Musings from Arledge: Putting Tosh in perspective, Wisconsin's bounce-back plan, and USC's fun again
In the last few months, Oregon has been blown out three times, lost its coach to a better program (again), and lost its team leader to USC. So what should we expect from Oregon football these days? Shooting their mouths off, of course. Enter Tosh Lupoi, mocking Lincoln Riley for losing a playoff game to Alabama.
“Only because you brought him up, he did get close, real close, I was the defensive coordinator (at Alabama) on the other side of the line,” Lupoi said at an Oregon signing day event. “He had a guy named Kyler Murray, really good player. It was 28-0 in the first quarter, but he did get close, you’re right.”
That’s cute. Tosh Lupoi, channeling Charlie Weis, thinks he was responsible for that Alabama win. (It was my decided schematic advantage, not Bill Belichick, not Tom Brady. Why won’t anybody believe me!?)
Oregon has clearly picked a defensive coordinator that fits the Oregon brand.
Lincoln Riley is probably too classy to hit back. I doubt he wants to punch down, particularly that far down, and, besides, Riley’s busy rebuilding USC into an elite program, which USC has been under multiple coaches in multiple eras and which Oregon has never been. Does Lincoln Riley really have time to think about assistant coaches at second-tier programs? Probably not. Maybe he’s never carefully followed the NCAA investigations news and doesn’t know who Tosh Lupoi is.
Riley probably isn’t even thinking much about Lupoi’s boss, Dan Lanning. Who knows what will happen with Dan Lanning – he has promise, but it’s a big risk hiring a coordinator this young – but we know Lanning either fails and gets fired or succeeds and runs off to a better program in a couple of years anyway. Oregon is officially a AAA affiliate for coaches, a feeder program for real football schools, the Albuquerque Dukes of major college football. Lincoln Riley has bigger fish to fry. I doubt he says a thing in response.
But not me. I’m your huckleberry. Petty insults is just my game.
So let’s talk about Tosh Lupoi. Lupoi is obviously taking shots at Lincoln Riley for recruiting purposes. Practically everything that Tosh Lupoi does is for recruiting purposes: travel, phone calls, trips to the ATM.
Okay, recruits, since you’ve been pulled into this, let’s talk about what you should know about Oregon’s new defensive coordinator. Lupoi’s shot at Riley was about Riley losing to Alabama in the playoff some years back while Lupoi was the defensive coordinator at Alabama. That game was only weeks before Lupoi became the defensive line coach of the Cleveland Browns.
That’s weird, isn’t it, blue chippers? Why, do you ask, would an Alabama coordinator become a defensive line coach for what was then one of the NFL’s worst franchises (and then move to two other position coach jobs at two different franchises the next two years)? Saban’s coordinators usually go on to head coaching jobs: Sark, Kiffin, Jeremy Pruitt, Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher, Will Muschamp, and Jim McElwain all became head coaches, not position coaches for NFL franchises in the middle of long playoff droughts.
But not Tosh. Why didn’t Tosh Lupoi become a head coach? Maybe because he was completely overmatched as a coordinator and actually lost his position in the middle of the season. The same year Alabama beat Riley’s Oklahoma in the playoff semifinals, Bama took a horrific beating from Clemson in the title game. Lupoi left right after that for Cleveland. Some people speculated that the title game cost Lupoi his job. It didn’t, apparently. His longstanding mediocrity had already made his departure inevitable. In fact, by the time of the college football playoff, Lupoi had already been demoted and had become little more than an overpaid position coach, since Saban had already realized that Lupoi didn’t have what it takes to coordinate a defense.
As you might expect, Saban made Lupoi defensive coordinator originally because he wanted his recruiting abilities and wanted to keep him on staff. Saban probably figured he could carry the load on defense if Lupoi wasn’t able to handle the position the way his predecessors, Kirby Smart and Jeremy Pruitt, had. So he ignored his concerns from the beginning about whether Lupoi would be able to handle the position. It turns out, Lupoi couldn’t. I’ll let the Bama media tell the story, per John Talty of al.com:
“After some early struggles during the season, Saban stripped Lupoi of defensive play-calling responsibilities and handed them over to co-defensive coordinator Pete Golding, according to sources. Saban had poached Golding from UT-San Antonio in the offseason in part to alleviate concerns about Lupoi’s inexperience with the secondary and as a play-caller. Still, word is Lupoi seemed overwhelmed during practices and didn’t totally grasp situational play-calling. While he was still heavily involved in the defensive game-planning, there was no question Golding taking over play-calling represented a demotion of sorts for Lupoi barely into the start of his defensive coordinator stint.”
So, if you’re a little slow and have trouble following – like a certain former Alabama assistant coach – let me summarize: After the game Lupoi is gloating about, Lincoln Riley continued to be the head coach of a top-five program, won 12 games the next year, went to the college football playoff again, and turned a castoff QB into a Heisman finalist and an NFL starter, and now he’s the head coach for the west coast’s only blue-blood program and makes something like $12 million a year.
After that same game, Tosh Lupoi, still smarting from a demotion, had to take an assistant job in Cleveland, helped the Browns go 6-10, bounced around the NFL for three years with three different teams as a position coach (he must have been wildly effective coaching NFL defensive lineman), and now he makes a fraction of Riley’s salary as an assistant at a second-rate program that loses every successful head coach it ever has and just lost its team leader to USC. And, of course, talks trash about Riley in the press.
You know what, that is funny, Tosh. Riley lost to Saban. What a loser! But your gloating about that game doesn’t really tell the whole story, does it? You left out the relevant stuff about you.
So I guess we don’t really have to talk about how weird it is for an assistant to take a shot at another team’s head coach. Riley’s not your peer, Tosh. He’s where you hope someday to be but probably never will be.
Did I miss when Tim Davis publicly mocked Bob Stoops after the 2005 Orange Bowl? Because that would have been odd. Does a character actor give public statements to the LA Times about Al Pacino’s overacting? Does the drummer for Herman’s Hermits publicly mock John Lennon? Does the night manager of a Taco Bell franchise say that Jeff Bezos is a clown if Amazon’s stock drops a point?
But, hey, Tosh, since you’re in a joking mood, I’ve got one:
Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Tosh
Tosh who?
Tosh Lupoi, your new defensive line coach because Nick Saban fired me.
Not funny? Okay. How about a little trivia?
“I’ll take guys who blew their big chance for 400, Alex.”
“This coach was maybe the only coordinator in recent Alabama history to leave Alabama for a substantially worse job. He also left Washington under a cloud of NCAA suspicion.”
“Umm, who is Steve Sarkisian?”
“No, sorry. Like all of Nick Saban’s other coordinators, Steve Sarkisian became a head coach at a major football power despite having humiliated himself publicly and even though he was stupid enough to sue his former employer. No, the answer is Tosh Lupoi, who even Nick Saban couldn’t make look smart.”
So let’s be honest about Tosh Lupoi. He’s a recruiter. An ace recruiter. A salesman. That’s all. He’s good at that. Why did Nick Saban throw him to the curb? Because Saban doesn’t need one-dimensional recruiters; he wants coaches. Alabama dominated recruiting long before Lupoi arrived, and they continued to dominate after Lupoi left. If your only skill is recruiting, and the program you work for recruits whether you’re there or not, you might be on your way to a journeyman career as an NFL position coach.
But not anymore! Now Lupoi can be Oregon’s Tee Martin, a guy who gets a coordinator gig because he can recruit even though he’s really no more than a position coach and should never be in charge of an entire side of the ball. Which means Dan Lanning has officially gone Full Clay Helton: nah, Dan, just because you’re young and inexperienced doesn’t mean you need a coach who is older, smart, and can help you grow into the position. Hire a coordinator who is in over his head because he can connect with recruits. That should work out great.
But Lanning clearly wants a staff of recruiters, so he’s gone all-in, and Lupoi is a key to that strategy. The guy won’t be able to game plan or develop, but he’ll show up at a recruit’s house at midnight, and he’ll use a big personality to trick kids into thinking he can actually coach. Some will fall for it. Some always do.
Yes, I’m crediting Lupoi’s big personality and work ethic for his recruiting success. Others don’t; they credit different things for his recruiting success. The rumors follow Lupoi wherever he goes. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe he’s always been a straight shooter and it’s just bad luck that Washington had to pay Lupoi hundreds of thousands of dollars and put him on a bus to nowhere to get rid of him when the NCAA was breathing down his neck. In fairness, at least he never got an NCAA Show Cause penalty.
You know, like Adrian Klemm did. Who Oregon also just hired.
And I don’t have any reason to believe that Lupoi bullied and intimidated injured players like Klemm has been accused of doing. So maybe I shouldn’t beat up on Lupoi. Maybe I should just ignore him when he runs his mouth. Maybe he’s just a little overexcited because he’s back in a position he can’t handle but foolishly thinks this time it will all work out. Maybe he thinks that he couldn’t coordinate Alabama’s defense because of personnel shortcomings or something. But now that he can get the athletes, he’ll be successful. I don’t know.
And maybe it will work out. It’s hard to imagine a Lupoi-Klemm pairing not succeeding wildly in the recruiting realm. They’ll convince some good players to subject themselves to Lupoi’s strategic ineptitude and Klemm’s bullying. It’s all about great facilities and multiple uniform combinations, kids! I just hope Lanning rounds out his staff with some SMU assistants from the 1980’s. That would fit the character of his program. Hey, Dan, maybe give Nevin Shapiro season tickets and introduce him to some of your players. What could go wrong?
That’s enough about Tosh and the Ducks. Oregon’s team leader just left to join USC because, I don’t know, wouldn’t you leave Oregon for USC if given the chance? I’m sure Dan Lanning would. As it is, he’ll probably just run to Florida or Auburn first chance he gets. And Tosh? He’ll be coaching tight ends for the Lions in no time, telling anybody who will listen how he took down Lincoln Riley all by himself in 2018. “Hey, guys. Did I ever tell you about that time I out-schemed Lincoln Riley….”
Don’t worry everybody. I’m sure Wisconsin will land another all-world quarterback in the transfer portal. It’s hard to imagine many quarterbacks passing up the chance to be trained in the art of handing off by a career TE coach.
This has been the best NFL playoff in history. Just extraordinary. I’m a college football guy. College football is the better game: more diverse, more passionate, better rivalries. But it’s hard to beat what the NFL has put out over the last few weeks.
I’ll leave the Super Bowl predictions to the rest of the media world. But I will say this: I’ll be surprised if Joe Burrow doesn’t take a beating. Great player, but that offensive line against the Rams defensive front? Ouch.
The roster continues to improve. USC is now a few defensive front-seven players from making a run at the playoff. I know that’s a big jump, and no, they could never win next year’s playoff. But winning the conference with a single loss gives you a legitimate shot at a playoff bid, and that’s within the realm of possibility. The jump in coaching acumen and talent will be huge, and the schedule is soft. I’ll save my prediction until we see what the final roster looks like, and the coaches still have a difficult job ahead of them in trying to bring this team of strangers together and implementing their new systems.
But that offense is going to score a ton of points, and the schedule is very manageable. Utah is tough, and winning in Salt Lake isn’t easy. But that Utah team also lost four games last year. They’re not Georgia or Alabama. Notre Dame will be tough defensively. But that game is at home at the end of the year. It could happen, people.
Look, maybe I’m delusional. Maybe it’s just post-Clay euphoria going to my head. Maybe. But I’d encourage USC fans who have stayed away from the Coliseum during the recent horror show to buy tickets this year. USC football is going to be fun again.
