umiamifan1
Those guys were flying around...
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2012
- Messages
- 982
Last Saturday as I watched Mario put Tyler back into the game to start the second half, I wondered to myself: how much of this decision is attributed to ego? It was clear to almost all of us 5 minutes into the game that he didn't have it that day; his body language, accuracy and timing were all abysmal; and while I fully understood playing him until halftime, I could not justify him starting the third. Sure enough, Jake comes in midway through the quarter and the entire team's energy shifts on both sides of the ball. Why did it take so long though? Then I thought back to his decision to hire Gattis to implement a smash-mouth, Big 10-style approach---despite the fact that Lashlee was hugely successful running more RPO stuff with TVD last year and the obvious fact that our personnel didn't align optimally with Mario's preferred scheme. He had the rare luxury of inheriting an underachieving team with a projected first rounder at QB (and several promising prospects in the QB room behind him) and decided to build his offense around the run game instead...but why? Because that's the way he's always done it?
So how much of this is just him having too much pride to adapt? In regards to the QB decision, is it possible that he views Jake's promotion to starter as an admission of his own incompetence or failure? Similarly, is he not able to recognize that the painfully glacial pace of Gattis' offense doesn't give us the best opportunity to win games? Don't get it twisted, I know that Mario is a workaholic who is completely committed to rebuilding this program...but I'm not sure how much he's willing to acknowledge his own mistakes quickly and fix them. In my opinion, all great coaches have this quality -- the ability to quickly adapt to whatever the opponent or game throws at you...but sometimes HCs become stubborn and refuse to admit their mistakes. Golden stuck with us his boy D'Onofrio and it led to his downfall; Richt wouldn't fire his son so he fell on the sword instead. To Manny's credit, he actually DID make changes to both the offense and defense during the offseason that yielded positive results; but in the end, he was just in over his head. Mario has proven himself to be a very good HC at the P5 level and I know he wants us to be great again as much as anyone does. I just hope he's still able to grow as a coach and recognize that what worked at Oregon may not work in Miami.
So how much of this is just him having too much pride to adapt? In regards to the QB decision, is it possible that he views Jake's promotion to starter as an admission of his own incompetence or failure? Similarly, is he not able to recognize that the painfully glacial pace of Gattis' offense doesn't give us the best opportunity to win games? Don't get it twisted, I know that Mario is a workaholic who is completely committed to rebuilding this program...but I'm not sure how much he's willing to acknowledge his own mistakes quickly and fix them. In my opinion, all great coaches have this quality -- the ability to quickly adapt to whatever the opponent or game throws at you...but sometimes HCs become stubborn and refuse to admit their mistakes. Golden stuck with us his boy D'Onofrio and it led to his downfall; Richt wouldn't fire his son so he fell on the sword instead. To Manny's credit, he actually DID make changes to both the offense and defense during the offseason that yielded positive results; but in the end, he was just in over his head. Mario has proven himself to be a very good HC at the P5 level and I know he wants us to be great again as much as anyone does. I just hope he's still able to grow as a coach and recognize that what worked at Oregon may not work in Miami.