Saturday, September 30, 2017

So Much for "Parity"

So much for the parity we'd find when we got into MAC play.  It was clear from the outset that, as noted in the preview here, this was not going to be a clash of titans.

BG played a badly flawed game against a badly flawed team and ended up with a two-score defeat at home, falling to 0-5 for the first time in 29 years.  This was an Akron team playing without their starting RB, who was injured early...and yet they still were able to get the win.

There will be more to come tomorrow.

For now, just a couple thoughts. 

First, clearly the biggest play was the pick 6.  BG had some momentum and had a shot to put a drive together and win the game, and instead threw an easy pick-6 that put the game away for the Zips.

After the game, Coach was VERY terse when asked about it.  This is unusual for him, but he was terse.

When asked what play was called, he said "a run."  Morgan checked out to a pass at the best Zip CB.  Even some time later, Jinks was highly irritated at the call his QB made.

Oh, and why was Morgan in the game?  Well, Doege started and got injured on a throwback pass from Wilcox to Doege.  He returned just for one more series and then was out for the remainder of the game.  Coach didn't know the status of the injury, but said that he didn't think it was season-ending.

Which is good to know.  If it was, however, Doege could get his redshirt back.

BG actually outgained Akron, but made too many turnovers and penalties to beat the Zips, who made their share of mistakes, but in the end made fewer.

BG is now 0-5 and 0-1.  For the entire Jinks Era, BG is now 4-13 and 3-6.  Three very tough games are coming up next.  This is shaping up very badly for the 2017 season.

The usual concerns exist.  We have yet to see any evidence that this coaching staff can win at the college level.  There is, first of all, the fact that they aren't winning, but then the team just doesn't seem to be making any progress. I mean, yeah, we haven't had anyone hang 70 on us, but I'm not sure we're any better and we might be worse, which is the opposite direction of where we wanted to go.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can say Morgan made a bad audible call, but who's been coaching him on audibles? This is the second year in the system, why isn't that ironed out.

Also, why is he audibling at all?  Why didn't we call timeout when he started to audible?  Sooner or later, these things are not just poor execution, but begin to reflect on the people in charge of the program.

I'm not saying we should give up on Jinks.  Mostly because we don't have much choice.  But given what we have seen so far, we are operating solely on blind faith and evidence to the contrary is continuing to pile up.

3 comments :

Anonymous said...

I totally agree, 1st bad coaching hire in a long time. BGSU Football was rising until this coaching staff came along. I didn't expect a good year after all that talent of Matt Johnson, Travis Greene, and Roger Lewis left. Last year is excusable. But the next year starting 0-5?!?! Showing no progress, he needs to be fired. Stupid contract prevents that. Just a terrible contract mixed with an even worse coaching staff. I'll go down and pack his bags personally, please just go.

NWLB said...

If Jinks proves a bad hire it wasn't the first in the last 20 years. I would go further to suggest that the problem extends beyond the football program and deep into athletics and University administration. BGSU squeezes far more out of the second smallest MAC athletics budget than programs producing half as well for twice as much. Yet I would argue that BGSU has failed across many sports and many years to create any kind of consistency. People label horrible coaches as great boons, marginal coaches as something we're lucky to have, and administratively from top to bottom we see zero focus on a true long-term plan. Which points to failures on the University level to understand how to manage athletics within the institution and community.

The next University president needs to have a legitimate grasp of what athletics can be to the community and University and invest the time to help it become so. That requires a 30 year perspective, not a paranoid rush to spike ticket sales for a few years.

Anonymous said...

That's a really good point. I mean Toledo has been consistently a good team. They have down years in between but always bounce back. And they ALWAYS beat BGSU. Also I was not looking that far back into the program history has I was referring to the past 2 coaches we've had along with the days of Omar Jacobs and coach Urban Meyer. I honestly feel like this is the worst team we've played in a decent amount of time. Maybe 20 years ago was bad but that's a really long time and I doubt half the people from then are here today at the administration level. Though some may be, I have no idea honestly. Just seems like Jinks and his coaching staff have to be given their fair share of blame for this mess.