early warning signs most of us disregarded

Sooooo sick of talking about Golden!
We have to use another name form now on.
Tub of lard sucks and will be pummeled into submission sooner rather than later..
Everyone knows he sucks and should have been fired last year.
It just gets so tough to talk about over and over... Soon the recruits will fall off and the new 17' class will be Als focus. He will blame the negative fans for this and we get a new hashtag and catch phrase..... **** gets old, his same song and dance
 
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Early warning sign was the 1st game he coached against Maryland. Nothing has changed since, especially defensively.
 
In retrospect, it's no surprise at all Golden has failed at Miami. There were several clues that I ignored or rationalized, but there are three that have come to signify Al Golden football.


1. He never beat a winning team in the MAC. He never won the MAC. He never even PLAYED FOR the MAC championship. It's pretty remarkable in five years he never even fluked his way into a win against a winning MAC team. That trend has essentially continued at Miami. He's never won the Coastal, he's never beaten a 10-win team, and he's never beaten a team that's finished in the top 25. When Golden faces a coach with comparable talent, it's almost a guaranteed loss.

2. His philosophy is counter-intuitive to south Florida's fertile recruiting base. Early on Golden said, "It is no longer okay to be a 208-pound linebacker at the University of Miami." The area is littered with lightning-fast guys who are a bit undersized. A smart coach would make the adjustment and build a system around that. But Golden is too stubborn. I believe DMoney mentioned that Golden is fully steeped in the Bill Parcells model of big, powerful players. That's all well and good when you're in the NFL or you recruit in an area that produces a lot of beefy linebackers and nose tackles, but Miami isn't the place for it. We have guys bulking up too quickly and carrying too much weight. Anthony Chickillo put on 30 lbs in one off-season and was essentially done as a playmaker. A lot of our guys look slow and stiff. The inability to alter the original plan is a huge issue. I remember reading an article where Pete Carroll said he tried to implement a two-gap system at SC, but quickly scrapped it because it was unnecessarily difficult to put in place at the college level. Instead he wanted guys to play with speed and aggressiveness. He had that undersized white dude Matt Grootegoed in the running for the Butkus, and he was like 210 lbs. Apparently you have to be a scholar to play in Golden's/D'Onofrio's defense. That's the only explanation for untalented players having strangleholds on starting positions (e.g. Safety every single year under Golden).

3. He's obsessed with coal-shovelers. This ties into #2 re philosophy. Golden believes you build a championship team with a lot of B and B+ guys, and a few A guys sprinkled in. That's not how Miami was built. Bring in as many studs as possible, have them compete like **** against each another, and then unleash them on Saturdays. Again, Pete Carroll told his coaches he wanted guys that could play in the NFL in 3-4 years. Nick Saban said he preferred college because he could recruit as many first-round draft picks as he wanted. Instead Golden focuses on over-achievers at camps, which have been almost exclusively busts. "The Cloud" may have negatively impacted recruiting to a certain extent, but Golden's own philosophy/evaluation process is an even bigger problem.


Golden has a laundry list of flaws, but these three issues speak to his stubbornness, lack of awareness, and inability to get the most out of his players.

**** good post
 
Anyone remember the picture of Parcells hanging up in the locker room?

It's not a warning sign that he follows parcells mold, it's a warning sign that he never actually coached for Parcells, but spoke about him as if he was a mentor. Always seemed odd to me
 
In retrospect, it's no surprise at all Golden has failed at Miami. There were several clues that I ignored or rationalized, but there are three that have come to signify Al Golden football.


1. He never beat a winning team in the MAC. He never won the MAC. He never even PLAYED FOR the MAC championship. It's pretty remarkable in five years he never even fluked his way into a win against a winning MAC team. That trend has essentially continued at Miami. He's never won the Coastal, he's never beaten a 10-win team, and he's never beaten a team that's finished in the top 25. When Golden faces a coach with comparable talent, it's almost a guaranteed loss.

2. His philosophy is counter-intuitive to south Florida's fertile recruiting base. Early on Golden said, "It is no longer okay to be a 208-pound linebacker at the University of Miami." The area is littered with lightning-fast guys who are a bit undersized. A smart coach would make the adjustment and build a system around that. But Golden is too stubborn. I believe DMoney mentioned that Golden is fully steeped in the Bill Parcells model of big, powerful players. That's all well and good when you're in the NFL or you recruit in an area that produces a lot of beefy linebackers and nose tackles, but Miami isn't the place for it. We have guys bulking up too quickly and carrying too much weight. Anthony Chickillo put on 30 lbs in one off-season and was essentially done as a playmaker. A lot of our guys look slow and stiff. The inability to alter the original plan is a huge issue. I remember reading an article where Pete Carroll said he tried to implement a two-gap system at SC, but quickly scrapped it because it was unnecessarily difficult to put in place at the college level. Instead he wanted guys to play with speed and aggressiveness. He had that undersized white dude Matt Grootegoed in the running for the Butkus, and he was like 210 lbs. Apparently you have to be a scholar to play in Golden's/D'Onofrio's defense. That's the only explanation for untalented players having strangleholds on starting positions (e.g. Safety every single year under Golden).

3. He's obsessed with coal-shovelers. This ties into #2 re philosophy. Golden believes you build a championship team with a lot of B and B+ guys, and a few A guys sprinkled in. That's not how Miami was built. Bring in as many studs as possible, have them compete like **** against each another, and then unleash them on Saturdays. Again, Pete Carroll told his coaches he wanted guys that could play in the NFL in 3-4 years. Nick Saban said he preferred college because he could recruit as many first-round draft picks as he wanted. Instead Golden focuses on over-achievers at camps, which have been almost exclusively busts. "The Cloud" may have negatively impacted recruiting to a certain extent, but Golden's own philosophy/evaluation process is an even bigger problem.


Golden has a laundry list of flaws, but these three issues speak to his stubbornness, lack of awareness, and inability to get the most out of his players.

pretty accurate except the point about 208 llb lb's. I don't think its as black and white. I witnessed us get manhandled by Cal and Wisconsin in two consecutive bowl losses. I felt at that time we looked small and weaker than those teams physically as well as most SEC teams at the time. the game has changed a little in that you can be bigger stronger and fast. that's the only point of contention I have with your post but otherwise its pretty accurate.
 
I remember that Whitlock interview like it was yesterday. Thought he was the biggest hater alive..he was just trying to soften the blow for us but we didnt know it at the time. Smh. 5 years later and we are in football ****..
 
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Again, Jason Whitlock's interview on ESPN radio told us all we needed to know about al golden.


Whitlock is hit or miss, but he knocked that one into the upper deck.


Whitlock is hit or miss...but the fact that he is a big time Ball St fan and graduated from there he was an avid MAC watcher...so he had intel that nobody else had...


CANES: Jason Whitlock not sold on Golden | Sedano Says



Man, it's like Whitlock was a fortune teller.
 
#2 gets me most. Fermin (I know, I know) stated on his podcast that Mia/Ft laud area is tops in the country for are with most NFL players at 51. Next is Atlanta with 16. STA has the most players in the NFL of any HS, also at 16. Crazy talent. He doesn't recruit it all that well and then he doesn't know how to utilize/maximize it. He appears obsessive and stubborn to a fault. It's fine if you're right, I suppose. But what he's doing isn't working. Couple that with his loyalty to D'No, who has been an unmitigated disaster here, and you've got issues. The enduring picture that I will have in my mind regarding the Golden regime when it is all said and done, is the shot of D'No grimacing and fumbling with the call sheet as Cinci (Cinci****inNati who we had beaten 11 straight, who hadn't beaten us since 1947, who this year lost to Memphis and TEMPLE, yes, that Cincinatti) ran up and down the field. Cincinatti was faster than Miami. Get your head around that. You are correct, his philosophy, his core, is antithetical to what Miami is all about.

That is all.
 
Part of the problem was that we were familiar with Temple as the doormat of the Big East and he turned them around (on paper, see #1 above).

We expected the same kind of thing here. We knew Temple attracted mediocre players and if he could turn them into winners, then he could develop the talent here even better. That was Shannon's biggest weakness. He wasn't particularly good at developing players. We expected more from Golden.

Golden just wasn't what we thought he was. The NCAA "cloud" and Shalala's departure just gave him five years of chances to waste instead of two.
 
His biggest most glaring failure..... They play every opponent the same. They dont look and say, ok this is a freshman we are going to come after him all game. Same lineup in base defense and play zone, every single game. You then wonder wy its so easy for the oppenent to figure out but hard for our players
 
I remember thinking how f'ed up that 2011 4th quarter against KSU (home game) coaching was. I remember thinking that this guy has no idea what he's doing.
 
Administration needs to do a "lessons learned" and insure they apply it to the coaching search. In hindsight, he was not a fit.
 
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8 of his wins are vs Bethune, Ark St, FAU, Savannah St. like all of these shouldn't even count.
 
#2 gets me most. Fermin (I know, I know) stated on his podcast that Mia/Ft laud area is tops in the country for are with most NFL players at 51. Next is Atlanta with 16. STA has the most players in the NFL of any HS, also at 16. Crazy talent. He doesn't recruit it all that well and then he doesn't know how to utilize/maximize it. He appears obsessive and stubborn to a fault. It's fine if you're right, I suppose. But what he's doing isn't working. Couple that with his loyalty to D'No, who has been an unmitigated disaster here, and you've got issues. The enduring picture that I will have in my mind regarding the Golden regime when it is all said and done, is the shot of D'No grimacing and fumbling with the call sheet as Cinci (Cinci****inNati who we had beaten 11 straight, who hadn't beaten us since 1947, who this year lost to Memphis and TEMPLE, yes, that Cincinatti) ran up and down the field. Cincinatti was faster than Miami. Get your head around that. You are correct, his philosophy, his core, is antithetical to what Miami is all about.

That is all.
Good point. Last year they had a record 17 players sign on NSD. 0 came to Miami.
 
When I found out that Barrow had to convince Golden to take Denzel Perryman, that should have been a red flag.
Yep I didn't believe it at first.

Also Jacoby Brissett telling Golden to **** his own face despite Golden begging him to come here, but instead choosing to sit the bench at UiF was an eye opener.
 
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