I love coming to TKP now and reading all the write-ups on things, and I also enjoy various sports and seeing the designs in things. With regards to coaching, and specifically in regards to OC, DC, and HC on a football team, I'd like to make a few observations and get a few opinions on things.
We've had a lot of people criticize coaching, and it gets worse in game where there's poor performance.
Here's what I see in football:
A bad coach is one with consistent bad performance, regardless of personnel. I'm not naming examples in any of these observations, but we all have ideas. A bad coach can do a whole lot of nothing, even if they had an entire team of 4 and 5 star recruits.
A typical coach (and this makes up a lot of college football) has typical performance, being good or bad depending on personnel. This kind of coach can have one of the best offenses or defenses in the nation if the personnel is there, but can have the worst in the nation if the personnel isn't there.
A great coach can have the same as the typical coach, but does it regardless of personnel. A great coach can take people that aren't recruited highly and turn them into star talent. A great coach consistently gets his team to perform at a high level, but isn't immune to poor performances.
We all know Bud is a great coach...he has had a couple down years for one reason or another, but he consistently creates a dominant defensive team.
We know Beamer is a great coach as he consistently takes teams and turns them into teams that can win, even without top tier (coming out of high school) talent.
It's hard to say what Loeffler is at this point, though I'd put him in the typical category because I imagine what this offense would look like with the right personnel, and it's scary.
What do you guys and gals think?
Comments
I think what you're on to is a good start. I think it's fair to say Beamer is a great coach and more than fair to say Foster is a great coach. But they also have a lot of time in and a ton of games on the books. Loeffler is still fairly new. If we give every coach 3 or 4 years to prove their worth I think we'll get a better read on them. Loeffler could potentially fall into any of those 3 categories over the next 3 years. I sincerely hope he doesn't fall into that first category. I'm interested to see what this team looks like in 3 years. I'm hoping that it's dominant.
I've personally always thought that there are 3 sort of spheres of talent in college coaches. Recruiting, motivating, and actual coaching (improving/preparing players, scheming, clock management, that sort of thing).
A bad coach might do one of these things really well at the expense of the others - Mike London comes to mind (good recruiter, but pretty crappy at actual coaching).
A decent coach is probably really good at one or two of these things, or just average across the board.
A great coach (say, Saban) will beat you in all three areas.
Good staffs will make up for the gaps in their own coaches' abilities. (Dabo Swiney is a great recruiter and motivator, but an absolute boob of a gameday coach. Fortunately for him, he's surrounded himself with talented gameday assistants who he delegates responsibility to).
It's clear Bud is one of the (if not THE) best DC in the country at both motivating and coaching. He's just incredible. I also can't really knock Beamer in any area - great coach. And I think it's really fair to say the jury is still out on Loeffler - way too soon to judge. He's going to need a couple of years before any decent assessment can be made.
I love it when someone can work boob into a writeup and it make total sense. Agree with most of what you said. I think motivating is one of the most important. If you can motivate your players, that positive can go pretty far and spill into other areas.
haha, thanks. I try to work it in whenever I can.
I'm going to add a subcategory and split coaching into 2 parts.
Gameday coach and preparation/instruction coach.
So far, I think Lefty is a pretty good prep/instruction coach. I can see the improvement from last year.
Tough to tell gameday coach with such a short time as CO so, that jury is still out for me.
On that note we should just go ahead and put in-game adjustments (one of CFB's biggest weaknesses I think). CBF does better than CFB IMHO.
I think Loeffler is doing a fine job as OC- better then what we've had in the past. When I watch the offensive playcalling, I see (for the most part, there's always exceptions when someone tries to get too cute, etc) a game plan that makes sense. I see the offense trying to set up plays for working later, or trying to attack different areas. The problem is, I also see a team that is extremely inconsistent in executing those play calls. When you're as inconsistent as our offense is, the OC is going to look bad, regardless of ability.
When you lack talent and experience and you've got a first year OC, you're gonna have a bad time.
Well, just imagine if we still had the old staff managing this offense with no running game. Loeffler at least has a decent passing scheme, with Ocainspring we might not have moved the ball past the 50 this year.
In that case...
Logan is not the only kid out there with talent. Sorry, but using this excuse is a pretty F'd up thing to say about the other players. Be a fan, support the whole team.
Finally a topic about coaching. I'm not a football expert or even close, but I'm a former athlete so there are a few things I understand. Most cases in sports, life, education...whatever; there is a top 10% a bottom 10% and everyone in between. Opportunity and situation will then create the perception of the middle 80%. When you recruit blue chips u're better positioned to tap into the top 10%. Generally, most teams/players fall in the middle 80%. I've always argued that talent is about 20% relevance to winning and coaching/development is about 80%.
We argue constantly about talent this and recruiting that, but I don't buy the hype. Guz Malzahn to me is at the very top of offensive minds. While everyone gives Loefler a pass for not "coaching with his own guys", Malzahn arrived to Auburn in 2009 and IMMEDIATELY turned an Auburn offense ranked 110th in the prior season into the 16th ranked offense in the country with someone else's guys; and then did it again this year. He did it at Tulsa and he's done it everywhere else regardless of talent. Tyrod Taylor to me is a better talent than Tajh Boyd; yet they're perceived completely differently, due to coaching and offensive schematics (pun intended). Chris Petersen on the other hand has been stuck in a recruiter's worst nightmare. Just think about trying to convince a bluechip recruits from Cali to show up to this small school in IDAHO; still he wins.
Ultimately I think Beamer is a great coach for many reasons, he is well respected by his unit and keeps his staff together. But I don't believe he has fully accepted that he needs to take that plunge offensively. He's never been an offensive mind and doesn't quite value the importance of an efficient offense; it's clear. Like a manager his perceived responsibilities are to the unit as a whole and not the sum of its parts; this is what frustrates fans sometimes. Due to his vaunted defense, he literally had to have his arm twisted to decide Stiney wasn't good enough, so NO, I don't trust his judgement when it comes to offense.
Not saying Loefler isn't going to be a good coach, but when you settle for a middle of the road guy (which he is at this point, just facts), u're increasingly dependent on getting as many of the top 10% of recruiting as possible. All those 2/3 star OL and WRs we picked up aren't the answer; we have those already.
While a Loefler is dependent on blue chip recruits, I think he offers upside in QB recruiting. He will likely be able to eventually land that PREMIER-QB, which can make all the difference.
(My opinions are not and should not be mistaken as facts)
I thought you'd be way off base when I scanned your long write-up and saw you mention Malzahn. People are quick to compare him and Loeffler without looking at the entire situation.
After reading your whole write-up, I agree. I'd say Loeffler isn't a great coach. If someone argues he is, what offensive concept did he come up with? But he might be a great QB coach (his resume points to it) and he will land (and teach) the concepts that can make a QB successful. Great QB coaches can be very successful because so much of their coaching is technique and football understanding, rather than athleticism. Spurier and Cuttcliffe are two other great QB coaches, and I think Loeffler could have similar upside.
In a pro-style system, the offense has as much success as the QB. I can see Loeffler landing some big QB recruits in the future (we just missed on the top QB in the last recruiting class, and Ford is a top-tier recruit himself.) Top QBs can make or break an offense (like Matt Ryan at BC) and I think VT's best offensive days are coming in a few years.
Nice post. Been holding on to that same thought about giving Loefler a pass since he's running an offense that's not made up of his recruits, but then I though that there's no excuse for this team to be averaging less pts per game than every team in the ACC. I mean should one need to try and rationalize why we are worse off offensively than syracuse, wake forest and virginia? Further, that auburn team he OC'd for last year averaged 10pts/game in SEC play, but that same team, 1 year later, is averaging 30 in the SEC so far. It's not apples to apples, but warning flags are flying...
Loeffler's offense will go as far as his recruiting ability will take him. I'd be willing to keep him assuming he's making progress. Another full year (2014) out of the top 100 offenses wouldn't qualify as progress. And next year he won't have a returning QB.
2014 Hot Seat alert!
So you're saying he'll be on the hot seat despite having only 1 recruiting class in and no returning qb? I say next year is a bit of a transition year. He certainly can't lose his job, but continuing to do poorly won't be great. 2015 is a big year in evaluating him, though.
Don't forget that CFB also likes to remain loyal to his staff. He's not one to make quick moves.
What the post was saying though is that great coaches can still produce top ranked offenses even with a lack of talent.
Some systems are better suited for less talented players. I might be completely wrong, but I read it somewhere that the spread offense was designed to give an advantage to less talented and smaller players an advantage over bigger and better ones? Or at least level the playing field?
The spread can maximize your strengths, and turn the game into more 1v1 matchups, so teams with less talent across the board can still have individual advantages. I wouldn't say it gives less-talented players an advantage.
Some could argue that the spread can be advantageous for a team that's more talented, simply because you win those 1v1 matchups.
thank you. That's sorta what I was trying to say, but I don't think I got it across clearly.
Well, the prime example is Oregon. I wouldn't necessarily say their players are bigger and stronger than the other team, but their certainly faster. And in the spread, speed is what you need.
Hooray for rhyming.
I find it hard to argue against much of what has been laid out here, but I personally can give Loeffler some sort of pass after watching our receivers run the wrong routes and drop a myriad of passes, our quarterback overthrow and miss wide open receivers, and top running back miss holes that are there and he should be hitting. Another thing, and I can only guess, is that Beamer has made it clear how he wants the offense managed and that's how Loeffler is playing it.
No doubt Malzahn has the mind of an offensive genius, but he must have (and have had) some talent to work with. My opinion, folks, is this year we have absolutely none on offense. If I were a recruit who wanted to play from the first day, I'd enroll at Virginia Tech.
"No doubt Malzahn has the mind of an offensive genius, but he must have (and have had) some talent to work with. My opinion, folks, is this year we have absolutely none on offense."
I don't know that you can make such definite statements. Perception suggests that if the offense isn't working then it is deemed talentless, but if we can get things to start clicking then suddenly we have playmakers. The gap I assure you is not as wide as some people imagine. Just consider both 2nd year SEC teams Texas A&M and Missouri; would you say that their recruiting compares to powerhouse SEC programs? Yet they have both found success almost immediately.
There was a QB by the name of Dominique Davis who once played for BC and was very unimpressive. After leaving to attend a community college he ended up at ECU running the former Texas Tech offense. Long story short he now plays for the Atlanta Falcons.
Ultimately the system is critical unless you are really ridiculously talented. Only a single hand full of schools fit that profile and they have had to win championships to recruit that way so I wouldn't consider that a sound strategy.
Not sure if Missouri was the best example, as they signed Dorial Greene Beckham before last year, a guy who was rated the #1 recruit in the country and is a 6'6" WR....
They also needed a #1 in an offense that was already great that likes to throw it around the yard
Look, I know you didn't want to name a " bad coach"
but I've got to. I've GOT to.
Lane Kiffin. There, ...I said it. That guy manages to do less with more and it's absolutely ridiculous.
As far as the rest of your article goes, I'd say you're pretty spot on. Frank and Bud have the Virginia Tech fanbase spoiled (and let me tell you, it's a good thing folks) I've always said it takes a few years to truly gauge a coach, so the jury is still out on Loeffler. But I feel like once he gets the guys he needs to run his kind of system, he'll be okay.
I've really nothing to add to this conversation that hasn't already been stated, I just really wanted to say how bad of a coach Lane Kiffin is, ...and that he has no class.
In scanning through, I saw 'bad coach' , 'Lane Kiffin', and 'no class' ... my mind immediately translated that to 'Lane Kiffin will be the next coach at UVA. lol.'
Watch it happen.
I'm going to stand up for Loeffler here. I agree with y'all that he is currently typical but could be great or bad. I can't remember if he said this or another coach, but they commented through spring and summer practice that they weren't just having to teach our players new schemes, they had to "unteach" all of the bad techniques that we had been using. Our team was so ingrained with Ocainspring football that the new staff has a doubly hard job at turning them around. Hopefully, another off-season with the younger guys will help them develop the talent and potential that are there.
Winners win, losers lose. Chad Morris could unteach, reteach, and have those kids humming on offense by week three. We have got to chill with the excuses.
Chad Morris also went to a team running the spread and just taught them a slightly different spread. And was given Sammy Watkins and numerous top 10/15 classes loaded with offensive talent