Football: State of the Program

 This is an annual thing I do...and here it is.  Where are we?

Most of this has already been said...scroll down to the Akron game post and the Loeffler presser.  The state of the program is, currently, not at all good.  We're not competitive...right now.  We're young but we're undisciplined.  Youth we can't control.  Discipline we can...which means we could be better than we are right now.

The hope is that we look back on our first winless season since 1919 (a pandemic-pandemic streak) and think, man that sucked but it was part of a process that got us back to competitive and we figured out how to stay there and not go boom and bust.

Whether that happens remains to be seen, of course, and I don't say that to be pessimistic.  It just does.

I've said it a million times, I support what we are doing and think we have to ride this out.

Not all of you agree with me.

I know it's hard, because we could tell Jinks wasn't going to work from literally the first game (or before) and we had to endure 2.5 seasons of self-destruction until we made a move.  (Note, because we didn't "have $2 million" not noting that it was mitigatable.  Had Jinks gone after the first year and gotten another job--he would have gone straight back to Texas Tech--we don't owe anywhere near $2M.  Anyway).

So, if you see Loeffler in that vein, I can see why you think we should make a move now.

It doesn't help that if you are a fan of football on twitter, Scot Loeffler and Brian Van Gorder are the butt of jokes nearly every day.  People say things like "Scot Loeffer, Head Coach??" and that's the whole post and everyone knows what they mean.

My response is this....

• Who cares about people on Twitter.
• I don't see this as the same as Jinks.  The part that is the same (and different than Clawson) is that we have a head coach without a proven track record to provide comfort.  But, Loeffler has a stronger staff than Jinks had and I think he is organizing the program for success.
• I don't think any Coach would have done better than 1-5 this year.
• We can't afford to switch gears AGAIN.  This needs to work.

Again, I know some of you disagree and time might prove you right.

Here is what I see moving forward.

The program is not where it should be, and some of that is on the current staff.  Loeffler said as much after the Akron game.  

So, the first thing is Loeffler has to be a better coach.  It's not unreasonable to expect him to grow into the job and learn from what is happening and I think he's prepared to do that.  He needs to grow, and I don't mean it as a criticism.  I think he would agree.

The second thing is that the strong recruiting needs to continue.  We need 3 strong (strong!) recruiting classes to get this thing right side up and we appear to have one in the books.  It needs to happen twice more in an environment where we continue to lose.

Glad it's not my job.  I saw that Cade Zimmerly said he picked BG because he "believes in what Loeffler is doing."  That's what we have to sell.  Or, pick a winning program and sit for three years.  If recruiting falls off, it's a way bigger loss than losing to Akron.

Third thing is that our staff has to prove they can develop players.  We have a lot of guys getting playing time early, but they have to be coached up and their potential realized.  It doesn't happen only from playing.  I'm not saying we can't...I'm just saying we have to see it happen.  Mike Jinks also had a highly rated recruiting class.

So what to look for.

1.    Signing Day (see above)

2.    What kind of returners we have.  I think some of the players who are seniors might not come back, even though they can.  I don't blame them, if they have graduated.  They've persevered through the worst period in our history.  I know all of us hope to see improvement next season, and the return of at least some of our Seniors and Juniors (small though the numbers are) is going to matter.

3.    Given what we hope is a full off-season, we need to see a young but competent team on the field next Fall, as opposed to a young but undisciplined.  We won't know how this works until it does or doesn't.

4.   To show progress, we are going to need to move the ball better.  There's been a lot of discussion about out QB.  I think people had unrealistic expectations for him, given that he had no real collegiate game experience and given the cast around him.  He has the chance to take a big jump (as many first year players do) for next year.  I'd expect him to be the starter next Fall...we do have a Syracuse transfer coming in...but I'd expect it to be McDonald, who hopefully will improve, given our QB-Guru Head Coach.

I think we're still a year away from a shot at .500, to be honest.  Maybe not.  But, next year could still be rough.  We just hope less rough.