Jinks Post-Gamer
So, I watched the Jinks post-gamer. A few general notes...
He was clearly agitated. He was moving around, his eyes were darting around. Losing is really, really tough on these guys, and it has to be wearing on him. You wouldn't want a coach that it didn't wear on. I imagine he isn't sleeping well, and every week he's faced with going into a game with limited assets, some of which is on him and some of which is not.
A lot of talk about James Morgan. The consensus seemed to be that Morgan played a poor game. I guess I didn't think it was that bad. He did throw picks, force throws, run into pressure. Coach says he needs to keep his eyes upfield when he runs. What surprised me was people asking about whether he thought about putting Knapke back in. Nothing Morgan did gave me the idea we needed to do that, but that was me. Coach also says he needs to get rid of the ball sooner, which is hard to argue with. Anyway, the thing is he's playing his second game and he might be able to correct those things. Knapke was in his 16th start or something and wasn't really any better.
Coach was clear they are going to ride with Morgan from here on out.
Basically, we had issues with penalties on offense and we turned the ball over four times, which we cannot do and win. (OU is living on their turnover margin, I don't believe they win either of their last 2 games on an even turnover ratio). Also, we had a bad game with punt returns, which he did.
His reaction...those things cannot happen and we will get them corrected.
We will see.
He noted that BG has continued to struggle on the defensive side of the ball, especially up front. He said that "we won't ask these guys to do things they cannot do," and said Coach Eliano has done a good job getting performance out of the defense. You might agree or disagree...to me the offense is the unit that is costing this team chances to win. The defense is not great or even good, but the offense is the unit that is killing this team right now.
Finally, he is certainly looking forward to getting Will Watson back.
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Coaching changes are never easy ... and their initial recruiting class is extra difficult .... thus two recruiting classes on this team during coaching changes. After all, isn't this the third head coach for the seniors?
Even with this in mind, and given his experience, I wonder if Coach Jinks is in over his head.
I agree....you have to wonder, even with all that. We are going to find out.
I would like to take a different direction on this. I wonder what Kingston told Jinks about what he was to inherit. Last year I looked at the players that were returning at dbacks, receivers and qb and then at what we got off scholarships. Nothing jumped out at me that was impressive. Small in size, quick, lack of experience, avg to below hands at receivers, yes those that got playing time had dropped passes last year like this year. Just makes me wonder. Based on Jinks comments now gives me the impression he might have received something he wasn't expecting
You know, anonymous, that's an interesting perspective. I will say this...things came together very fast and the general tenor seems to have been to get a coach NOW. I'm not sure if anyone else was even spoken to about the job. The scenario you describe could have happened. There wouldn't have been any time to look at film for Coach Jinks, I would imagine. Also at the time Dieter was expected back. Certainly Knapke could have been oversold. Anyway, interesting was to look at it.
To borrow a line from a favorite John Wayne movie, "His fault, your fault, nobody's fault...."
The problem that I see growing is that Jinks has to survive a baseline loss of faith in his ability to do the job. This maybe unfair, there were some who hated seeing Brandon let-go as a "winning" coach, who held it against Clawson during the early years of building. There were/are those who swore Clawson should be shown the door as they felt his scratch-building was inferior to Brandon's results. There are those who gave Babers a free pass due to "transition" issues to new systems, etc. There are any number of endless excuse/counter excuse lines of thought. However many could come out of a truly epic melt-down on the field and see only the end-record, not the context or more subtle background details. And that could taint everything else Jinks could and may do entirely right. It may obscure the more supportive details in his favor.
What is aggravating is simply how much we cannot know at this point. Is this team showing signs of life and the basis for recovery? We see hints of it on defense, even the offense doesn't look utterly hopeless. Yet we could be looking at all this from the perspective of the "glass being half full," when in fact the glass is broken and what we see is the last fleeting glimpses of Clawson's program draining out. No matter what, either giving the benefit of the doubt or if Jinks is a bad hire, leaving him in-place lets you flush the bad all at once or vindicate faith two years from now.
How this hurts BGSU is in the "master plan" I ripped as being impossible just before Kingston left. There were assumptions that "post season" revenue would be part of those plans. That clearly will not happen now. And it is hard to grow season tickets, tee-shirt sales at a 7% annual clip when your football program can't sustain either winning or a watchable product on the field.
For my part, the season is over. This is mostly moot until a couple of months from now.
Well said. Jinks could unfairly lose credibility and this thing could be over before it started. And how much do we know? Are we better or playing worse teams. (Note, we will get an idea Saturday I fear).
NWLB, that's my point exactly and I agree totally with what you mention to a T. People are crucifying Jinks when he may not have even had any idea of what he was getting involved in. Basically, we have become spoiled to winning which is a good and bad thing but due to lack of attention in a few areas, "the chickens are coming home to roost Bobby". If we all just take a deep breath, we are beginning to see improvement that will take all year but could very well be back next year.
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