Again, same for all coaches because when it doesn't work that's the complaint.
Ask Bama fans about their complaints about Saban and see if they claim he's making the same mistakes--hint they will say that
Stating facts isn't an excuse. No coach is perfect. Fitzgerald isn't Saban or Smart or Meyer. He's the best thing that ever happened to Northwestern football (arguably twice) and a great coach. We'll see how he does at Michigan State over the next 3 years and where he goes from there. He's probably got 20 years left in his career--maybe more.
C'mon - Pat isn't even close to being anywhere near the level of coach that Saban is, and Saban, while he certainly made mistakes from time to time, didn't make completely bone-headed ones, much less repeat them.
Saban, like his good pal, Belichick, are known for being the masters of attacking the opponents weak spots.
You can take it to the bank that they both would have attacked Army's weak spot (the secondary) instead of trying to beat the strength of Army's D (stopping the run), and one can be equally sure neither would keep making the same mistake over and over and over again.
Speaking of Saban, unlike Pat, Saban changed how he did things as the game changed.
Saban saw the game changing and that he could no longer win with a strong D and playing conservatively on O, which is why he brought in offensive masterminds like Kiffin and Sark.
Ironically Northwestern was on the cutting edge, being one of the earliest programs to use the spread O.
A certain someone by the name of
Chip Kelly (then an assistant at UNH) visited Evanston to learn NU's version of the spread option (run by
Kevin Wilson, who would later become the OC at Oklahoma, then HC at Indiana, then OC at dOSU).
Kelly had UNH's QB at the time learn the terminology, etc. - someone by the name of
Ryan Day.
Another person, by the name of
Urban Meyer (at the time, HC at Bowling Green) also visited Evanston to learn the spread O, and would go on to use with (with some variation) at Utah, Florida and finally dOSU.
Hence, the circle of life with
Day, Kelly and Wilson all having landed at dOSU at a certain point.
The irony is that a few years later, Kelly, then HC of UNH, would use that very same O to
beat the Cats now coached by someone by the name of
Pat Fitzgerald who had abandoned the spread option, with the Cats only being able to muster 17 points compared to the 34 pts that UNH ran up.
There were some good QBs like Dan Persa, Mike Kafka (now, interim HC of the NY Giants) in his senior year and Trevor Siemian - who managed to cover for insipid scheme and playing calling by long NU OC (under Pat), McCall.
Whenever Persa and Kafka were asked about how they managed to improve as QBs, they spoke glowingly of former NU QB (and then backup QBs for the Bears),
Brett Basanez, who had run the spread Of under Walker
Baz would run training sessions with Persa and Kafka during the off season.
Not once did Persa or Kafka ever mention their OC, McCall.
The O was stale and predictable under McCall (kinda like the Steelers O under Canada), and it continued to get progressively worse over the years, where the program started to have trouble recruiting good QBs (nevermind WRs) where it started to rely on the transfer portal to very mixed success.
That's it.
