Jinks Monday/Thursday presser

So Coach Jinks had his Monday presser today to lead into the Tuesday game with Kent.

• He said that everyone was healthy at QB but they will have a starter named by tomorrow morning.  However, he said that no one (Morgan or Loy) had taken the job and for all the world I would expect Doege to start if he's healthy.
• He was asked how much of the team's issues would fall onto the QB.  This is an interesting question because Jinks seemed to talk as if the NIU game fell apart based on QB mistakes.
• He says, as you would expect, that the team in the locker room know it is not all on the QB and that's right.  It isn't.  This team has issues all over the field.  Interesting, he also noted that the other coaches were part of the issue, too.
• He also showed an astounding capacity to view the season in a positive light.  He said something like "we could be winning the East."  My first reaction was, the MAC EAST??  Yes, the MAC East.  We were winning late in the 3rd against OU and Akron at home and lost those games and just think if we were 3-1.
• (Uh, you know, you were one play from losing the Miami game, so its 2-2 at best and what it is is 0-4.  The East was never at risk.  Are you kidding me?  His review of last season has included talking about being ahead in the 4th as tantamount to winning, so now he's moved the bar back a little bit.)
• He said against Akron and OU for 2-3 quarters we might be the better team.
• The recruiting stuff was interesting.  He did concede that it is tougher to recruit given the losing, but that players see that you can get time here and that we have 14-15 freshmen and redshirt freshmen recruiting so they know if they come here they won't be sitting for three years.
• For my money, the biggest issue with the losing is that a young man might fear he comes here for the last two years of the Jinks years and then the first two rebuilding years of the next coach and your whole career is gone.
• Early signing is new this year.  He expects all of our current verbals to sign on the early signing day on December 20.
• With the off days, the coaches were out on the road making sure we stay in front of the guys we have on board.  (Note:  he said we have 14-15 verbals, but to my knowledge only 13 are publicly known).  He expects a smaller class...like 21-22.
• He talked about the difficulties for a program giving the coaching changes.  One telling question was whether it was easier after a championship year and he said "I would not know."
• He did note that lots of championships teams hire internally to keep stability in the program (Hello Chris Kingston?)
• He said once the season ends, he will go on the road for 23 days straight to ensure our verbals sign early.