Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Briggs on Jinks

The Blade's Dave Briggs is in with a column today about Coach Jinks.  There's nothing really new here that Jinks didn't say to the Sentinel in late December.  Here's the basic idea.  Falcon fans fell in three camps on Jinks.  First is that he had to go.  Second that the cupboard was bare.  Third was that the team was overrated but the problems were made worse by the coaching staff, which was the position taken by me.

What Jinks is saying in both of these articles is that the third one has truth to it.  He says they were obstinate to change defenses when it wasn't working.  In the Sentinel article, he also acknowledged the youth of his coaching staff and that he shouldn't have spent time with Texas Tech before their bowl game.

Then and now, I give him credit for the candor.  Note that he has been talking this way since before he signed the big recruiting class.

He also said this to the Sentinel:

If you go lose by 70 in two out of the first four weeks, we’re lucky to still be coaching here." (emphasis added).
So he gets it, fans.

So, as I wrote in December, much as it was unnecessary to break in a newbie in college coaching, that's the path we are on.  I think we will be better but I think that overall it would be good to have reasonable expectations for this year.  The schedule is very tough and pointing to those three wins at the end of the year as progress is pretty tough to sell.  BG could be much better and go 6-6.  We won't really begin to get an answer about whether Jinks is a championship coach until year 3.

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