Exactly. You're proving my point. Lane Kiffin had some baggage too back when we could have hired him. Then Mississippi hired him a year later and it's working out pretty well for them. Good coaches are always out there. And some of them will be glad to take our job if we'll just not settle for the easy hire.
If Lebby goes 5-7, which naysayers will admit
- Thread starter paindonthurt
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The days of hiring a sitting HC for $5 million are gone. If we are paying Lebby $4.5 million plus incentives this year and he goes 4-8 or worse, we can offer and get a sitting HC for 2026 for $7.5 million. If the Admin is not willing to pay that, then we need to accept bottom 4 SEC for eternity!
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But any of them could have failed. You only have the benefit of hindsight to say they didn't fail.
Do you realize how many idiots wanted Sherrill fired in 1993, 95, 96. Heck in 1997 there were morons yelling in the stands.
Same with Mullen.
YOU DO NOT KNOW IF LEBBY IS A GOOD COACH OR NOT.
The days of hiring a sitting HC for $5 million are gone. If we are paying Lebby $4.5 million plus incentives this year and he goes 4-8 or worse, we can offer and get a sitting HC for 2026 for $7.5 million. If the Admin is not willing to pay that, then we need to accept bottom 4 SEC for eternity
You think you have a good idea. You may be right.
And to be clear, i'm not saying lebby is or isn't a good coach. I have seen things with the offense that tells me he knows what he is doing. Obviously the defense look horrendous but WE HAD ZERO TALENT. Nick Saban wouldn't have done MUCH (capitalized so some of you will see it) better with our talent last year.
I do recall a specific play either last year or the year before where we had 2 lineman pull the opposite direction and almost hit each other (now that i think about it it was 2 years ago for sure under arnett). I pointed out on that play we had one guy to block and we make a big play. You argued with me. I showed the video evidence and then you quit replying.
I'm hard headed about stuff but you definitely are.
What in the hell are you talking about? You could say "if we block that one guy we make a big play" probably 20 times every game. So what? You didn't make the block. Either you just aren't good enough, or you're not coached good enough, or both. In our case, mostly both. Again, I hope I'm wrong and Lebby shows he is a good coach. But I haven't seen anything from him from coaching on the field, to personnel decisions, to recruiting, to the way he runs the program to make me think he's a good coach right now.
We didn't make the block b/c the lineman went the wrong way. You argued that our line was just terrible. It wasn't. it was terribly coached though.
So which is it? Is Lebby a good coach with terrible players or a terrible coach with good players? Cause you're saying both in different posts. Or is he a just bad coach with bad players, which seems the simplest answer?
Leach was 11-2 and national COY in 2018. He was hired in 2020
And?
Timing was good and there was never going to be a big name school come after leach based on his age.
JWS was the persona non grata coach. Mike Leach was close to that, but we were also a good program at the time. Dan Mullen was a crapshoot that worked out. He did have a little better resume than Lebby, but he was not a sure thing.
The ship has now sailed on Rich Rodriguez, but he definitely would have been a better hire than who we chose in December 2022 or December 2023.
Lost in this thread of "he is he ain't" and comparing different eras is this: If Lebby goes 5-7, does that motivate the money guys and average fan to invest more in the program to help take Lebby's recruiting ceiling and potential assistants pool to the next level (consistent bowl eligibility)? If yes, we got ourselves a coach and a decent trajectory. If not, we will just be in limbo with nothing but more lame results, coach speak, and high roster turnover.
I think more importantly if he goes 5 and 7 or 6 and 6 it will show recruits that the program is rising out of the ashes. Very few kids look at a 2 win program and say boy that is the place I wanna go play ball. Losing is hard to sell. If Lebby cant get better players it's a sinking ship. This is the SEC and every season is brutal. I hope these guys are better than we all think. But I agree that there is no way you can honestly judge Hutzler because he had straight garbage esp on the DL. He may suck but we dont know yet.
Fully agree with the first half of this, but we know plenty about Hutzler from last season. To list a few...
Out of 133 FBS teams, he put the 125th ranked defense on the field. As in, there were 8 total teams in the country actually worse than our 456 yds/gm and nauseating 6.3 yds given up per play.
Then, if you're wondering whether he was at least remotely good at one part of the game, nope... he wasn't. 129th in rushing D and 104th in passing D, so we were god awful at both. Well, good gosh, did we at least get some turnovers? Nope, tied for 110th in the country with 12 total for the year.
How about some individual games to jog everyone's memories about how bad it was? 454 yards and 41 points to Toledo, 603 yards to Georgia, and 673 yards against.... Arkansas. Somehow, we actually continued to get worse as the season went on.
But what about recruiting? Lol, glad you asked. Two classes in, and we are going to have two starting CBs that wouldn't likely start for a G5 team. We have a patchwork D line that simply has to be better than last year, yet still one of the 2-3 worst in the conference from a sheer talent perspective. 2026? The class is nearly full, and our top defensive recruit is the 86th best player in the state of Georgia.
For those of y'all that aren't ready to close the book on Hutzler, fine. Let's see what happens this season because that's all that we can do. However, this is HIS defense now, and when it sucks donkey balls again this season, I'm done hearing the excuses
When all know the defensive performance was horrible. Our best 2 DL was a 3 star true freshman and a backup from Purdue. Of course they struggled. If you cant start at Purdue you have no business in the SEC
And looks like our best DL this year is a guy who has 5 solo tackles & 9 assists in 3 years at UNC & MSU.
where would we need to be in the final defensive stats this year to say maybe he'll be ok? i've made it known i'm in the wait and see crowd on Hutz AND Lebby. I would not count last year stats on Hutz as it was going to be a cluster no matter who the D-co was. But this year he has no pass. As far as Lebby goes why haven't you graded him on the offensive stats against ZA? what does he need to do to get you on board???
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KBJ isn’t going to start. Our Best DL is Whitson 62 total tackles 5 sacks in 17 games at CCU.
Because that's well known, hence everyone on here saying above we should have hired someone with experience, not someone that's never been DC before and making him one at an SEC school. Did you not know that?
That's okay though. I know that you're just mad that you were a being a
and ended up being wrong and now making excuses.You are talking about something i never claimed or used as justification.Because that's well known, hence everyone on here saying above we should have hired someone with experience, not someone that's never been DC before and making him one at an SEC school. Did you not know that?
That's okay though. I know that you're just mad that you were a being a
Hutzler was hired on like December 8. He stayed until alabama lost in the playoffs. That happens all the time.
Dan Mullen was hired as the head coach on December 10 2008. He coached in the BCS game on January 8, 2009.
You cannot be serious. Dan Mullen took over a 4 win team after an abysmal 8 year stretch. Lebby also took over a 4 win team that was coming off a stretch of 13 bowl games Dan improved that team to 5-7 season Under Lebby we got much worse with just 2 wins.
Incidentally, Dan won 9 games his second year. Lebby might not win 9 in the next TWO seasons.
Dan Mullen took over 11 nfl players.
Lebby took over 0 nfl players.
Dan inherited some good players from Croom. Lebby inherited Isaac Smith and a ton of holes.
We were bad in 2008 but at least were a relatively young team with some good sophomores and juniors. In 2023, we were bad with a bunch of seniors and no depth behind them. So not only did we stink, we had no experience to replace them the next year.
Go look at the depth chart for the 2023 Egg Bowl. There was virtually nobody from that starting lineup still on the roster in 2024. And a ton of that is guys who had exhausted their eligibility.
Rich Rodriguez has had 15 seasons (and counting) in his career that were 8-4 or better. I doubt Lebby and Arnett combine for that in their whole lives.
and so far has one 3rd stringer that he inherited on the preseason All SEC team this season, and that's it. He apparently despite the portal advantage hasn't brought in any either................
"The ship has sailed" because he patched up his relationship with West Virginia and returned there. He's surely not going to turn around and leave them again.
In December 2022 and December 2023 he was coaching at Jacksonville State and doing really well there.
He's about to start year 2. Last year aint on him whether you like that or not.
If we don't show significant improvement (5-7 would be significant; 4-8 and competitive in other games is gonna guarantee him year 3), then i'll agree Lebby isn't gonna cut it.
MY ENTIRE POINT isn't that lebby is good. It is that its too early to tell.
So if he fails at West Virginia you are right or wrong? Trying to create a measuring stick here.
I guess it depends on how Arnett and Lebby do in that time frame too, right?
I predict that Rodriguez will win more games as a head coach from 2025 to 2029 than Lebby and Arnett will combined, but you never know.