AgDad121619 said:
Divining Rod said:
AgDad121619 said:
The mental gymnastics folks go through to try to say Sherman was better than Sumlin is bizarre. Sherman was 25-25 against big 12 competition - Sumlin was 51-26 against sec. How can you make the statement he was best coach in the 21st century with a straight face?
Sumlin was 17-19 in SEC after that frst year (6-2) with Johnny and a team Sherman built. His teams got progressively worse despite the early momentum.
Sherman took over a team in disarray and improved it every year (yes, even his last year team was better than 2010, but lost a lot of close games late).
I'm glad to see Sherman getting hus due here- I always maintained he was a good program builder. His weakness though was in-game management, no doubt.
What he did with Tech though was glorious! Leach had our number bad, and Sherman completely dominated their attack his last three years, going 2-0 in Lubbock with a 22 pt win at Tech in Leach's last yr (2009), an 18 pt win at Kyle in 2010 and a 5 pt win in Lunnock in 2011.
Also, Arkansas showed how far we came. in 2009 (start of series) Ark dominated 47-19 and Sherm said hiw we needed to get bigger and tougher to match up w SEC caliber. in 2010 we lost 24-17 in a competitive game. Next yr iur 14th ranked team lost to their 18th 42-38 in a game we dominated in the first half. again poor game mgmt in 2nd half. But the transformation of the team was apparent and the next yr under Sumlin we crushed them at Kyle 58-10.
sherman was 9-16 in the big 12 if you remove his one 6-2 season and 15-18 if you include his greatest season. He was a good offensive talent analyzer but he was an average HC at best. It was time to move on from Sumlin but it is asinine to say Sherman was a better HC. Sumlin took Sherman's 6-7 Big 12 team with an NFL QB to 11-2 in the SEC with a fish QB. The 2011 season was one of the worst wastes of talent of any team since 1988.
Sherman inherited a ****ty program from Fran. Sumlin inherited an offense made up of future first round draft picks at almost every position and an experienced defense full of upperclassmen.
Sherman's 6-7 big 12 team had a much harder schedule than 2012. In 2011 we played 5 teams that finished with 10+ wins, OU, OSU, Arkansas, KSU, and Baylor. tu and Missouri both finished with 8 wins. In 2011, the only great teams we played were Florida, Bama, and LSU. MSU finished with 8 wins, but Auburn, Arkansas, and Ole Miss all had losing seasons. We also played 2 FCS teams because of scheduling. It was not the gauntlet it was made out to be after Petrino got fired and Chizik lost Cam. Sherman could have slept his way to the same record.
And Sumlin was never even close to repeating that season. As Sherman's experienced talent left, Sumlin couldn't make up for it. He could recruit stars, but he couldn't develop and couldn't game manage. Hell, he couldn't even locker room manage.
Sherman was absolutely a better head coach considering where the team was when he got here versus what he left and the same for Sumlin.