Players play. Coaches coach. Coaches choose who play.
Why didn't Colbie Young play at all until the very end of the UNC game? You think he could have helped in the red zone against A&M?
Players make mistakes..and they get graded for them every week. And the coaches decide (at least they should) who plays based on those grades. The coaches picked the kids that make mistakes to play
Like Dr. Henry Cloud says, Mario is ridiculously in charge. He decides scheme. He decides reps. He makes game time decisions. He gives responsibility. Accountability. He's fully and wholly responsible for the results because he has 100% authority over all decisions. Blaming players is an exercise in futility for those who are in charge. Sure he has some limits by the roster, but the portal has minimized that and there's still no excise for losing to MTSU, ZERO TDs against A&M, and the woeful red zone success against UNC and in general.
Lincoln took over a 4-8 USC team with their worst roster in 30 years. He flipped the roster and installed an advantageous scheme that his new roster could execute.
Mario could have done the same. He didn't. And that's ok. But it's why he has a D for this season so far. I still expect him to be an A hire. But he has blundered the first half of this season.
I do agree with most of this. Especially that as the HC, the buck must always start and end with Mario. And I sincerely doubt there is any aspect of this program that Mario doesn't have his fingers in.
And the coaches definitely decide who plays, but they are still limited to the players on the roster. I agree the portal and new transfer rules help address needs more quickly than ever before, but a new coach still needs to assess his team to figure out where additional help is needed. Mario correctly identified that he needed help at RB, WR, OL, DL, LB, and CB. Parrish, Ladson, Young, Denis, Sagapolu, Mesidor, Jackson, Lichtenstein, Moultrie, Agude, Johnson, and Porter. Many of those guys (Parrish, Ladson, Young, Mesidor, and Jackson, especially) have had significant roles this season.
I think we can all agree he should have done more to bring in more portal help at OL, WR, and CB. And I think Mario would also say he and the staff expected more players to enter the portal in the summer months and it just never materialized. That was a mistake.
Of course, player evaluations should constantly be occurring, but it also takes some time to understand your players, learn their strengths and weaknesses, figure out growth potential, and assess their character. You get some of that in practice, but a lot of it is theoretical until the the bullets are live against outside competition.
A great example is CY. I'm not going to crucify the coaching staff for waiting until Game 5 to give a JUCO kid who many people on this board considered a borderline P5 guy when he enrolled less than 4 months ago. The player obviously needs time to learn the system (though it is up to the coaching staff to get him up to speed as quickly as possible), the coaches need to evaluate what they've got with the player, and you obviously can't bump a kid to the top of the depth chart when he's just gotten here. It takes time. That's not an excuse, that's just reality.
A bad example is coaches asking Mallory to do the things we have years of film showing he can't do. Or asking TVD, who everyone knows thrived in a certain system last season, to do things he was clearly uncomfortable with as early as the Southern Miss game. They figured it out with TVD a few games later, which is probably better than past staffs, but its valid to question why it took that long in the first place. Or the communication and personnel issues in the secondary that we just can't seem to get right.
None of that excuses the performance against MTSU, the offensive and ST performances against TAMU, the way we came out flat for the first 20 minutes and then disappeared for most of the second half until the last five minutes against UNC, the second half (and especially 4th quarter) against VT, or the red zone issues that have plagued this offense throughout the season. It also doesn't excuse this team's total lack of identity.
All of that said, I'm withholding judgment and not making any conclusions about the long-term outlook of the program until the season is over, the 2023 class is signed, and I see what happens with the coaching and personnel departures at the end of the season.
