From Deion Sanders to Mike Locksley, publicly chastising players will only make their jobs harder

From Deion Sanders to Biff Poggi, Week 9 featured a slew of coaches publicly criticizing their players in explicitly blunt terms. 

Good luck with that. 

“The line has to improve. It’s a struggle to run the ball,” Sanders said after Colorado allowed 10 tackles for loss and seven sacks in a 28-16 loss at UCLA.

“The big picture you go get new linemen. That’s the picture and I’m going to paint it perfectly.”

More on Sanders in a moment. 

The already-unorthodox Poggi pained an even more vivid picture in his viral mid-game interview in Charlotte’s 38-16 loss to FAU, saying, “It’s like watching sausage being made, it’s just a horrifying experience.” 

“It’s just football for God’s sake. Just block and tackle people. Do what you’re supposed to do. Don’t do anything else. Don’t talk to anybody. I don’t care what anybody says, you just do your damn job.”

Yikes.

After the 49ers’ sixth loss in eight games, Poggi decided to suspend an unknown amount of players for their lack of discipline in the loss. Charlotte committed 12 penalties for 106 yards, including multiple personnel fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct flags. It was hardly an outlier showing of poor discipline, as the 49ers rank 121 nationally in penalties per game this season.

“I am extremely disappointed with our comportment as a football team against FAU. I have made the decision to immediately suspend various players for our game against Tulsa,” Poggi said in a release with no other specifics. 

It’s a unique decision by Poggi, and he’s clearly trying to send a message to his Year 1 team. But maybe his short statement should’ve just sufficed.

The sentiments expressed by Sanders, Poggi, and even Mike Locksley and Pat Narduzzi all had some merit — some — but coaches are playing a dangerous game with such critical candor on their players here in 2023. Players absolutely deserve accountability, but publicly chastising them isn’t going to help you recruit better talent or bring in better players from the transfer portal. These coaches are only making their jobs more difficult. 

College football operates much differently now with the transfer portal and NIL, but make no mistake, it still isn’t the NFL 2.0 just yet. 

There’s no waiver wire or true free agency. Even with some players making real money off their name, image and likeness, there’s still a wide chasm between the majority of them and their millionaire coaches, too.

So the optics are poor, but the lack of self-awareness from the coaches this weekend was probably worse. All four coaches certainly care about their players, but they had little (or nothing) to gain by voicing such frustrations publicly. 

After Maryland’s 33-27 loss at Northwestern as a two-touchdown underdog Saturday, Locksley griped, “It was a drop and then the next one the receiver is falling down on the ground. Players got to make plays. It’s our job as coaches to give schemes, put things in place and we both have a responsibility in that relationship, coach and player.”

He’s not wrong. But also whose fault is it that the players are struggling? Mike Locksley has been at Maryland for six years. He recruited or signed that entire team. 

Similarly, Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi mistakenly used his postgame presser to lament his team’s talent, admitting he and his staff were at fault for the Panthers’ 58-7 drubbing at Notre Dame before adding, “As a football coach, you lose a lot of good players from a year ago and you think, as a coach, you’re going to replace them, and obviously we haven’t. Again, it starts with me. I didn’t do a good enough job coaching today. Put it on me, and we’ve got to make plays.”

Panthers players immediately took to X (aka Twitter), quoting tweeting Narduzzi’s comments. 

It didn’t take long for Pitt’s coach to issue his own rebuttal tweet to make sure he was to blame for the blowout loss. 

Too late. Narduzzi has never been shy about sticking his foot in his mouth, and now a team that was already fragile is even more fractured. Suddenly, the Panthers are on major ‘Q’ watch. 

Sanders’ comments were perhaps the most notable because of how Colorado arrived at this very issue, and Coach Prime’s misguided plan on addressing it. 

He’s correct that the Buffs’ offensive line stinks. 

They’ve allowed the most sacks of any team in the Power 5 (42) and rank 131st in rushing. But he already tried to patchwork Colorado’s starting OL through the portal last offseason. He ran out several starters and brought in a trio of linemen from the portal. Yet despite witnessing first-hand that the OL portal pickings are slim, Sanders is openly ostracizing players who can’t leave the team now because they’ve already used their one-time transfer wavier.

These comments would’ve been received poorly if he said them at the end of the season. The fact that Colorado still has four games remaining is trying to make a bowl game makes them worse. 

Sanders choosing to double down on a portal philosophy to rebuild the line makes them even dumber. Getting quality starting-caliber Power 5 offensive linemen out of the transfer portal is like buying a bag of nuts that allegedly has Brazilian nuts in the mix. There’s like two of them in there. 

The only way Colorado’s offensive line will improve is if the Buffs recruit, invest and develop high school prospects. Well, Colorado has just two offensive line commitments so far in its 2024 class. 

I repeat, good luck with that.