Below represents the best interim solution for the rest of the season until the problem can be fixed long term with our football program.
-Go ahead and fire Manny and Blake now, so that we can begin a thorough search for the next AD 1st and head coach by the bowl season. (At least fire Manny now even if they are considering reassigning Blake or just holding on to him until the for whatever silly reason). Manny has lost all support in the players, recruits, fan base, boosters, and alumni, so need to prolong the inevitable. The administration has to realize when you find yourself in a hole, you must stop digging and keeping Manny and Blake represent constant digging in a hole at this point.
- Name TROB interim head coach. Why because recruiting is the lifeline of any good programs outside of an exceptional coach who can scheme and is brilliant at X and O's. No one else on the staff has HC experience and to make the best of what we can with recruiting until the next HC is named TROB is the best recruiter on staff and is probably the most likely to be retained by the next head coach. This allows TROB to continue to recruit at a high level as the interim face/figure head of the program and show why he needs to remain on staff for the next HC. It also allows him to see if he can help turn around the culture problem with the remaining schedule, since he has a lot of previous SEC experience, relates well to players, and is from South Florida.
- Bring Shoop on field and name him as DC. Of the coaches with DC experience (Shoop and TROB), Shoop is probably the most proven and has coordinated better defensive units in the past. Shoop can coach safeties and DVD can coach corners with TROB assisting both when needed from his interim HC positoin. This will also answer some questions for us and the next staff: like was Manny's scheme a serious problem assuming some of Shoop's philosophies are different ex. more press bump and run etc, who are the players that are currently on the team that can excel in the scheme, are we running the right scheme, it allows the next head coach to evaluate the coaches we currently have on the defensive staff to see if they can improve our defensive deficiencies with their won fixes. (it gives a glimpse for say someone like Mario for example to see if the 4-2-5 can excel with what we have versus brining the 3-4 with him from Oregon or playing a 3-3-5). If Shoop and TROB can show they can fix the defense, then consider them for CO-DC positions if it makes sense, if it doesn't then move on.
- For the offensive side of the ball Lashlee has the rest of the season to prove Manny was hindering him from being an effective OC. (which I personally believe was not the case and that the offense has been all Lashlee). If can not improve on the slow offensive starts, lack of diversity in the run game, lack of rhythm with playcalling, and low percentage of scoring TDs in the redzone then his resume is what it is. The new HC can decide who to keep or not keep from the offensive staff outside of Lashlee.
In my opinion this is how we should move forward and get some ground truth answers on what some of our problems were under Manny and arm the next HC and AD with these answers as well.
