Hubert J. Farnsworth said:
His coordinator hires. Bateman was a failed defensive coordinator that was back coaching linebackers when he was hired. He may be running an Elko defense, but he isn't Mike Elko. I have a little more sympathy with Elko taking a chance with Klein. He seemed like an up and comer that had shown 2 years of efficient offenses at Kansas State with 2 different offenses that took advantage of his teams strengths. Unfortunately, he changed nothing here. This years offense looked like Jimbo 2.0.
Teams figured something out about us down the stretch and this team could not adjust. That's on Elko.
Recruiting is not at the level of the big dogs. It's a nice class but isn't on par with the elite teams we hope to be on the level with. The o-line recruiting is especially weak.
The regression after the LSU game. I saw a team that was getting better week to week until the LSU game. Afterwards, they looked like a much worse team. They had everything to play for and they looked totally unmotivated. Thats on Elko.
The bad first half's. I know we all love to talk about Elko's halftime adjustments, but why can't we just come out with a good game plan in the first half?
I'm going to hold the line on Elko and Klein. I hate the results from last night and am not at all about "moral victories", but we were one of three teams in the SEC in contention for the championship game last night. That's a better result than DeBoer achieved, than Kiffin achieved, than Heupel achieved, or than Kelly achieved.
I hate to say it, but Texas has shown us the model in Sark. He went 5-7 his first season, and he had all kinds of stink of failure on him from his past. The man had never had success as a head coach before Texas hired him. But they stuck with him and invested in him and supported him instead of imagining that the grass is greener elsewhere and thinking that they could find just one crazy trick to win a championship.
As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on Klein. He lost his two biggest weapons that he started the season with in Weigman's flameout and Moss's injury. I respect that he is trying to establish an actual identity for this team as a physical, run-first, power football team. It's not his fault that we don't have the personal to credibility threaten downfield or the talent at running back to impose that on the defense. To everyone saying that you just "adjust" -- you can quibble over this or that play call, but whatever it's going to be it's going to be within the boundaries of that identity, and it's probably going to lead to the same results because we don't yet have the personnel to execute on that. If you think we should have tried to make a total shift in our teams identity, you still run into the personnel problem of our QB, receivers, and running backs (after Moss) being mid-shelf or situational at best. If we had had the pre-injury Weigman and a healthy Moss all year, then everyone here would be all over the Klein love train, because I can promise you we would have had a different set of results.
Now where I'll grant the criticism is of Bateman. You could see that the scheme was there in that our players were *frequently* in position to make the play, but the coaching clearly wasn't because they could never get their man to the ground. Look at how much *better* Scooby Williams was for us than he had been for Florida when he was being coached directly by Bateman! It's unfortunate that we couldn't get anyone better last winter. I hope that Elko takes the opportunity to make an upgrade and that the powers that be give him the support to allow him to do so.
