said before, I really, really like Charlie Strong the person and was rooting hard for him to succeed. He did do a good job on cleaning up the program and "hitting the reset button" after the disastrous last few years of Mack, but it's time to move on. He'll get another shot somewhere soon and I hope he's learned a thing or 2 and wish him well. It was about time. He's been by far the most disappointing individual player this year given the expectations. Not sure why, but he doesn't show the same effort/aggressiveness.
Our 3 best freshmen defenders from last year have all been benched. Not sure what's going on but hard to imagine all 3 having taken such a big step backwards. Why they're getting benched while Haines and Bonny are still playing blows my mind. Boyd shoes flashes but has been really inconsistent. But Malik is still playing out of position IMO. Use his athleticism to rush like they're doing with Hager and think he improves dramatically. Gotta find ways to get your best players on the field and in position to make plays.
Not sure why Hager gets so much love from the coaching staff and fans. I like that he plays hard, but he has no discipline or fundamentals and thus is rarely in position to make a play. He has absolutely no run-stopping ability.
Who are you expecting? There will be a lot of open positions. It's definelty the worst year to look for a head coach. I think people were dissusional last time and banking on getting Nick Saban which was never remotely on the table. That's why we were stuck with strong. All the other "big" coaches were more interested in getting raises from the current schools. I don't know how UT plans to attract a big time coach when they don't have an AD. Who would take a job before they knew who their boss was that had very little job security after firing a coach after 3 years and one of the most suessfuk coaches in the previous 20 years before that. I'm not saying I would keep Charlie. I never liked the hire, the way he coached, the coordinators he hired, the fact he fired Duana Akina, the fact he only played lower class man which is why we are in the situation we are in today IMO. I was just blown away by his last cycle of recruiting and hoped he could get the right coaches here to make the team great but he just doesn't have the right instincts. We don't need a coach that gets to the weight room at 5AM or one that tries to run after school specials. I wish this would make people appreciate Mack a little more but i doubt it. Local sports guys say he still wants to coach and he could end up back at North Carolina.
My guess is that it's because he's a real coach's son, first one in, last one out type of player who always hits at pad level and has an incredible motor.
Disagree. Last year was considerably worse IMO. Obviously it's still early but don't think we'll see the nearly the number of big openings we did last year. But even if can't expect a "big" coach, don't think we should settle with Miles whose team is playing exponentially better after his departure. Miles is a great recruiter but like we've seen with Strong at Texas so far, in-game coaching hasn't been good. Don't think we need more of the same.
Any reason as to why? No. I'm not trolling. Why the hell would I be? And what have those other coaches done that I quoted in my post? None of them have achieved a damn thing worth mentioning. You can say Les Miles won a National Championship with Nick Saban's players and even that is better than anything any of those coaches on that list have accomplished.
I said y'all shouldn't fire him and you guys ATE me for it. Not because he shouldn't have eventually been replaced, but because there weren't great surefire options on the table. For all his faults, Mack Brown was still a capable CEO. I also would have thought the Muschamp scenario would have been great, but I would have been WRONG.
At the time there was a chance the Horns could've landed Saban. They f'd that whole situation up. I still believe some of these Texas insiders that said Saban wanted to come here and that it wasn't just a ploy to get more money from Alabama.
You could say the same thing about bringing Mack back as well. Yet for everything he accomplished, his name hasn't been seriously mentioned despite a dozen or so jobs up for grabs every year. I do think Les gets another shot somewhere but don't think he'd be the right guy for UT.
I'd honestly welcome Mack back. After going through these last 3 seasons now with Charlie Strong, I won't ever take it for granted how bad a team can look. I thought the latter part of years with Mack were bad, but he at least had some credibility and probably could've turned it around in due time. I'm not sure I'd put any faith in Charlie ever turning this around. Everyone says Charlie should be given 4 full seasons, but I'm just not seeing any improvement at all to give him that 4th year. In fact the Horns might even be worse this season than the last two seasons combined if you take out that Notre Dame game in the beginning of the season (which I credit Sterling with more so than Strong). I'd be OK with Les because he has experience. He can also recruit really well. He'd be coming in from the SEC which is a defensive battle (at least among the best teams) to the Big 12 which is more of an offensive battle. He's an offensive minded head coach that really never did well with developing QBs. But I think he could do some good things with Buechele. Tom Herman seems to be the obvious choice for everyone, but aside from beating a weak OU team and a somewhat weak FSU team last season, he hasn't proven anything else at the HC level. I'll be interested to see if UH beats Louisville later in the season. Another name that kind of intrigues me a bit is Mark Dantonio. He's been at Michigan St. for a while now, and he's had great success there. I think with a program like Texas that has unlimited resources and a capability of getting better recruits this is somewhere he could flourish. Now granted, he also has never taken the 'next step' with Michigan St. But that's someone I'd take a chance on.
