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Calling for the benching of your QB who's 3 for 11 with 21 passing yards and 6 consecutive 3 and outs is hardly the unreasonable college football fan trope you're making it out to be.
Not to mention Drones had already clearly quit on this game. Keeping him in with those stats and his body language is nuts.
Oh absolutely, and probably ESPN as a whole doing him a huge favor. I hope Saban threw up in his mouth a little bit every time he had to do it.
Remember, Justin Fuente thought Ryan Willis was better than Hendon Hooker
Until he didn't.
Sometimes the coaches get it wrong.
And most of the time, fans get it wrong. I can't think of a season since 2016 where there wasn't a "bench the starter" mentality here (and that's not unusual for college football fans). Hell, I remember folks calling for Tyrod to be benched during the Stanford game (I think?) because fan saw Logan Thomas throw that one absolute missile in that Miami game.
Yes, Pop fumbled after getting hit as he threw. Kyron jogged out of bounds 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage on 4th and 3 to turn it over on downs.
Which is worse?
Yeah and in 2023 they started Wells after having seen all of training camp, put in Drones due to injury and the offense took off. So I think questioning the personnel decisions of this staff is on the table.
I'm not a Pop truther either, but that was a dogshit performance from Drones. Even if you think he better than Pop (which he probably is). Drones gave you 0% to win. Pop brings that up a little because that game was in reach until we went three and out for the entire middle half of the game. A singular scoring drive in the second or third quarter would've gone a long way.
It sounds like you have more confidence in this staff than I do.
Remember, Justin Fuente thought Ryan Willis was better than Hendon Hooker, and he was watching them both in practice every day. Sometimes the coaches get it wrong.
IMO that's Saban doing Jimmy Sexton - who is not just an agent, but his second closest confidant in life (behind his wife) - a big favor.
But what would we have to gain, either?
Giving the team a spark and possibly winning the game?
In all likelihood it wouldn't have been enough, but after halftime it was very clear that the only way Drones was going to win the game, was with 3 defensive or special teams TDs.
Who would maximize the talent more than Franklin? Even including people that are unrealistic to hire. Frank Beamer isn't going to be coaching on the sideline. Franklin has his warts too. But right now we haven't played in an actual big game since 2016. That's 9 entire years of consistent mediocrity.
Is it better to maximize the talent of a low 3 star or get the average output of a mid or high 4 star? If you apply this question across the entire roster, the 4 star team is going to win 9 out of 10 times. Maximizing anything is incredibly hard. Doing it week in and week out is damn near impossible.
Yea this is where I'm at. The NC st and Cal games would both be losses under pry/with less effort.
Monty was certainly in an unenviable position. Remember when Pry was first fired and people on here were worried we weren't even going to be able to field a team by the end of the year due to all the potential transfers out? They managed to field a "mostly" competitive team most of the time in most of the games and even managed to give us 2 victories.
That said, I thank him and this staff for his service but everybody is ready to turn the page and get on with the Franklin era, including monty. You could see it on his face last night.
It might have made a difference. Only way to know is to try.
Or watch hundreds of practices over 2-3 years.
What did we have to lose?
The scoring streak
Look, I'm not a drones truther by any stretch. But I think the coaches all want to win desperately. I think they play the players who they think give them the best chance of winning. And they have way more data points than I do.
Came here to say the same thing.
James Franklin today, I assume.
It might have made a difference. Only way to know is to try. What did we have to lose?
You could see the quit in Kyron's face. We've seen that deer in the headlights look many times now. He's about as bad a leader as he is a passer. Might as well try something else and see if it energizes the team. Sometimes teams respond to a change. We saw Pop energize our team just last week.
Or we could continue trotting out the worst QB we've ever had even though he hasn't gotten a first down in 3 quarters. Drones was guaranteed to fail at that point, but because Pop might fail too, we should keep banging our heads against the wall with Kyron?
I think you just answered your own question. Pry couldn't get 8 wins out of a 10 win roster (as you called it). Franklin had 3 bad games this year ,but multiple seasons of 10 wins or more, made in the CFB playoff semifinals (nearly the NC game) last year and can recruit the shit out this region.
I don't know who else you think would be better, but everyone on PSUs list to replace Franklin got extended and wasn't available. And anybody at the G5 level is a bigger gamble.
It's still so funny to me that Saban was on gameday stumping for him to coach through the playoffs as if he didn't literally fire the person he was defending for the exact same thing.
Sad seeing some of these players and coaches taking flak. Monty coached his head off with 1/3 of a roster. The players mostly showed effort. All of them chose to finish the season, easily could have quit like the other half of the roster.
As a Vikings fan who's been dealing with seeing so many fans thinking a rookie undrafted free agent is going to be the franchise saving qb since McCarthy has been generationally awful, I really do believe that if Pop truly gave the team a better chance to win, they would play. I get that it would be hard for him to be worse, but that doesn't always mean better.
I remember back when Kellen Mond was the backup and Vikings fans were calling for him to play, Mike Zimmer was asked why he hadn't turned to Mond during the Vikings struggles and zimmers response was basically "because I've seen him in practice"
Then he turned the ball over instead of just taking a sack, essentially ending the game.
Their fanbase couldn't fill their stadium in their biggest game since 'nam. They are not serious about football. They hit the jackpot with a combination of a veteran roster that will need replacing next year, the easiest schedule in FBS, and some incredible luck to beat FSU, Louisville, Washington State, and UNC. Louisville was the only decent team they beat all year.
I am not worried about UVA. They got their once-a-decade win against us last night. Good for them. They should enjoy it while it lasts.
Who was gonna catch it? Who was gonna block? We could have thrown in Pop sure it would have made no difference.
But what would we have to gain, either? Season's cooked, game's cooked...time to replace him was games ago, though.
Without getting into the whole debate, I do find it fascinating that so many different coaching staffs and QB consultants mistakenly thought Drones was a quarterback instead of the wildcat running back he actually is.