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- Thread starter TheBigDA
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And again not just for the star rankings. You can have a good class with the majority of the "blue chip" talent fizzling or quitting, if the rest of the class turns out to be pretty good and gives you good production.
It's about both the numbers and how the talent develops, and I really don't think there is a whole lot of difference from coach to coach on talent development. Good players with a will to work, in most instances, develop under any coach.
As I said a few weeks back, if you can look back at a class and say it is giving you 3-5 guys that are clearly above average SEC (maybe All-SEC or All-SEC fringe) type talents with another 8-12 players that are solid average SEC contributors, then you had a good class that will give you a good shot at winning, star rankings be damned. I'm talking mainly about your high school signees, since they are the core of your class as it develops.
Typically if you sign classes that are highly rated or at least if your staff won more hotly contested recruiting battles than it lost, then you have a much better chance of having those numbers bear out from a class. If you sign a bunch of Plan Bs or if you have too many players leave, it's a lot less likely you'll squeeze that much talent out of a class.
Go back and look at your 2007 class in hindsight using that criteria. It was a pretty solid class with guys like Relf, Saulsberry, Sherrod, and KJ Wright with a decent number of other average SEC contributors. Obviously, you can supplement those numbers 2 years later with Jucos if you sign some good ones. See Chris White and Pernell McPhee from your 2009 class supplementing your 2007 class's numbers.
It's about both the numbers and how the talent develops, and I really don't think there is a whole lot of difference from coach to coach on talent development. Good players with a will to work, in most instances, develop under any coach.
As I said a few weeks back, if you can look back at a class and say it is giving you 3-5 guys that are clearly above average SEC (maybe All-SEC or All-SEC fringe) type talents with another 8-12 players that are solid average SEC contributors, then you had a good class that will give you a good shot at winning, star rankings be damned. I'm talking mainly about your high school signees, since they are the core of your class as it develops.
Typically if you sign classes that are highly rated or at least if your staff won more hotly contested recruiting battles than it lost, then you have a much better chance of having those numbers bear out from a class. If you sign a bunch of Plan Bs or if you have too many players leave, it's a lot less likely you'll squeeze that much talent out of a class.
Go back and look at your 2007 class in hindsight using that criteria. It was a pretty solid class with guys like Relf, Saulsberry, Sherrod, and KJ Wright with a decent number of other average SEC contributors. Obviously, you can supplement those numbers 2 years later with Jucos if you sign some good ones. See Chris White and Pernell McPhee from your 2009 class supplementing your 2007 class's numbers.
Big D said:
I think the main thing that coaching helps is the scheme matching up with a player's skill set. If you have an under-sized, quick O-lineman, he's not going to look good in a power running offense, but he might look pretty good in a spread option offense. And obviously with QBs, the system match makes a big difference. See Brent Schaeffer and Omar Conner playing in pro style offenses, or John Brantley trying to be a spread option guy.
Outside of that, no one's S&C program is that much better than anyone else, and technique coaching isn't that much different from place to place at the highest level, so the ultimate development, to me, comes down to the player's individual drive to be better, and his physical potential.
Patrick Willis was going to succeed and go from 2 star to All-American under any head coach, because he had the drive and the physical potential. Coaching didn't develop him, or at least the coaching he received at Ole Miss wasn't a big enough difference compared to what he would've anywhere else from USC to Miami (OH). On the flip side, many 4 stars and 5 stars aren't busts because they failed to get good development. They failed because they either were just not as talented as people thought, had already reached their peak and didn't have room to grow, or just didn't have the drive or focus or the mental toughness.
Mike Wallace is another one that was a 2 star. The potential was always there. He always had the speed. It took him a few years and some coaching to figure out how to use it on the field, but it wasn't anything special he received at Ole Miss that he wouldn't have received anywhere else in the SEC. Same with Titus Brown. He went from 2 star to All-SEC because he was just that good.
A.). Lazy SOB's that had no drive to compete, B.) Not as talented as predicted by everyone, or C.) Had already peaked? Your coaching staff should not be held accountable for player development, just player evaluation, because according to you the outcome is solely based on the character of the players or father time has already struck? I'm speechless!
RebelBruiser said:
I could not disagree more. Annie Sullivan should have to give up her nickname as the Miracle Workerbecause of Matt Balis. On the flip side, I watched a gased Ole Miss team lose to Jacksonville State at home. Your guys were so spent by the start of the third quarter, your S&C should have been fired on the spot. It was absolutely pathetic, not only the loss, but how utterly out of shape your players were...
do you think that might be related to the coaches not pushing their players after a walkon died during August practice? I don't think the S&C coach just said "$$%! it this year". Maybe Nix said that, but I really doubt Decker did.
A lot of schools are wasting a lot of money on coaches if your theory is right. When we hired Balis, Urban Meyer said that the S&C coach was the most important coach on the staff and that we'd hit a home run with him. Then we improve from 4-8 to 9-4 in just 2 seasons. You think that's a coincidence? You think you know more about this than Urban Meyer does? If your theory is right, a lot of schools are wasting a lot of money on coaches.RebelBruiser said:
patdog said:
I forgot. Your S&C coach is weight lifting Jesus.
Everyone spends money on solid S&C coaches is the point. I don't think there is a big difference between the guy at Florida and the guy at South Carolina and the guy at Arkansas. At least you aren't talking about the type of difference where a guy that has NFL potential is going to fail to reach it at one place but be able to reach it at another.
I think you improved from 4-8 in 2008 to 9-4 last year because you went from having a young OL to an experienced OL, your defense picked up Chris White and Pernell McPhee, KJ Wright came into his own, you hired a DC that knew a thing or two about defense, etc.
You think those guys would've just sucked had Jesus Balis not laid his hands on them? Seriously now, you're usually pretty reasonable, but there isn't much difference between decent S&C coaches in terms of developing talent. I'll buy that there is a difference in how you choose to condition players. Iowa may want to re-think their strategy. Orgeron's staff overdid it too, but in general I put conditioning on the head coach. The head coach is the one that lays out the plan for how hard he wants his guys worked to reach the goal of being in shape not only in September but to still have legs in November. That's conditioning though, not talent development. Mike Wallace was a great talent in 2007 in Orgeron's conditioning program. He was a great talent in 2008 under Nutt's conditioning program. He could've gone anywhere in the SEC, as long as it was somewhere that was going to work with him, and he was going to become a high draft pick. It wasn't our S&C program that got him there.
Chris White, Pernell McPhee, KJ Wright, Derek Sherrod, etc. would've been in a similar situation in terms of their NFL draft chances had they gone to Auburn, LSU, Arkansas, South Carolina, wherever.
Back to the original point, 4 and 5 star players don't becoming busts because they have a poor S&C coach, and 2 and 3 star players don't become studs because they had a great S&C coach. If that were the case, then why wouldn't EVERY player under a great S&C coach make the NFL? It's because they all have different ceilings and drives to reach that point, not because the S&C coach is magic.
ETA: We didn't struggle in 2010 because we were out of shape or not strong enough. We struggled because I don't think our DC was very creative, our OL was young, our defense wasn't deep, and our upper classes in general were short on numbers. It wasn't because Don Decker didn't do a good enough job developing players. The material just wasn't there.
the S&C programs not being that far apart when it comes to the actual physical results that they produce; however there is a huge difference in how it is implemented to develop players. The Croom staff looked at S&C as a way to keep the players in shape
during the off season; Mullen looks at S&C as the only way to
develop players in the off season. The S&C coach is going to have more contact with these players than anyone else on the staff.
State has used their S&C program not only to develop players physically, but also uses it to develop a players attitude and work ethic. They compete at everything and there are winners and losers. Our basic philosophy is that if you don't work hard someone else is going to beat you.
I think that is the biggest difference in great S&C programs and bad S&C programs.
during the off season; Mullen looks at S&C as the only way to
develop players in the off season. The S&C coach is going to have more contact with these players than anyone else on the staff.
State has used their S&C program not only to develop players physically, but also uses it to develop a players attitude and work ethic. They compete at everything and there are winners and losers. Our basic philosophy is that if you don't work hard someone else is going to beat you.
I think that is the biggest difference in great S&C programs and bad S&C programs.
But you never really responded to Urban Meyer's quote. If the S&C coach isn't important, why did he go out of his way to make that statement? The fact is, you could just look at our players and tell that physically they looked very different in the fall of 2009 than they did in the fall of 2008. Just like you can just look at our basketball players and tell that physically they look very different than most SEC basketball players. The point I was making wasn't that our S&C coach is Jesus. He's clearly not the only good S&C coach that's out there. The point was that all coaches aren't basicly the same and that coaching does make a huge difference. In some cases, a player is going to be a star or a bust no matter who his coach is, but in a lot of other cases, the coaching makes the player succeed or fail. For example, no QB was ever going to turn into a good player with Crxxm and McCorvey coaching him. Just not going to happen. But put even an average (or maybe even slightly below average) QB in a Mike Leach offense and he's probably going to turn into a pretty good college QB. </p>
The S&C coach is important. I just don't buy that he's anymore important than the head coach, DC, or OC in any way, and I don't buy that the S&C coach makes the difference between a guy getting to the NFL and not getting to the NFL, because I don't think there are any S&C coaches out there that do so much better of a job than their counterparts at other places that it makes a huge difference for individual players.
And again, what you are talking about is system, not talent development.
I just don't buy that the coach takes a player from a 2 star to a 4 star. I buy that the right system match can make that kind of difference for a player, but great players are going to be great players, and experience is experience. You aren't going to win with freshmen, and you aren't going to win without players that have NFL potential.
If you gave Croom/McCorvey the USC talent of the mid-00s, they would've moved the football, scored a lot of points, and sent a lot of players to the NFL. They didn't recruit that well though, and the few players they did have, they weren't capable of using correctly because they didn't have a flexible scheme.
Take Jerious Norwood. He didn't make the NFL because Croom or Jackie did such a great job developing him. He made the NFL because he was a great talent, even though he played for awful teams and didn't really play in great offensive systems.
Don't get me wrong. Winning it not all talent. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I think talent development is overrated. How you use the talent you have is important, but I don't think in the SEC, there is a huge difference in coaches making players reach their potential. If the scheme is a poor match and the coach isn't flexible at changing the scheme, then that's where the coaching can fail a player. I don't buy that you see players gaining a significant amount more talent or ability from staff to staff at the D-1 level.
Every player has a ceiling, and I think a player's match with a scheme has more to do with whether that player will succeed than coaching talent development. Most staffs are going to get players close to their ceiling if they have the drive. Where that ceiling is is the hard part to gauge. Take two players at the same position in the same class on the same team, and they aren't going to develop to the same level.
And again, what you are talking about is system, not talent development.
I just don't buy that the coach takes a player from a 2 star to a 4 star. I buy that the right system match can make that kind of difference for a player, but great players are going to be great players, and experience is experience. You aren't going to win with freshmen, and you aren't going to win without players that have NFL potential.
If you gave Croom/McCorvey the USC talent of the mid-00s, they would've moved the football, scored a lot of points, and sent a lot of players to the NFL. They didn't recruit that well though, and the few players they did have, they weren't capable of using correctly because they didn't have a flexible scheme.
Take Jerious Norwood. He didn't make the NFL because Croom or Jackie did such a great job developing him. He made the NFL because he was a great talent, even though he played for awful teams and didn't really play in great offensive systems.
Don't get me wrong. Winning it not all talent. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I think talent development is overrated. How you use the talent you have is important, but I don't think in the SEC, there is a huge difference in coaches making players reach their potential. If the scheme is a poor match and the coach isn't flexible at changing the scheme, then that's where the coaching can fail a player. I don't buy that you see players gaining a significant amount more talent or ability from staff to staff at the D-1 level.
Every player has a ceiling, and I think a player's match with a scheme has more to do with whether that player will succeed than coaching talent development. Most staffs are going to get players close to their ceiling if they have the drive. Where that ceiling is is the hard part to gauge. Take two players at the same position in the same class on the same team, and they aren't going to develop to the same level.
G
Goat Holder II
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and I'm not talking about just Rebelbruiser.
Attempt this: Both sides take off the glasses, think independently, then post.
MSU fans are pumping Balis's coaching and Mullen's player development because that's what it SEEMS is working for MSU right now.
Ole Miss fans are crowing about how talent wins games because they are getting higher rated recrootin classes based on Genes and Yancys.
It IS all about the players. It's up to the coach to get players he wants that he can put in a position to win. Then they have to be good enough to win. There's also a big scale. I mean, how big do you want to win? 9 games? National titles? Etc.
Apply that same scale to recruiting. Ole Miss beating MSU by a player or two probably can be overshadowed by coaching (or it proves that rankings are bogus - but again, go to the scale). LSU beating MSU by about 10 players, year after year, starts showing up on the field more often regardless of coaching.
Attempt this: Both sides take off the glasses, think independently, then post.
MSU fans are pumping Balis's coaching and Mullen's player development because that's what it SEEMS is working for MSU right now.
Ole Miss fans are crowing about how talent wins games because they are getting higher rated recrootin classes based on Genes and Yancys.
It IS all about the players. It's up to the coach to get players he wants that he can put in a position to win. Then they have to be good enough to win. There's also a big scale. I mean, how big do you want to win? 9 games? National titles? Etc.
Apply that same scale to recruiting. Ole Miss beating MSU by a player or two probably can be overshadowed by coaching (or it proves that rankings are bogus - but again, go to the scale). LSU beating MSU by about 10 players, year after year, starts showing up on the field more often regardless of coaching.
Like Craig James' old SMU coach used to say: "Don't tell me about the labor, just show me the baby."