This is like praising a 10-year-old who’s been having accidents at school. A week goes by with no accidents, and that’s great. But it doesn’t make the kid some sort of potty wizard
Is it Fitz or JON? Give credit either way, but don't burden Fitz with also having to be the defensive coach.
Fitz has to do what he has to do to make the team work. I'd imagine Fitz was involved at some level, but regardless he's responsible as HC.
Based on the way the team played today, they could go bowling, or more. However, they sure got a lot of yards on penalties today. Likely not going to get this going forward. UNLESS, the penalties were because our offensive play was such that we could not be stopped without penalties.
From the comments Fitz made to Dave Eanet in the pregame interview today it sounds like he got personally and extensively involved in the defense planning and coaching over the last two weeks.
I'm still in this camp. He got around to doing what Ryan Day did after a single loss. Perhaps I'm wrong and really IDC along as we don't suck. RU is not UM but probably as good as Duke. We played well against a mediocre opponent, which we didn't do against Duke or Nebraska (fka best 4 loss team in country , nka best 5 Los team)
Congratulations? Whoa.
The players met with Fitz and he promised to get new scheme as reported by parent on FB.
And if anyone knows experiments into madness, it would be you. And that is not exactly a compliment to JON.
Thank you for providing the report from Mr. Wildcat. My ignorant eyes watch the ball too much to know what happened yesterday, but I am smart enough to notice guys getting to the ball more quickly.
The first five games were just a ploy to catch the rest of the teams on our schedule off guard.
Sort of like how we used to give up an early score to get them lulled to sleep then come back. This year we tried giving up 3-4 scores then come back. Didn't work
Hey, the cats won! Not sure who is more miserable of a person, you or willycat.
As mentioned by Fitz and others there are 3 assistant coaches to call upon with extensive experience in Hank's defense.
Ah, the bliss of madness. Who is not enjoying the win? And that Fitz is getting to the root of the defensive problem.
All the more reason Fitz should have promoted one of them to DC instead of bringing in an outsider with very questionable credentials to begin with.
We don't get to make those decisions. Fitz is the CEO of the operation and "in Fitz I trust." There are components of the 42☆ that Fitz wanted installed to make us more diverse and more aggressive on D. It was always intended to be a blend of old and new. I'm as unhappy about MSU, DUKE, & UNL as anybody, but as I have said the players and coaches would figure it out and they did. Now get better fast. Tough games coming up.
I hope that you are right and that JON is the man for the job. However, the disastrous start and the fact that Fitz had to finally get personally involved in order to straighten things out is still a matter of concern.
Fitz was not going to figure anything out. A group of players finally stood up after being thoroughly embarrassed on the field thru JONs madness. Fitz heard them out and the handwriting was on the wall,ie., either support the players and internal problems go away, or support JON and his madness and a handful of players would most likely exit.
Yeah, it looks like a Ryan Day/Kerry Coombs situation to me, but, you know Fitz. He'll take that to his grave. My memory sucks, but wasn't Jerry Brown a failure at DC, then was promoted to assistant head coach and DB coach and basically started the Sky Team, so to speak? I just remember him being the subject of heavy criticism, and then remember him dancing in the locker room with the kids after a big win.
Brown ended up with a good overall defensive coordinator in Hankwitz and started getting more talented players during his last few seasons as a DB coach. Amazing how good players can make a coach look good.
Don't you think Fitz was embarrassed about the Nebraska game, too? I'm sure he heard the players out, but I doubt that's the only reason we saw changes on D against Rutgers.
There was a PI called that was questionable but there were also at least a couple that were glaring and not called. O is still a work in progress. Right side of OL still weak and we had plenty of penatlies called on us as well
You are choosing Turk's opinion? Where did I say I did not enjoy the win? Keep in mind he came down hard on JON when the defense was tanking. Suddenly, defense (seemingly) okay, JON no problem? I don't know where the problem has been, but most signs point to coaching. At least someone is addressing this.
Of course i came down hard on jon. Why wouldnt anyone. Even the players had it with his pop warner setup. Thankfully some players stopped the madness since Fitz didnt have the guts. Without the meeting, Fitz would have not changed a thing and rutgers would have scored 40.
From what we've observed about Fitz, Turk's observation is a reasonable hypothesis, although perhaps a bit extreme. These are my opinions: 1) Fitz is stubborn. If you disagree, you can ignore the rest of the post. 2) He hired JON because he knows and trusts him, despite his checkered past performance. 3) Our defense against P5 opponents, two of which are terrible teams, was the arguably the worst Fitz's tenure. 4) Some of the poor performance can be attributed to new people, some can be attributed to the scheme being new, and, IMHO, a large portion can be attributed to casual observation that the new scheme just hasn't worked - here or anywhere - prior to this. 5) There was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the pitchfork populace (us and others like us - the handful of NU fans that actually give a sh1te). 6) Fitz doubles down, as he always does, with 'my emails is hashtag i don't care' 7) some player representatives approach him with their concerns, and unlike us weirdos, he actually listens to them 8) Fitz does a Ryan Day/Kerry Coombs thing, under the radar and 4 weeks late.
So you're combative only after a loss? History (Oh, that's right history only exists to the degree you say it does) says otherwise. Look back to the beginning of time, say 1995, at your own history of combativeness, after wins.