I appreciate the honesty but I differ with you on one major point. If he decides to keep Gattis or Ponce then I will immediately assume that he has no facking clue what he's doing because it will be obvious. This ties in directly with my next point. You made a comment that at the end of the day it's all about the scoreboard and that Mario will be judged by that and you are absolutely correct. The problem is that Mario seems to be completely oblivious to one of the most important realities of college football right now and that is the fact that now more than ever a team must be able to score and score often in order to be competitive in this current landscape of college football. It all starts with the offense and the ability to score points. If you have a very good offense you can be in a lot of games and give yourself a chance to win. You see it all over the nation. Plenty of teams who are in the process of building with new coaches who realize that if you are offense centric that you can both win a lot of games and make your program attractive to recruits thus giving you the ability to build a strong defense, and strengthen yourself on both lines etc.
Mario seems to be clueless to this fact. We need to have a more offense centered identity to begin with. We need to have a fun and exciting brand of offense that is aggressive and wide open. Then after a few more great recruiting classes we will have the depth and talent to be able to be a more balanced type of offense. Until we improve the OL considerably we need to be a pass first to set up the run type of offense. An Air Raid style OC is fine. There are many different variations of Air Raid and being Air Raid in no way precludes the ability to run the football. Who doesn't love an awesome running attack and having a stable of stud RBs? For the time being however we need to air it out in order to set up the run. Hopefully Mario has his "Come to Jesus" moment" and finally realizes this.
I really do agree with you. I'm just sort of bottom-lining it for myself. Whatever decisions he makes, he will have to live with. He can't hide behind not being given the tools to succeed.
Sorry, but this isn't 1973 where we don't really know what we have for the first 4 years and coach may need another 2-3 to make sure he's implemented his strategies and systems.
I've mentioned it in another thread - he had enough talent to win 9 games this season. Ask yourself, if Kiffin had come here, would he have gone 5-7 this year? I think we all know that answer.
I knew MC was going to be a slow cooker, but in my wildest imagination, I had no clue it would be this slow. Now, granted, he did have a record number of injuries at key positions and it just won't happen again like that next year - not to that extent.
I don't always claim to have my pulse on Cane Nation writ large, but I will say that I have been right more than wrong when assessing the group think temperature. I believe he basically has one year (roughly 12 months) from today-ish to win a minimum of 8 games and show real and systemic progress for the program. Outside of that, despite all of the Ruiz money, I just don't see him surviving. The death spiral will have been initiated.
I'm hoping for the best and as of this moment, I am still cautiously optimistic that he will get this turned around, but no one will convince me that we HAD to lose 7 reg season games this year. Not buying it. Even with the rash of injuries and bad culture players, etc., there was no excuse for this season. If he rights the ship, and I think he will, then this season will make for a good dark night of the soul portion of the new 30 for 30 Cane special. The dip that comes before the new dynasty.
![crossover22[]_[]](https://data.canesinsight.com/avatars/m/2/2075.jpg?1518149361){kind=avatar}