I clearly was not paying enough attention to the hirees when Fuente came on. Obviously we know he hired Cornelson, who I THOUGHT was the OC as Memphis. But my friend brought to my attention that Cornelson was only Co-Coordinator. the Main OC was actually Darrell Dickey, whom had been OC since 2012 at Memphis and personally recruited Paxton Lynch and oversaw Memphis' offensive explosion 2 years later (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Dickey#Coaching_career)
From here this article in 2015, https://roanoke.com/sports/college/va_tech/brad-cornelsen-officially-hir...
Cornelsen has a long history with Fuente, having served as Memphis' quarterbacks coach the last four years and adding the title co-offensive coordinator last January
In 2017, Dickey was hired by Texas A&M and their offense improved from 57th in 2017 to 20th in 2018.
But on the flip side looking at the stats, it may be moot, considering this year our teams offensive stats are similar (VT slightly edges TAMU in yards/play). The huge difference is in 3rd down conversion. TAMU is at 54% and we are at 35%. But the thing is, what this leads me to believe is that Cornelson learned to a degree from Dickey and has a similar playbook, but doesnt have the same feel for the game and 'coaching instincts' that Dickey has. When he needs a key play he just regresses back to whatever main play the playbook has instead of being creative and finding different solutions to put players in position to succeed.
I'm probably just searching through the weeds for something that isnt actually there. It's just given how defensive Fuente is of Cornelson in interviews and then me realizing that Dickey was the OC at Memphis and not Corn, it makes me wonder even more that Fuente didnt hire who he thought was the best available, but rather his coaching friend...
Comments
in a word, yes
I think Fuente is a proud man. I think he doesn't want to admit that he fucked up by bringing Cornelson with him. It's kind of tragic because he's letting Cornelson tank his career because of pride.
Or maybe he's just an idiot and doesn't realize that Cornelson sucks at his job. But I think he knows, he just doesn't have the guts to do anything about it
And we all think Jerry Kill clued him in and was shown the door.....but even so at some point when you are failing you have to look in the mirror and say what do I need to change. Unfortunately, none of us can see the smallest sliver of change in walled off Hokie football land.
More and more Fuente is starting to remind me of some of my golfing buddies who were getting older and losing it physically and mentally. They still thought their 8 iron was good for 150 yards when it went about 120 tops. I will always remember one guy like this, likeable as heck and started getting Alzheimer's, he would ask us how far it was to the hole and we would say 180 while we leaned on the 150 yard marker.
Maybe if we could just slip an assistant onto the field to tell Justin its 3rd and 9 from the 50 when its actually 3rd and 3.
I feel like the play is QB draw regardless.
Hell, make it 3rd and 20.
It has been said in other threads that Darrell wasn't going to uproot his family at the time.
Does that mean that he took Corny because Darrell said no? I have no idea.
Ah I missed that little nugget. Sucks cuz he ended up moving just 2 years later anyways
Money talks, he makes almost double at TAMU than what Cornelson makes at VT
I don't think Dickey wanted to come to VT. He was named interim HC after Fuente was hired, so I wouldn't be surprised that he didn't want to move and/or was making a play to become the next HC at Memphis.
Even if it was equal money it would be more in texas because of taxes plus better coaching opportunity, better recruiting area and better conference so seems like he lucked into the right situation.
While true that taxes in general are lower in Texas compared to Va, the difference is much smaller than most think and probably isn't enough to make a meaningful difference for a coordinator. In Texas, you save ~5% on income taxes, but property taxes are ~3X higher than Virginia rates, plus ~3% higher sales taxes and toll roads everywhere. This will vary a lot based on where you live in Texas, your income, and the price/value of your home but for reference my state effective tax rate went down less than 1% when I moved from VA to TX, not counting sales taxes or tolls. If I made the same move today with current property values in TX going up I'd probably be close to breakeven or even worse off.
TL, DR; Governments get their money one way or another.
Probably, but we're also at the point where changing OCs won't fix much. But of course it could've put us on a different trajectory.
Yeah, the whole Dabo/CEO type coach with brilliant coordinators requires a certain personality at the HC spot...which I just don't think Fuente has.
There's far too many issues outside of X's and O's in the program overall for me to believe that Fuente has *it* when it comes to running a top 25 (or whatever we are now) P5 job.
His ceiling is likely being head coach at a lower level P5 job (Vandy, you interested??) or back in G5.
Vandy pls
I think you're on to something. He's coached in Tennessee and must still have ties to that state plus Mississippi and wherever he recruited while at Memphis. Plus Vandy has less pressure and only requires you to at least have more than 2-3 wins a season.
Yes
compounded by the even bigger mistake of not firing him when it was clear he wasn't doing any of the facets of his job adequately
I know Whit controls who the head coaches are, but can he hire/fire an assistant coach without the head coaches approval?
If Whit doesn't have the money for Fuente's buy-out can he at least force some change for next year?
Unless there's a clause in Fuente's contract giving him full control of the coaching staff, I would imagine that Whit would have the ability to pull the plug on any of the department's staffing decisions.
I could see him approaching Fuente and saying "you have to make some major staff changes this offseason, or I will do it for you", but I still think we're well beyond the point where that could be effective.
Contract says the following:
So this is very inconsistent language, but ultimately it would seem Fuente selects the coaches with mutual agreement by Whit.
See item 4 of page 2. See also Section IV beginning p. 12. Fuente Contract 2017-2023
(Note: There was another extension in 2018, but I couldn't find the contract as easily on google. Please share if anyone has a link.)
(Further Note: This is a very subpar drafted contract that was executed. Whit needs to do better. Based on this contract and how its written, I can conjecture on why VT has had a hard time getting acceptance of NCAA waivers.)
Would you mind elaborating for those of us not educated in contract law? I'm especially intrigued about the part re: VT and the NCAA waivers.
It basically doesn't say who has authority.
For starters, the contract has a very unprofessional appearance. It has the look of a contract drafted by a 2nd year law school student that put it together with in an hour and just trying to barely pass.
The formatting is poor. It isn't easy to navigate.
There are contradictory statements throughout. A contract CANNOT be ambiguous. The whole point of a contract is to remove ambiguity, so each party (and any 3rd party reading the contract) knows exactly what was agreed upon.
Certain clauses are in multiple sections. For instance, the power to hire and retain a assistant coaches is in 3 separate locations. A well written contract would have one concise section.
(And my point about the NCAA waivers is the following: If they have this poor of a legal document for the highest paid employee of the athletic department, what would their other legal documents look like?)
I just googled Lincoln Riley's contract for comparison: Lincoln Riley Contract
Gotcha. My only main exposure to contracts is our subcontractor and professional services agreement contracts which to me are pretty straight forward, but I was already kind of picking up on the points you laid out. I'm used to writing our Exhibit As which lays out the specifics of a sub's scope and they're either very specific or left vague-ish depending on the contractor and the scope.
I agree after taking a quick glance. I don't even do that much contract drafting but I would have definitely cleared up some of these inconsistencies.
Who drafts these? Agents? Surely not outside counsel for the University? If so, the legal department might want to shop around.
At least it's not written in Comic Sans.
This and Galen Scott being unable to keep it in his pants
Yes but maybe that was the only thing getting us recruiticorns?
I'm not sure I understand why Cornelson seems to be becoming the scapegoat. I know Tech fans are used to blaming the OC but, the defense has been terrible this year.
He can't recruit and none of our QB's have developed
The defense was going to be bad because of the transition. I think there is room for improvement with the coaching, but the cupboard is bare for guys who fit what this system was meant to be.
The offense has good playmaking QBs, Herbert, and the best offensive line at VT in the last 20 years... and they can't put it together.
Can't wait for next year when we can pair an offense that is going to be bad because of the transition with a defense that is already bad.
Pretty much. Even if we somehow get invited to a bowl game to extend the streak to 28, I'm not very confident that it'll reach 29.
If we get a new engaging, dynamic coach/staff that can keep the team largely together (and is competent X and O-wise), I think we can get to a bowl next season. Have the talent on paper given the number of cupcakes almost every team has each year. It is after that when the 2019 and 2020 recruiting kick in that I think we are almost doomed no matter who gets here - unless they can turn recruiting around instantaneously, which is highly unlikely.
If we bring in a home-run hire who immediately gets things turned around, there's a chance. And I'm a little less worried about the recent recruiting classes, what with the way the transfer portal is changing the sport, but again that assumes we bring in someone who will attract quality transfers.
And it could be the SuperPortal next year. I haven't heard anything about the NCAA changing the 85 scholly limit, and with everyone having an extra year of eligibility, how does that all come to make sense. Won't there be excess players all over the place? Someone please post a response to this that says "The numbers always work out" and then someone else can actually add some real help.
The numbers always work tho
Something tells me that the NCAA will temporarily increase the max by a few scholarships to help the numbers work, just like they've issued waivers for all sorts of random stuff just to make sure that this season worked at all.
The offense hasn't looked *not* bad the past two weeks... if we hadn't hit the lottery with Herbert transferring in I think our offensive stats would be abysmal
The thing that is frustrating is that VT is 18 in SP+ offense and 52 in SP+ defense, putting us 25th overall. So the talent is there, and we're moving the ball well enough, but we can't convert that into wins. It's quite perplexing.
because when the staff was hired, the goal was to pair a high powered offense with the stout defense we're used to. The offense has shown glimpses here and there, but it's been stale and predictable which makes it a downright liability in some games.
Everyone who was actually paying attention knew the defense would suck this year, just like we knew it would suck in 2018 (though, maybe not quite to that magnitude). We brought in a new coordinator and an almost entirely new staff around him, gave him hardly any offseason practice and meeting time to implement his system, and have had a revolving door of personnel due to COVID. I (and presumably many others) are more than willing to give him a mulligan on this season.
Cornelsen, on the other hand, kept the majority of last season's offensive personnel intact, added a few star players to the mix in Herbert and Hoffman, and was largely expected to not only keep the boat afloat while the defense figured out their new system but also just simply dominate along the way. They came out and dominated for a few games, but have regressed all season since to the point where we can't even expect more than 2 TDs in any given game anymore. He is absolutely blowing his chance to coach the most talented offense we've had in Blacksburg in at least a decade, and it is pretty clear that he is unfit for his current job.
Doesn't matter who the OC is if the HC can't recruit.
Exactly. The bad hire was Fuente because he is either unwilling or unable to succeed at recruiting at the P5 level. The Head Coach at VT's level has to know that recruiting is a cutthroat, dog eat dog world where you have to be willing to fight tooth and nail with other programs to get those 4-star and high 3-star players in the top 500 coming out of HS every year. It's a never ending war that you either win enough times to succeed, or you fall into mediocrity at best. I believe CJF is an excellent coach and mentor, just not the right personality for a top 25 head whistle like Hokie Nation expects/desires.
hindsight is 20/20... if Fuente would have been able to entice Darrell to make the move we could be having a significantly different conversation about the program in its entirety right now.
FWIW, Dickey wasn't calling plays at Memphis, and he's not calling plays now at TAMU. Doesn't mean he wasn't a valuable part of the offensive staff, but if you think Corny's problem is just play calling, DD wouldn't have been the solution.
Nah bc Fuente is calling the plays here.
Wait, who was calling plays at Memphis then?
Corny. I'll dig up the podcast where Fuente talks about it. The pod is from 2017, it's been posted here a few times over the years.
Only in 2015, before that it was Fuente. I remember him making a big deal out of realizing he needed to take on the CEO role of being a head coach and learn to delegate aspects of the offense to his coordinators.
My recollection is that Fuente gave up playcalling, then memphis got there 10 win season, but I might be misremembering
Could've been that Dickey was in more of a position like we had Jerry Kill in
You mean breaking down film because Corny couldn't?
Yup